Designing our Barcelona Kitchen

We rebuilt our house on Capitol Hill ourselves, and designed a large kitchen that worked really well for us as active cooks. When we designed our house in Arlington, we started with the kitchen, and it's a treat to be able to take on large projects in it. One of the big attractions of our apartment in Barcelona is the fact that we have the chance to design yet another kitchen, as the floor of the building doesn't exist yet.

We're absolutely delighted we have this opportunity again: it's a real bummer thinking we'd end up living with "someone else's" kitchen. Most are unworkable for real cooking, some focus on looks and magazine styling but have no useful space, or are badly laid out.  Or maybe we're just food-obsessed nerds: we know what we like, what works for us and what doesn't. In our past two kitchens, we've made some design choices that worked out really well: keep guests out of the work area, distract them with easy access to refreshments but allow conversation to flow without physical interference; plan for where your tools will live, near where you'll use them; envision two cooks actually preparing a sophisticated meal for 6 people; use durable materials that will hold up to actual use; plan for things magazines never show, like soap dispensers, trash cans and paper towels; have as much storage as you can for tools and supplies; drawer base cabinets are more accessible than door cabinets).  We've had to do a little rearranging in our two kitchens, but mostly small stuff like moving flatware closer to the dining room; all the thought-experiments beforehand led to really workable kitchens when built.

We hope to take the lessons we've learned from designing, living with, and cooking in our past kitchens and focus on the essentials, as we settle into a space much more compact than what we've cooked in for the past 20 years.


We've already moved rooms around in the apartment design and moved the kitchen into the original floorplan's bedroom, and our realtors at Address Properties and our designer with mimouca barcelona have been great to work with. They recently sent us a couple designs, one of which we felt had all the work areas far too separated, but the other was right along the lines we were thinking.  Their CAD drawings showed us that where we'd intended to have a raised bar adjoining the cooking area simply did not have space to accommodate a set of bar stools for guests like we've had in our past two kitchens; disappointing, but important to know. The designers shifted the raised bar and stools to the other side of the kitchen, which we felt was too isolating. Then we realized that with our dining room directly connected to the kitchen (with no walls like in our previous houses) the stools were redundant; OK, they're gone.

We really like the raised bar which lets folks hang out almost in the kitchen and talk with us while we're cooking, and I tend to use the additional surface as a prep area, for mise-en-place or for serving; it's good for buffet service too. So we moved that back to the main cooking area.

To accommodate guests and keep them out of our work area, we wanted a second area where they can "self-service": grab a beer, pour a glass of wine, make a cocktail. So we have, like our past two kitchens, another area of counter space with a small sink. We're still debating how to accommodate cold drinks -- share the same fridge with the cooking side, or perhaps an under-counter fridge -- but expect the coffee and booze will all live on that side of the kitchen. I'm thinking of it as the drink side of the kitchen (maybe all our glassware should live there too), while the other is the food side: you don't tend to need drink things in your food prep, and vice versa, so their spatial separation is OK.

It's alternately fun and frustrating working on these designs. We're so passionate about our kitchen that we argue incessantly: fridge on right or left of doorway? slide in range or separate cooktop and oven? and OMG, where do the spatulae live? (depends: the ones for prep that should be near the mixing bowls, or are you talking about the heat-proof ones that should live next to the cooktop?). At least we can quickly agree that the knives and cutting boards should both be next to the sink, since that's the hardest working tool in the kitchen and you need the sink for cleaning up and scraps.


So here's our first set of sketches based on our designers' Option 2.  It looks like a ton of changes, but really, it's not: in the drawing below, we move the raised bar from right to the left side (gaining more work area, too), and put a wet bar and computer area on the right area, and fit in as many cabinets as we can.

Now we've got to find out how people in Barcelona access the corners of the cabinets under the counters. We've used big lazy-susans before and they allow easy access to lots of stuff; is the same popular there? If not, we've got to find something else since there are three corners in the kitchen and we definitely want to use that space.

First is the big view showing the dining room on the left, kitchen on the right; the front door is on the bottom left. We realize we'll need a place to put coats, grocery carts and such as we walk in so need cabinets/armoires there. The kitchen is on the right.

