My Life as a Pillow

After work today, I went on another run with Ellie, this time with Marcos tagging along and Victor nowhere to be found.  It was a beautiful day up in the mountains, with incredible views over both sides of the ridge.  Ellie always tells me a little bit about the different parts of town and the other mountains, which makes the runs really interesting.  At a fork in the road, Marcos and I headed back to the hospital while Ellie headed toward her house.  And that’s when our trail run turned into our trail shenanigans.  Marcos is secretly about eight years old and thinks that the world is like a giant playground or a giant science experiment.  He therefore decided that we should take this tiny, obscure path down a rocky path, bushwhacking our way through overgrown grasses and ferns, dodging cacti and boulders.  All because the sign said “La Vall d’Hebron”, so it had to lead to our hospital.  It didn’t.  It lead to a highway near a scenic overlook.  When we tried to get down to the right road on another small path, we ended up on the cinder block porch of a cardboard and corrugated tin hovel with a wonderful view of the juvenile detention facility.  We backtracked.  Eventually, by cutting through another person’s porch and yard, we wended our way down the steep hill toward the highway below.  We traversed dusty fields and more dry, rocky paths among trees until, magically, we ended up on the road to the hospital.  It wasn’t a great running path, per say, but you can’t help but smile at Marcos’ impish humor, attitude, and mannerisms.  As with any twenty eight-going-on-eight boy, he trail blazes through life with a sense of invincibility.  When we got back to the hospital, he then joked that every time he runs with Ellie or me, he gets back far later than he’d planned.  Oh, right, this is my fault.  But then there was the impish grin again, and you knew that he loved every minute of it.

My first priority, upon getting home, was groceries.  Food is a sort of magical conundrum in this city; buying groceries is wildly cheaper here than in New Haven or New York or other New England cities, yet eating out at restaurants is incredibly expensive (expect to pay 30+ euros for a decent paella, for example).  Case in point: I bought at least two weeks’ worth of groceries today for about 25 euros, including 20 apricots for less than $3.  I’m not sure how this all works out, but I like it.  So if you’re visiting Barcelona, I recommend stocking up on some of the delicious and abundant fruit and other snacks and carrying them around for when hunger strikes and  you don’t want to dish out $10 for street food.

To end the night, I went out to an Indian restaurant, Mayuna, with Naaman.

Note that one of the alcohol-free cocktails is called "Safe Sex on the Beach" and has a tagline of "Use a condom!" (Usa un preservativo!)

This might sound like a strange way to experience Barcelona, but I have an odd tradition of going to Indian restaurants in other countries.  Like Ghana, for example.  And while it’s never the best Indian food I’ve had in my life, it’s always a fun experience.  At Mayuna, they had some interesting ideas about presentation and served one dish with a naan blanket on top.  When it arrived, naan covered the entire dish, making it look like an enormous Indian take on French onion soup.  And yet, when it was sliced open, it contained large amounts of rice.

 Naaman and I ordered some chicken tikka masala and another dish that was basically saag paneer and went halvesies (shout-out to my sister Caroline for imprinting this wonderful tradition on me).

 By the way, I should mention that while this restaurant has a few tables, most of its seating is in the form of plush couches covered in colorful silken pillows, with both diners sitting on the same side of the table next to each other.  About half way through dinner, we realized that I blended in perfectly with the pillows.  
 Not the most glamorous realization, but I don’t pride myself on being glamorous.  I'm much more proud of how much I can enjoy food.  And enjoy we did.  Our check at the end came in its very own box, which deceptively looked like a present.  It was a meal full of surprises.

Spotted: In the Metro Diagonal station there is a piece of sculpture/art on the main wall that essentially represents Diagonal as a street.

I see this every day as I hurry down the stairs to catch the Metro to work, but I never fail to examine it for a few critical seconds.  I've noticed several times that it has the artist's name, Subirachs, written on the lower righthand corner.  Since that name sounded familiar, I looked it up.  Unless there are multiple Subirachses in Barcelona who get commissioned to do major works of art, I believe this piece was made by Josep Maria Subirachs.  Subirachs is a Catalan sculptor and painter best known for the Passion Facade on the Sagrada Familia.  He also made the inverted staircase sculpture dedicated to a former president of Catalunya that stands at one corner of Plaza Catalunya.  I guess I'll have to take the art at the various metro stops more seriously!