Boats and Chefs

Packed one yesterday, I’m beat today. Being a tourist is hard. I try to be a traveler over a tourist though enjoying more than just a check-in at the biggest landmarks in a city to say you were there. It’s a difficult balance when you don’t spend much time in one place but you want to pack everything in, and try to sleep somewhere in between. 

After a day of being a straight tourist, this was a much more activity-based day. Started with the cappuccino crawl hitting three different spots and walking the El Born neighbourhood down closer to the sea. We had a paella class at 1230 and the young chef Johannes was a character. An ethiopian-born spaniard who’s been in Spain since he was 3 and cooking since he could work. 

He was shocked when I told him I ran a food truck for 4 years, after seeing me try to divide the egg from the yolk (my job for the cremè brûlée). James was always the chef. I might as well have been an armless man as I wasted three eggs before I learned how to do it. Gentleness when splitting the egg is key. 

We swapped some kitchen stories and he told me how he worked in the kitchen of a Japanese restaurant for 7 years. The owner would watch them on camera all night and listen to their conversations through planted microphones. The owner made his money to open the restaurant through playing poker and he and his boys continued to play poker in a room that was attached to the kitchen. They’d do a bunch of cocaine during those games and yell at the line cooks. The type of stuff you see in movies really. 

Anyways, the paella came out great, the creme brûlée is all sugar anyway so who cares. 

He also hit me with a pizza recommendation for Florence and was telling me he’s trying to get the money to open his own pizza shop in Barcelona. He showed pictures of home-cooked pizzas that looked fantastic.

I then toured around and saw the beach, sat in the sun a bit and we had a sunset catamaran cruise. It looked much like the old Moses Malone Memorial for those of you that remember that. Nah, not at all, but it was a beautiful night for it and gave a great view of the city. There were also some hilarious Australians and Belgians on the boat that were hammered and chatting us up.

A dinner of 16 tapas shared between 7 people to finish it off and another chatty chef that came up to each table at a lil place on Ramblas called Petit Tapas. that follow by a metro/walk home for another 11 mile day on my feet.

Getting some laundry done this morning before a flight to Ibiza, that should be an adventure as it’s not my scene.

Here’s me making due in a rush after the laundromat dryer didn't have the juice:

I'll check back in when I feel like it.