Next, we enlarged the kitchen diagram, then marked it up; below we spun it around. On the left is our main work area (the "food side"), on the right is what we're considering the guest side, with a wet bar (the "drink side"). We'd love a big 6-burner behemoth cooktop like we have now, but we simply don't have the space. We started placing large skillets and pots on our current cooktop, and figure we could squeeze a good meal onto 4 burners, if they're spaced well enough apart in the cooktop.  We also will have an oven a bit smaller than our current ones, but when we measured the half-sheet pans we always use in our oven -- 18 inches or 46 cm -- we realized they'd fit into a standard European 60 cm oven; OK, that's perfect! (no, we may not take our sheetpans, but it's helpful to know the size of things we use, that sides of salmon or trays of lasagne will fit comfortably; when shopping for appliances and sinks, we take sheetpans and such to ensure they'll fit, before we buy!)

European kitchens seem to be built on a 60 cm grid: ovens, fridges, and standard cabinets are that size. And the fridges are counter-depth (hurray!), the same 60 cm dimension (about 24 inches). The modularity makes it easy to think about how to arrange things. In the drawing above, the main cooking area along the left wall is 5 x 60 cm units, so 3.0 meters (9.8 feet). I've drawn green lines on the 60 cm boundaries to help visualize the modules.

I hope our designers are OK with our changes, and that our builders don't identify any show-stoppers. If that's all OK, then we can start detailing where all our stuff lives, knives, cutting boards, spatulae, mixing bowls, plates, glassware, flatware, napkins, whisks, zesters, cocktail shakers, tongs, and the myriad other things. When that's laid out, we can determine where to get drawer cabinets versus door base cabinets, how lazy-susans and wall cabinets should be hinged. Then we can think about cabinet and countertop materials. And finally appliances. (I think a lot fo folks get this the wrong way around: "I gotta have a Subzero fridge and a Jenn-Air cooker" and too late realize they should have thought about layout and how the cooks work rather than the name badges on the machinery.)

We're looking forward to this adventure....

¡Vamos a España!

Well, we signed the contract on the flat in Barcelona yesterday. We weren't able to send the reserve payment due to security restrictions with the web and mobile app: I didn't have my one-time password card for our Spanish bank account here in Peru, so that'll wait until we return home tomorrow.

Our folks at Address.Properties and the project's architect have been vary patient and helpful as we've been ironing out the details. The floor isn't built yet, so we've changed the layout of the flat, and will be heavily customizing the kitchen (big surprise there!).

Which reminds me, I owe them some diagrams showing where we want the radiators so they don't interfere with our planned furniture layout. Something like this:

The windows on the left side look out directly over the marvelous Mercat de Sant Antoni and over the city to Montjuïc.  The ones on the right open to a meter-deep balcony looking into the interior of the block.  The stairway in the center will go to the private roof deck, and stairs and new elevator go down to the lobby. We expect the flat to be finished late Summer 2016.

Sadly, we're still working-class stiffs so can't just pick up and move to Spain. We expect we'll have to rent it out for a few years before we move permanently.  We hoping to rent it out for about a year at a time and spend a month there each year until that time. Barcelona's stopped issuing permits for short-term "tourist" rentals, in an effort to prevent tourists overrunning the city, so the minimum rental period we could offer would be a month. We'd prefer long-term renters to hen-nights and party-hardy folks anyway.

OMG, A Roof Terrace!

Last time we wrote about an unbuilt apartment we were seriously interested in -- until we found out we couldn't have a walk-out terrace.

We were about ready to storm out of the meeting when the project's architect said something about a roof terrace. He was speaking Spanish, but I could swear he said it was a "terrassa privada" -- a private terrace.  What??!!  Our agent didn't even know about this!

He pulled out his architecture drawings and showed us the roof plan. The entire thing was going to be a roof terrace.  And it was going to be split in half, for use by the two top-floor (atico) owners. For private use by them. None of the owners of the apartments on the other floors would have access.

OK, not the entire roof. There would be a central core where the elevator and stairs and light well comes up, naturally. And around this would be an area reserved for technical equipment -- the air conditioner compressors for the apartments, etc. Here's our portion:

OMG, it's big. The diagram shows 87.9 square meters, almost 950 square feet. That's about as big as one of the floors in our existing house.

