Weekend in Barcelona

I studied abroad in Barcelona in the fall of 2004 and Kent and I returned for a weekend trip 11 years later. I waited so long to return to the BCN because I wanted to see other parts of Europe, but as soon as I was back walking the streets of Barcelona, I remembered exactly why I love this city so much. Besides the beautiful modernist art and architecture, delicious, fresh food and unbeatable shopping, the people in this city are super friendly and fun loving. Here's a quick hits list of some of the best places in the city, but part of what makes it so incredible is that you can find something new, different and special wherever you look.

What to see

Sagrada Familia: this church in progress is unlike anything you've seen before. It is truly spectacular. Buy tickets online beforehand.

Hospital de Sant Pau: one of my favorite places in the city and very much under the radar of the hordes of tourists. I discovered it because I lived right by it but there is actually a pedestrian walking street that goes from Sagrada to Hospital. Definitely do free the tour, which explains the history behind the buildings and gives you a bit of insight into Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of the most important modernist artists, right up there with Antoni Gaudi. 

Palau de la Musica Catalana: another one of Montaner's buildings that is absolutely stunning. There is a tour or you can buy tickets to one of the shows. 

Park Guell: a quiet escape with some quintessential Gaudi architecture and sculpture.

Bario Gotic: this is a fun neighborhood to explore. It has great boutiques and small restaurants.

L'Eixample: Passig de Gracia is another good shopping street in the L'Eixample neighborhood. But wander off the main street to see some beautiful buildings, cute little bars and shops.

El Raval: this is a mostly student and immigrant heavy area but it was once the most important parts of the city so you will find the Boqueria Market and several other Gaudi designed houses here. If you are lucky, you will run across El Gato de Raval, an awesome life size cat sculpture from Colombian artist Fernando Botero.

Where to eat

Firo Tast: this tiny little tapas bar is located on the street that runs between Sagrada Familia and Hospital. We ordered a wide range of items and everything was delish!

Spoonik: make a reservation in advance for this tasting menu only joint where the chefs personally describe the different ingredients and inspirations and the lighting, music and art changes depending on the course. You also sit with strangers so hopefully you get a good crew like we did!

Neighborhood Spotlight: Le Marais, Paris

My family and I spent a wonderful week in Paris at the end of October. I found an incredibly charming apartment that was built in the 17th century through HomeAway in the Marais. The girl that rented it to us was very helpful and provided us with a detailed list of her favorite restaurants in the neighborhood. Here are some of the places we enjoyed:

Art deco decor at Café Charlot

Café Charlot: The first thing I wanted when I arrived in Paris was steak frites with a huge glass of Burgundy and that is exactly what I got at this delicious neighborhood bistro. While the waiters were less than friendly, the food and local charm were totally worth it.

Steak frites at Café Charlot

Nanashi: All I knew was that I wanted some legit Asian food while I was in Paris since the options in Germany are less than adequate. I would say that Nanashi was a mix between super awesome vegetarian food and inventive Japanese. I ordered a bowl of salmon poke with puffed sesame, leafy greens and brown rice. It was super close to ahi poke bowl from Pacific Catch that I would order at least twice a month back in SF. For dessert we split a black sesame custard that was super different & very tasty and a green tea cheesecake that was okay.

Salmon bowl at Nanashi

Marché des Enfants Rouges: Oh how I wish that a market like this existed around the corner from me because I would eat there everyday! This special place, that I talked about in a previous post, is a foodies' dream come true. You can not only buy fresh fish, veggies, breads, cheese and patés, but you can also dine at an incredible number of food stalls serving specialities from Morocco, Italy, Japan, and Jamaica, to name a few. There are gourmet burger stands, fresh falafels, homemade foie gras and anything else you can think of. We decided to go for the Moroccan and feasted on stuffed eggplant, chicken tajine and fresh pepper flatbread.

Marché des Enfants Rouges

134 r.d.t.: This inventive bakery is across the street from one of the best confiseries in Paris, Jacques Genin, that I previously wrote about. We sampled a crusty roll with figs and nuts, a pain au chocolate and a croissant. All were delicious!

Sweets from Jaques Genin

While there are hundreds of great options for eating and drinking in the Marais, there are thousands of options for shopping, but that is another post!

Holiday on Hvar

We hit the Homeaway jackpot! The beautiful house that we rented on the island of Hvar, outside the town of Stari Grad, in the tiny village of Rudina, was exactly what we were looking for: relaxing, close to the water and ruggedly beautiful. The wonderful couple, Mare and Ankica, who's family has owned the land for more than 500 years, stayed in the home next door and provided helpful recommendations about what to do each day and told colorful stories about what life was like in the former Yugoslavia.

