Barcelona - The Neighbourhood - Shopping, The Cathedral and "Our" Bar

As wonderful as our apartment is, it is the neighbourhood that most enchants us.  Imagine an area from Yorkville to Wellesley/Avenue Road to Church Street - with very narrow winding streets and no cars.  The streets are constantly thronged with people. Spaniards clearly love to stroll....young, old, rich, poor.  It's hard to depict the experience in photos.  What, in other places would be an annoying crowd, becomes a social ritual.  Of course, even when intending to depict crowds, Richard intuitively waits until there are no people before taking a shot!








Would it work in Toronto?  There are certainly climate issues and - more significantly - cultural ones.  Would Canadians stroll in sufficient numbers to justify retailers on walking streets?  There are downsides - we pulled our roller luggage several blocks from the nearest cab stand....definitely a new piece of furniture is a logistics event (delivery trucks are allowed into the area in the early AM/Garbage and street cleaning happen in the middle of the night).  Perhaps North American mega malls are our alternative.  We'd hate to think we were agreeing with David Miller....."let them melt snow".












Urban planning speculation aside, this is a delightful place to live.  The Gelateria is 6 feet across from our front door.  We never make dessert....and if your sugar craving is in overdrive, the candy shop is right next door









Down the street is an epic deli/cheese shop/wine store, but mostly a place where neighbourhood businessmen sit around and smoke, drink (very good wine) and tell lies.  It's where we run to at odd hours for a good bottle of wine or some excellent cheese or ham







Sweetness abounds in the square, at all economic levels.  Across the plaza is a very deluxe chocolate store.  The Easter special are wonderful, wretched excess











Down the street is the Henckels Knife store.  We've never seen a Henckels store before.  Great knives, wonderful utensils and some truly perfect pots (the apartment comes with a set)  Since we're easily amused, we regularly pop in to try out a few knives on various vegetables (they have a mini test kitchen).  Looks like our big Spanish souvenir will be knife made in Japan for a German company!  The window features a 300 Euro limited edition composite blade Japanese knife with Damascene finish that Dickie seems to believe would improve his knife skills!





Each morning (except Sunday) Liz (the much earlier riser) goes to get our morning Herald Tribune from the newsstand in the square next to ours.  Convenience Stores are clearly more convenient.....surprise, but there is a nostalgic charm about the newsstand , with its crusy proprietor (which ours is)




We've two nearby toy stores - one of which has the best selection of die cast metal trucks Dickie has seen in years.....and who can argue about an 8 inch model bulldozer with real metal tracks (no plastic please) for just less than 100E?  Richard just tells Liz that they're for the nephews.  The other toy store specializes in puzzles....the bald guy is in heaven











The main Cathedral (not the iconic Sagrada Familia) in the next square is the centre for both the old part of town and a Catalan culture nexus. The building and the surrounding complex (under restoration) is quite beautiful - religious art, a gorgeous pipe organ and ornate spires.  We aren't showing the Cathedral since it's covered in scaffolding and the day we wrote this there was a very large temporary structure in the square (a Catalan language book fair).  (Liz just finished reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett about Gothic Cathedral building - Richard has been very patient as Liz launches into long descriptions about how they built cathedrals!)













But, best of all, the courtyard at the Cathedral entry has an ancient fountain with geese.  Guess where all our stale bread goes?  We missed bringing a parrot home from Australia - a goose could be fun.  Louis and Orange Bird will love him.  The geese are, however, cramping our dining style - we're feeling a tinge of guilt everytime we eat foie.







Of course we've found a charming tapas bar down the street and last time we visited they said "your table is free".....guess we're living here.  Our table is on a mezzanine overlooking the bar and the square.  Food is good, service is warm and Sammy (behind the champagne on ice) the barman caters to our every need.

It's a great neighbourhood.