We started laying it out with our design software. Some planters around the technical equipment, plenty of outdoor dining space, a hot tub (!), more chairs, a video projector, a barbecue (which I gather is not legal in Barcelona but we saw stores selling Weber kettles and charcoal).  There's plenty of room. Below, the left side looks out to Mercat de Sant Antoni and then on to Montjuïc; the right looks into the interior of the block which is filled with courtyards and decks; top and bottom edges are neighboring buildings.

We have to walk up the central staircase to get to the roof terrace, and that's something we were hoping to avoid because we're not getting any younger. I mean, we've got another 10 or 20 years probably before this would become a problem.  But I did ask the builders if they could talk to the other penthouse owner to see if they'd be willing to split the cost of extending the elevator up to the roof -- not cheap, but a lot easier for schlepping up provisions for a big dinner party.

Our agents said if that wasn't possible, we could build our own private elevator from our flat to the roof, once the construction was done.  I think this is probably not so uncommon, since so many old buildings there have been retrofitted with elevators in small spaces.

From the current roof, we've got a decent view over the market, Montjuïc and the city.  We're hoping that with when our new floor  is added we might be high enough to get a glimpse of the Mediterranean as the building faces the direction of the port. We're not optimistic, but it'd be pretty cool.

It's starting to get serious at Sant Antoni

The folks at Address.Properties have been working hard with us to try and nail down details before we left Spain. Unfortunately, so many people in Barcelona were on vacation that we couldn't finalize things.  And we have a lot of details to nail down.

What the hell am I talking about?

Irene found a place across the street (really, right across the street) from Mercat de Sant Antoni. The building is undergoing a complete renovation, with new wiring, plumbing, and structural reinforcement just for us... OK, to support the addition of a new top story. That's the one we want, "el atico", the penthouse.  There are two in this renovation and one's sold. We've got our eye on the other.  The quality of the work we can see looks quite good.

One of the lower flat's done, and another we saw is well on the way. Where they can, they've salvaged the antique Catalan tiles. Irene's not a fan and the patterns are a bit too busy but I like how they've combined the antique with clean modern lines of the fixtures.

 Salvaged French doors overlooking the Mercat.

 Wood floors into the back bedroom with its own French doors to a balcony.

Because construction on el atico (I love saying that) hasn't started, we could have some freedom to influence the design.  Oh, look: our new kitchen!

Irene surveys the interior courtyard from the current roof, which will be built up a bit, then el atico built on top.

OMG.  We renovated our 100-year old house on Capitol Hill with our bare hands, moving a staircase and bathroom to make room for a kitchen we really loved, redoing all the plumbing so we had good water pressure, and rewiring the house to serve modern needs.   We then designed our concrete and steel house in Arlington, with open spaces and tons of light everywhere.  We've got a bug: I don't think we'd be happy in someone else's house.  This presented an opportunity we'd sadly resigned ourselves to never experiencing again.  Irene instantly filled the flat on Raval we were staying in with dozens and dozens of variations on floor plans. I found the Roomle web-based floor-plan software which could give us a good 3D visualization and help identify too-tight areas. We drew up a plan that sacrificed some of the proposed living room for a walk-out terrace; I thought it would be interesting to introduce a diagonal element to the shape.

We met with Alfonso, the architect for the whole building project. Then we asked: since this is new construction, can we push in the facade to create a terrace? No. Not a chance. The architecture board would never approve it. No way, no how.

He's got some great ideas about how to incorporate the vertical extension of the building with the historical facade, and hopes he can persuade the board to approve his more adventurous plans.  We love his work. I don't want to violate his intellectual property so below is just an excerpt of one of his drawings; too bad I took the photo crooked with my camera.

But we were crushed: the walk-out terrace was non-negotiable for us. We expect we'll eventually get old and don't want to have to walk downstairs to a park, or whatever; we're used to our outdoor space in DC and Arlington and take our breakfast and dinners outside whenever we can. We felt like outdoor cats that have been told they have to stay inside.

We were about to walk out when he told us something that our realtor wasn't even aware of, that got us to sit up and listen intently, that rekindled the enthusiasm.

To be continued...