Mare and Ankica with Heffe

We spent our days exploring the island, hiking on the rocks around the Bay, preparing meals with fresh food from the garden, dining out at delicious restaurants and drinking local wine and brandy.

The structure of the house is more than 500 years old

The Kabal peninsula is a 10 min. walk from the house.

The highlight of our stay was the incredible meal Ankica prepared for us. It consisted of bruschetta with anchovies, sheep cheese and olives, squid ink risotto, Octopus peka, fresh salad and tomatoes, flan, plums and local white wine. All of the ingredients were fresh and came directly from the island. Mare and Ankica were so nice, they let us keep the leftovers!

Ankica preparing the peka

The finished product: Octopus peka, a Croatian specialty

Le Marais by Mouth

In the course of researching restaurants in Paris, I found the blog Paris By Mouth that seemed to have good recommendations on the best places to eat in the city. I noticed that they also offered food walking tours of different areas of the city. I decided to splurge a bit and signed us up!

We were given instructions to come to a little bakery/cafe in the Marais at 10:00 am sharp. We decided to walk there from our hotel so it took about 30 minutes and it was lovely to see the city waking up on a Saturday morning. Once we arrived at the cafe, we met the other people in our group of 8. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, most of them were young couples like ourselves and all of the girls were celebrating their birthdays.

Our guide was an adorable American woman who moved to Paris about 10 years ago after a life long love affair with French food and wine. She took us to a variety of shops and eateries and explained in detail about the different foods and drinks that we were sampling. It was a delightful way to spend an afternoon getting to know the Marais and swapping tips with other food-obsessed travelers.

Below is an overview of the places we went, all of which are worth a visit:

Poilâne bakery at 38 rue Debelleyme, 75003
This bakery served delicious pan au chocolate and is world renown for their true-to-tradition way of preparing the bread. Be sure to order a cafe creme, because if you don't already know, cappuccinos don't exist in Paris! Well, actually...they might at Starbucks.

Jouannault cheese shop at 39 rue de Bretagne, 75003
This place was off the chain on a Saturday morning. We sampled various types of cheese, including a Roquefort, Brie with truffles and Comte. Our guide explained that Roquefort is literally aged in rocks and thats where it gets its name.

Caractère de Cochon at 42 rue Charlot 75003
A wonderful couple runs this shop and they had a great time telling us (in English) about where the different charcuterie comes from and why some countries have hard meats (Germany) and why others have lighter ones (Spain). It all has to do with the wind patterns and the way the meats are aged. Pretty interesting stuff.

Marché des Enfants Rouge
About half of the places we went to were located around this adorable market that I am sure I would shop at every weekend, if I lived in Paris. Its definitely worth checking out for the beautiful, fresh food and there are several places that you can stop to grab a bite to eat.

Goumanyat spice shop at 3 rue Charles-Francois Dupuis, 75003
If you are interested in taking home some souvenirs, this is the place to get them! This store is a cook's dream, stocked with every single spice or cooking additive you could imagine.

Jacques Genin chocolate shop at 133 rue de Turenne, 75003
This place is run by a very eccentric man who takes perfectionism to the extreme, so much so that he only serves his signature pastries once every 3 months. By some stroke of luck, we happened to be there on one of those days and got to try famous bicycle wheel (I forget how to say it in French) and it was amazing.  Even if its not one of the special pastry days, you still have to go to this place to try the amazing candies. I had a mango flavored carmel that changed. my. life.

Birthday in the Best City in the World, Paris!

After the TGV from Stuttgart delivered us to the heart of the 10th district at Paris Est in less than 3 hours, we were in celebration mode and ready to eat and drink our way through the City of Light.

We quickly stashed our bags in a locker and walked 20 minutes along the Quai to Restaurant Pierre Sang in Oberkampf. I had first read about this restaurant in an NYT article and was intrigued to see how Sang combined his South Korean heritage and his French upbringing in his cooking. The meal did not disappoint. For a mere 35 euro per person, we enjoyed a 5 course lunch (wine extra) that was inventive and delicious. The waiters changed it up a bit by presenting the food, letting us try it, then coming back to see if we could guess what it was. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I was pretty good at it. I was even able to identify the tripe course. Oh yeah, you should probably be willing to try anything when you go because its a tasting menu, meaning the chef presents what he pleases.

