of course I went to a food market

This is a beautiful church (↑) and this is a lucky turtle (↓). 

The architecture in Europe is amazing. I wouldn't doubt that the oldest building I grew up around was probably fifty years old, and anything older than that was in ruins and part of a park (Bandelier). So going out of the country is always incredible. I can never fully wrap my head around how these things were built and how long they must have taken. Here I am getting antsy about the renovated common area plus gym that's supposed to happen in my work building, and that's only supposed to take two years or something.

I liked walking through Barcelona because it felt like it was shifting as I circled the streets lined with new buildings to streets lined with old buildings. I will always be taken aback when I see a shiny modern retail store tucked into old brick and mortar. The main bustling areas of Barca were kinda like that. We popped into Escribà for some pastries - cream filled croissant/turnover thing for me and chocolate orange cruffin for Audrey.

And brought them with us to a park to sit and take a breather. While Audrey read, I ate my pastry as carefully as possible while watching ants carry off the large flake crumbs. Dude. I was amused by this for many minutes. Ants are persistent. Flakes are not the easiest crumbs to carry - they kept getting stuck in the blades of grass, and the ant would have to pull its sweet find free.

As a side note, how necessary do we think a hot iron for brulee-ing sugar is?

It feels very necessary.

La Boqueria

Audrey and I made a juice stop after seeing so many rows of pigments, and pigment was the way I made my decision - dragonfruit + coconut.

And there were meat and cheese cones! This is the solution to charcuterie-on-the-go I didn't know I needed. I just need some pickles and olives on a toothpick and a little sidecar of honeycomb, and I could walk for hours.

I'll admit I ended up getting vacuum sealed pages of meat to save for later instead of the cones because my mission was to get a seat at Pinotxo bar, situated at the edge of the market.

Where I got a plate of grilled head on camarones, seasoned only with sea salt crystals as far as I could tell. The juices and flavors are all in the heads, I'm telling ya. It took a good couple minutes to get through each shrimp because I was determined to get every drop of juice in my mouth. [That includes shamelessly licking fingers in public... whatever, Americans already have a bad rep.]

Audrey got a hearty bowl of meat and potatoes.

And then when I was halfway through the shrimp, I decided I had to have some everyone else was having - some blistered peppers, also simply garnished with large salt crystals. I blanked on the word for 'peppers' in Spanish while trying to order them, and when I tried to point to my desires, some super helpful man behind me laughed in a mansplain-y way, "Peppers?"
Yeah, no thanks for your help, dude. I wanted the Spanish word.

It was fine, though. I got over it after cleaning both plates with the baguette chunk that came with our meal.