Invisible apartment with a great location

Irene found a listing through Address.Properties. We're really keen on it.

You know what the realtors say: location, location, location. Well, this place has it -- at least for our tastes. It's right next to our favorite market, Mercat de Sant Antoni, that we've written about before. The renovation work is really coming along quickly, now.

We're not getting any younger, so it's nice to know we can hobble over to the market and get our bacalao, shellfish, fin fish, fowl, rabbit, snails, fruits, vegetables, nuts, olives, and even a good bite to eat and some vermouth or cava to slake our thirst from the arduous trek across the street.

It's 3 blocks to the Airport bus, which we used several times this trip. It's a 3 minute walk to the L2 (purple) metro, and 8 minutes to the L1 (red) or L3 (green) lines. We explicitly don't want a car, so this is great for us.

There's an antiquarian book fair that's set up every Sunday on the cross street, and the stalls spill over onto the adjoining streets, including one in front of "our" front door. I bought some comic books aimed at kids in Castilian to help me learn the language; no way I'm ready for the Catalan books I almost picked up.

After I saw Irene off at the Airport bus, I wandered around and it seemed like there are at least 20 cafes open, even on a Sunday morning when many things are closed, with a 2 block radius of "our" place. The spiffy Moritz brew pub is a block or two away.

We determined empirically that neighborhood fixture Els Tres Tombs' cafe stays open an hour later than the other cafes. Great for night owls like us, and 3 minutes from "our" place. We spent at least a couple happy afternoons at this place when we were here years ago.

There's just one small problem: our place doesn't exist yet. More later...

Architecture old and new

My last day in Barcelona, after Irene left for Scotland, I had plans for dinner at a fish place, MariscCo. It was a 35 minute walk but I hadn't gotten out of the house much to exercise so I hoofed it. It covered a lot of the same route we've come to repeat heading toward the Plaça de Catalunya. Then it turned straight up and the walk became a noticeable climb. I could see Tibidabo on the top of the mountain (?) in the distance; I walked block after block but its illuminated form never got any closer.

Barcelona's filled with great architecture, both old (gothic) and new (very contemporary).

On Carrer de Balmes, I was entranced by the pure machine-like form of this geometric building; it looks like some science fiction movie computer or an interstellar hibernation chamber. This photo is not black-and-white nor retouched.

The modernistas left their stylistic stamp all over town, with organic and floral shapes like those of the Art Nouveau or Vienna Secession movements; I'm crazy about this aesthetic. Frequently, the plasterwork is not just painted, but incised then painted; it's great work. You can see it here in this dramatically-lit facade on a building a block away from the machine-like building above:

After a fine dinner lubricated with a bottle of good cava, I wasn't in the mood (or shape) to walk home so I headed for the Metro.  One of the sidewalks had this wonderful interlocking tile pattern. I'd first seen it mentioned in a guide book, indicating it was not in fact a modernista design, then later saw it on the swanky Passeig de Gràcia. You can see spiral sea-shell like patterns, but also a second interlocking pattern of flowers that look like thistles and a third that looks like tendrils. I'm curious where this clever and gorgeous design originated. [time passes] I finally got my Google-fu on and found other references to this tile, all pointing out that it's a Gaudi design; makes a ton of sense.

Full Moon Risin'

Our roof deck affords us some excellent views in an almost 360-degree panorama. It's not that it's a skyscraper, or rotating restaurant kind of place -- far from it.  It just is in a good location a bit higher than the palm trees on one side, and there are no other roof desks blocking the views.

We've gotten some great storm clouds, a fine sunrise, and now a full moon appearing to rise out of the "airport control tower building" as we refer to it.  Irene said, "quick, come quick, aliens have landed!!!"

Could have been!

Por último, un buen café

We were coming back from the bank looking for a coffee and stopped at a cafe. On the side, we noticed this store selling coffee beans. It looked wonderfully old fashioned; in fact, it was -- from 1902. Given the name, I had to have a posting for Mayra.

We'd been desperately seeking sanka -- er, just kidding! --  something other than the vacuum-packed bricks of flavor-free brown grounds we get at the grocery store but hadn't see a shop that sold fresh coffee. 