Although stuffed from lunch, we managed to find room for dinner at Bistrot Paul Bert. While generally recognized as one of the best Parisian bistros by almost every dining authority, we weren't particularly wowed by the experience. Sure, the steak was tasty and the sauce savory, but it seemed overhyped. Not to mention everyone in the restaurant was American. I guess we need to keep searching for our authentic Parisian bistro.

The next night was the eve of my 30th birthday so we decided to go all out. L'Ami Jean seemed like a fun place, they spoke English on the phone and accepted our reservation so that's about all we could ask for! Located in a residential part of the 7th, this restaurant was a little hole in the wall and barely noticeable from the street. Inside was a different story. The place was a non-stop whizz and whirl of waiters rushing around cracking jokes with the cooks in the back yelling and shouting instructions to each other. Guests were crammed practically on top of each other so a romantic evening was definitely out the window. However, we were seated next to a very friendly, food obsessed couple from Singapore, so we had a great time exchanging opinions on which restaurants and cafes have best food in the city.  We opted for the tasting menu and a bottle of red burgundy. Immediately we were presented with an appetizer of pate with rustic farm bread. We were served wonderful food over the course of the night but the highlight of the meal was the risotto with a squid ink sauce topped with shaved squid. I also loved the ride pudding with salted carmel for dessert.

For my birthday brunch, Kent found Un Dimanche a Paris in the heart of St. Germaine. Attached to a very famous chocolate atelier, we dined on baguettes with chocolate, smoked salmon omelets and assorted pastries, before packing up and catching the train back to Stuttgart.

Zlata Praha

“This is shaping up to be a negative blog post,” my boyfriend spoke into the phone that I held to my ear as I sat in a hotel room in Prague at 2:00 am crying my eyes out. Not more than 45 minutes earlier I was having a wonderful time dancing with my friends to Rihanna’s dangerously addicting “S&M” at the hip club Nebe in the new part of the city. But after hours of walking around exploring the enchanting Czech capitol my feet were aching and I was ready to call it a night. My friends weren’t quite ready to throw in the towel so I walked up to a group of taxi cab drivers hoping to get a ride back to my hotel. 

“Zlata phhh,” I said making a “phhh” sound in place of the second part of the name of my hotel, which I could not quite remember. “Zlata Prana” they immediately responded and a man emerged from the group and motioned for me to get into his unmarked BMW taxi. “Is this a real taxi?” I dumbly asked ignoring my instincts. “Yes,” he assured me and pointed to the meter, which was already at 240 crowns, or about $10. That seemed high for the notoriously inexpensive former Soviet country but I again told myself that we were not far from the hotel so it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I had to pay a bit more. It was cold out.

He began speeding through the city and on to the highway. “Near the train station?” I asked him as I watched what I thought to be that exact building whizz past. “Yes,” he again said. I noticed he had a picture of a baby on his iPhone that was docked within sight. A guy with a picture of his baby can’t be that bad I assured myself even though we seemed to be traveling further and further away from the center of town.

“Aren’t we past the hotel?” I finally had the courage to ask.

“You said Zlata Prana,” he responded.

“We are definitely past the train station. I told you by the train station.”

 “You said Zlata Prana, I am taking you to Zlata Prana.”

“I want to go back to the train station now,” I demanded.

“You said Zlata Prana!” he was screaming at me now. “You said Zlata Prana in Prague 6!”

“No, not in Prague 6,” I said now frantic. I looked at the meter and it read 800 crowns. I did the math on my phone. It was $40. “Take me there,” I pointed to a nearby hotel.

“No,” he screamed and kept driving.

He then got on his phone and started yelling at someone in Czech. I was contemplating ways to throw myself out of the taxi as he sped along the highway. Then out of nowhere he pulled over to the side of the road and told me to get out. I gladly jumped out then immediately realized that I was in the middle of nowhere. In Eastern Europe. At 1:30 in the morning. Bawling, I tried to call Kent. No answer. I waved my hands around in the air as taxis flew by. In the distance I saw a Hilton sign so I dejectedly started walking towards it then out of nowhere a taxi pulled over. Still sobbing, I jumped in and managed to show him on a map where my hotel was. My phone vibrated and I began to tell Kent about the ordeal and he stayed on the line till we reached my hotel, which I realized was called “Zlata Praha.”  

Art Deco Delights

I spent the majority of my time in Prague last weekend just walking around and gazing up at all the incredible architecture and design. All different styles and periods are visible from Gothic to Renaissance to Baroque to my personal favorites, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Unlike its fellow former Iron Curtain neighbor Budapest, Prague has done a spectacular job of maintaining and restoring all of its buildings and squares. It was also largely spared from the bombings during WWII that destroyed a majority of Europe.