Barcelona: good & gross

These photos are in reverse order and I'm too lazy to fix them. I went to Barcelona for 4 days last week. Lots of good food, and also some bad food. I learned to mostly only trust Rick Steves. And to always bring a list of restaurants so that you don't get roped into a gross one. And to warn other customers if they try to come into the gross restaurant you unfortunately got stuck in.

Paella!
The waiter tricked us into ordering 2 orders of it, which was awful because we had enormous appetizers. But it was still excellent. I pushed past the wall of pain as much as I could.

This is like a whole package of Despar lox. Nobody gets what that is probably, but it's like one of those things you can pretend everybody gets while secretly knowing nobody does so they maybe think it's something great and special but it's not.
ANYWAY, that came with bread. Eryn's came with avocados.

Melissa's mushroom crepes with duck bacon

Not totally sure what this is

There is this great great market called La Boqueria. It's super crowded and has lots of tourists, but who cares because it's greaet and has lots of food stands and raw meat and seafood and lots of food bars. The best one, apparently, is Pinxoto (I think that's how it's spelled), which is right when you get into the marekt.

This is fried lamb

Eryn and Melissa cut the empanada before I could take a picture

Chickpeas

Sausage

When I see people in Rome in those touristy trap restaurants by the Pantheon or where ever, I never understood why they would go there when they could just look in a guide book or look something good up online. BUT now I get it. Because sometimes the restaurant you picked only lets 140 people in a day and you can't get in and it's like 10 PM and you're really hungry and you don't know where else to go except for the busiest places with the touristy restaurants so you just pick one so you can finally EAT. And that's how this gross dinner happened.

Anchovies with grilled peppers and eggplant. It tasted like salty crap with slimy crap.

I probably ordered the least gross food though. It doesn't even look so bad.

Bocadillo with anchovies, peppers, and olives

Tapas, bad picture, but they were good

And sometimes, you just get confused and get bad food without knowing any better. Like these stale churros and hot chocolate.

Bocadillo with bacon and tomato jam

open studios

Open studios crept up on us so quickly. And somehow, the end of May came even faster and more sneakily like Elmer Fudd wishes he could be. Here's some food that the caterers made for the Open Studios (by the way, way better than those crackers they have at every other other opening). Got way too full on cheese. And other things. There was a lot of food. A LOT

caprese salad on a toothpick

MY ARCH NEMESIS: CHEESE
But it was so good. Plus toasted garlicky bread.

Cookies

There was also this yogurt dip type thing. But it's not here.

Back from Croatia

I went to Croatia for spring break, and it was super surreal.

We went to Plitvice Lakes National Park, and I still don't really believe that it exists. It was like Ferngully in real life. I took way more pictures of waterfalls and trees and whatever than my food, but here's what I got. It was just a lot of seafood all week. And a lot of bread. Croatian bread is like if Wonderbread actually tasted good and was an acceptable bread to eat in public.

Squid

Seafood risotto from the first night

Now there are only 6 weeks left before I leave Rome and I don't know what to do! I think I just have to be more proactive about eating and keep carbo-loading as much as possible. I'll miss always having 4 different kinds of cheese and salami and proscuitto. But I also can't wait to eat a hamburger and have a taco and a corn dog. All at the same time.