Stepping into this store, we got a rush: a giant wall of rich aroma.  Redolent of chocolate, old wood, tobacco -- smells I hadn't encountered in way too long.  Far from the scorched milk and sugared pastries of some omnipresent "coffee" stores from the Pacific Northwest... I realized charbucks doesn't have that smell, and how wrong that is. 

There were coffees from all over the world, of course, and one of the most expensive was in fact from Puerto Rico.  We asked about something full bodied, and he gave us a couple choices -- "acido o suave?" and we went for a half kilo of the black stuff, ground for a plunge pot.

Then I noticed the roasting machine set up in the back -- it looked like it was installed when the store opened,  113 years ago (you can just make it out on the right of the frame).  I asked (in very poor Spanish) if I could take a photo, explaining I had a friend back home who also roasted coffee for his shop (Hi, Doug!). He vehemently rejected my request, but -- pointing out the door -- said I could take one from there.   Barcelona's so overrun with camera-toting, selfie-stick wielding tourists that never buy anything, I wasn't surprised: the merchants are mobbed and customers crowded out. I've stopped, for the most part, taking out my phone camera in various markets. (Is there an app that can warn you of selfie-stick plagued areas of a city so you can avoid it?? maybe a Negative-Four Square, so you can go where people are NOT checking in?)

Anywho, the  coffee was excellent when we brewed up a pot. And ever time we opened the fridge door, where we kept the grounds, it was like a blast of mahogany/chocolate breeze.  

It's just run out, and I guess I can do without a good pot at home my last day here.  Cafés here make good "cafe solo" -- an espresso -- so I'm not going to be too deprived.

Pobre gat!

There's a famous statue by Botero right out side our flat's door, The Big Cat.  It's as big as a rhino.  Kids climb on it all day long.  Sometimes adults do too but I suspect they're drunk.

Some a-holes thought it would be cute to give it some color.  Poor kitty.

They even got the poor thing's cojones, a different color for each one.

Sunrise in Barcelona

Up late last night and up this morning before dawn. So much to do, so little time left.

Set up the laptop on the roof deck to start my working day and was able to see the sunrise over the buildings on the Rambla del Raval.

yeah, right, it's for your friend!

yup, that would be a bowl of plain white rice. 

the very nice lady in the farmácia valiantly suppressed a smile while demonstrating her understanding of what i had just asked for......communication after all, is the transmission of information followed by confirmation of receipt and understanding of such......and in a foreign language there can be many pitfalls.  embarazada can signify pregnant in castillian but embarrassed in latin american spanish.  a so called "falso amigo", albeit one that could have both meanings at once  :-)

"falso conejo" on the other hand isn't a rabbit at all, but a bolivian beef dish.  oh, and that reminds me, don't mix up conejo and cojones, but i digress.

chris has been largely absent from this blog recently because he has been working day and night on an overdue project.  with the 6 hour time difference the plan was to work from 12 noon to 2000 every day to coincide more or less with the office hours in the states, but after a week or so he began to work from when he got up till when we ate dinner, meaning 0900 to 2200, clearly an unsustainable effort which is affecting his physical health.

so, "no more than 5 pills a day, plenty water and nothing but white rice till your stomach settles."  she wasn't having my suggestion that i make him some paella.  not exactly the renowned barcelona cuisine we came for.

Cerveteca: An awesome beer bar!

We went out this morning to try and take the cable car up to Montjuïc; when we finally go to the station it was a 90 minute wait: 14 people a gondola, 4 gondolas an hour, hmmm  -- fuck this shit.

I really need some downtime after crushing it for work the past week, what are we gonna do?

The cable car is in the oldest part of Barcelona, Barcelonetta, an ancient fishing village. Narrow streets... but it's right on the Med. In fact, we were two blocks from the beach. Fine, I dipped my toes in the water, it was warm. Behind me was a surf shop with a rotating carousel of surfboards -- but why? There are no waves in the Med!  Really! You walk from the flat sand, down a quick slope, and boom, you're in the water. Shortly off the coast are boats: it must be a very steep shelf. But no waves at all.

We'd worked up a powerful thirst, and usually we'd avoid beach-area bars, but there's a lot of beach and a lot of bars: competition should keep everything in check.  A mediocre beer and a decent local vermouth and a Vichy Catalan water (which is soapy to my taste) was under €10, and the view was great -- folks rolling by on bikes, electric scooter, rollerblades, electric bikes, rickshaws, and all manner of boats, ships and such on the near horizon.

I knew I had to get back to work: it was Saturday after all, and my colleagues back home would be getting up soon. Did we have time to find a decent beer on the way? Barely.   Oh, that one's right on the way -- Cerveteca. Goddammit again, google says they're closed until 6pm. Well, let's head home and when we have a choice, pick the most narrow street.

Wouldn't you know: we came across Cerveteca... and the door... looked open!

Sure enough: a funky space on a narrow street, with tons of interesting beer in the coolers, and six or more taps with things that I could barely read and didn't know at all. Excellent.   In my very best Spanish I inquired about a couple, asked to try a couple more. Ended up with a pair of Hoppy Hour, made in Barcelona. The bartender, after we asked about Jalapeño beer, gave us a sample and it was quite good -- Irene had that for her second.

I enquired (practicing Spanish agin) whether they knew of any good beer place near where we were staying (Raval) or like to hang out (Sant Antoni).  Our bartender (I really should have asked his name) gave me a booklet from the 2014 Craft Beer fest held in Barcelona, and a map that showed local beer-friendly establishments. Now we've got a quest!

We took a look at the menu -- in Catalan, Spanish, and English. Horsemeat sausage? Dried tuna from Spain? Hook me up.  Beautifully served, a fine pair of tapas.  Our timing was great: they were closing for the siesta right as we finished our nosh.

What a super-comfortable place, with excellent beer and friendly staff. Thanks, Cervateca, you made our day!

Barcelona stays up late: movies in the square

At 10 PM (22h as they say here), we were having dinner on the roof deck and saw that some pretty big fireworks a few blocks over; this wasn't kids with bottle rockets. The blue light in the bottom is a sliver of the AgBar gherkin building we walked by yesterday.

After they were over, we heard what sounded like a loud TV. Not surprising, everyone had their windows open. But it was really loud, and surprisingly clear. Then we heard the sound of dramatic music, of strings -- it sounded like movie.

The Rambla del Raval is right below us and we figured maybe they were doing a Screen on the Green kinda thing. We headed down the 104 stairs to the street, but there was no film.  Lots of people at cafes, walking up and down, hitting the restaurants and such, but no movie. We could hear it though, a bit further on.

A block further toward the city center is the Filmoteca de Catalunya, and it's showing a great selection of movies this month. It's a cool modern building that incorporates indoor and outdoor spaces, including this bar, the Monroe, named after Marilyn. It was heaving with people at almost 11 PM.

Ah ha, mystery solved, around the corner they were projecting a movie on the wall of the Filmoteca. Black and white. Hundreds of plastic lawn chairs were set up in the square, all filled with people. The audio was in English, with Castilian Spanish subtitles. This could be a fine way to learn some Spanish :-).  After a few lines, I was able to google the names and found out the film was The Fountainhead from 1949 with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. Lots of dramatic music.

Even the kids were up at this hour, playing on the swing sets.

We went back to our roof deck and sure enough, by midnight the film had ended, the sound was gone, and we could hear the cafes on Raval putting away their tables; the evening was over, it's quiet-time now.

I guess I don't understand the schedules of people in Barcelona. If they're eating at 10 PM and hanging out until after midnight, are they getting up and slogging to work at 8 AM?  The middle off the day siesta seems a bygone artifact here in the city but maybe that's how they recover.

Fish liver, Funicular to Tibidabo, Gràcia fest, a 7 mile walk, more craft beer!

When we picked up the merluza from the fish monger, we picked up a big bunch of monkfish livers. We've only seen these in tiny portions at exotic Japanese restaurants. Our monger had kilos of giant livers -- these fish must be heavy drinkers. At €4.50/Kg ($2/pound) we got a batch, we'd figure out something to do with it. For breakfast, I fried them up with a bit of schmaltz (chicken fat) irene had left over from roasting our chicken yesterday.

A bit of radicchio for bitter contrast and some bread and we were ready to hit the streets. The liver had a slight livery-ness (which I find too strong in mammals), and a bit of fish roe flavor. I might not seek it out specially, but it was fun, and we've got some ideas for other preparations; stay tuned.

Another perfect day in paradise. Let's get out and hit Tibidabo, an amusement park built in 1899 on a mountain overlooking Barcelona. We weren't that interested in rides, but heard it had outstanding views; we were not disappointed.

After walking to Plaça de Catalunya in the center of town, we found transport folks blocking our intended line: construction. My Spanish still sucks but I was able to ask for and get an alternate route on a train line that would take us to a funicular. Funiculars are like railways but up steep hills and mountains so the downhill side of the car is elevated to keep the car level; inside the seats are stepped.  Below, the view looking down, as we were pulled up. Cleverly, there's only one track but two cars; they cross in the middle, allowing the weight of one car to counterbalance the other, but without the expense of duplicate tracks.

We goto the Funicular station without incident. Barcelona's transit system is integrated and our 10-trip ticket covered metro (subway), the S-line trains, buses, trams, and also the funicular. We took this to the top, where we waited for a bus to take us the rest of the way. This mountain road was full of spandex-clad Lance Armstrong types with thigh muscles the size of  Iberian hams. The bus patiently followed the riders as they grunted up the steep hills.  Turns out the buses don't run that often and our funicular group filled the bus (yes, it *was* a short bus :-), which really pissed off another group further up the climb that shouted epithets as the driver blew past their stop.

We reached the top and there were plenty of ferris wheels, rides (some almost 100 years old), but happily, we could mill about and take in the out-fucking-standing views without charge. We also could buy a beer at a tolerable price.

You can expand these photos. The two towers in the center are on the waterfront near where the 1992 Olympic park started redevelopment. Further to the left, the tallest building, back from the waterfront, is the AgBar "gherkin" building. We walked to those the previous day, from way over on the right, off the frame of the photo.

In addition to selfies, I've figured out how to do panoramic shots. When will the madness stop?

We'd considered walking down from Tibidabo home, but our feet were killing from yesterday's 10-mile jaunt. We took the bus, funicular and train back to Gràcia, which is where we hear all the hip people live and and cool shops are located. We found this beautiful steel-capped market-looking building, but it was closed.

Then we stumbled across the Gràcia festival; how the hell could we almost miss this? Different blocks compete with each other to decorate their area, and cafes sell drinks and snacks from their storefronts. This one had a Flintstones theme, with a stone-wheeled bike (hi, Dana and Kelli!)

We stopped at a cafe to refuel, yeah, mojitos aren't very Spanish but everybody was selling them, and the cafe was Dutch anyway with bitterballen and haring. So we mixed it up with a mojito and chistorra sausages. Super friendly folks and only €10 for both of us.

Some beautiful architecture in this area too, including this hotel; the windows in the upper floors windows with details that make them look almost arabic. Irene got some dulce de leche ice cream in a shop here, it was really good.

And then this. I didn't want to believe it, but I suspected, and a sign confirmed: it was a Gaudi design. In this one, it looked like he just didn't know when to stop adding stuff to it.

And another festive block, this one with a circus theme, light fixtures made of plastic soda bottles, games for kids.

The walk home was 30 minutes, so we hit a place our AirBnB host had recommended that was right on the way, Bar Velódromo. Wow, what a beautiful place, all art deco, stunningly restored by the Moritz beer family who bought it when the original owner retired.  Surprisingly not stuffy, despite such well executed fare as tuna tartar (for me) and steak tartar (for Irene).

As we continued on toward home (only 15 minutes away now), we were so distracted by this outstanding building -- seemingly a combination of a 1950's cinema and arabic inspired brick- and pale-colored layers -- that we almost walked right by...

a craft beer bar! We took a look inside BierCaB, were drawn in by the cool ceiling and then noticed the 30 taps.

Many of the selections were American, quite a few Belgians, but we chose a couple from Spain, including Irene's brewed in Barcelona.

They had an electronic display of the beers available and upcoming on tap, and I was able to photo-bomb their display of their Twitter feed.

By the time we'd gotten back, my phone informed us we'd done a 7-mile walk. Not as much as yesterday's 10-miles, but pretty damn good. Hopefully enough to burn off some of that fish liver and beer.