Barcelona: Food, Sights, Green Pigeons

We flew to Barcelona on Thursday, arriving at our hotel around 8 pm. We were quite hungry and asked the hotel receptionist for a nearby recommendation. I had looked up one restaurant, and it was at the top of her list! So, we walked the ½ km there where I had three tapas that the receptionist had also recommended: bread with tomato (my favorite of the three), Spanish omelet (full of potatoes), and roasted potatoes with sauce.

Phillip ordered a paella, but with chicken, not seafood. The lady seated next to us had one with seafood and the shrimp were unpeeled and whole (with heads). Phillip prefers his shrimp more processed, so he went with the chicken. What he forgot was that a chicken dish has bones, so he did have to pull the chicken bones out of his paella. He did say it was flavorful.

We walked almost seven miles on Friday, making up for the skimpy walking day because of the flight on Thursday. Getting out of the area where our hotel was took us thru what we would consider alleys, but which are actually main streets in the center of old town Barcelona.

Barcelona, just like Vientiane, Laos, and other cities, has its own version of the Arc d’Triumph, named Arc de Tromf.

As in other European cities, statues grace many of the traffic circles of Barcelona.

Modern art is also represented here.

Parks are also common. One of the central city parks is Ciutadella Park, lots of people, statues, and tents where people were sleeping. The area wasn’t smelly or nasty, so they may have been backpackers, not homeless, who were allowed to camp in this major park.

In this park was a pool surrounded by dragon statues and a memorial of some sort. Not sure as Google maps told me it’s Neptu, but Neptu is also a Neptune statue closer to the marina. Oh well, it was nice to look at, even though the pigeons never moved from the top of the dragons.

The south end of Ciutadella Park contains Barcelona’s Zoo. Although we could have visited for just 10 euros (the senior rate!), we wanted to see more of the city. About 100 feet outside the zoo gate, we saw ten green parakeets. One of them was wearing a necklace, probably for tracking. Zoo escapes, most likely. Thankfully, they were parakeets, not monkeys, that escaped their enclosure.

We walked around the zoo, between its exterior wall and the train station. Sounds kind of boring, but it wasn’t because of all of the graffiti on the zoo wall.

Hundreds of feet of this art, to be expected as Pablo Picasso was from Spain and lived in Barcelona for a while as a child.

Phillip and I did not go on the sand of Barcelona beach, but we did walk along the malecon.

We made our way back to the Las Rambla area of the city where our hotel is located, passing another striking piece of art.

Las Rambla is a set of five streets that run parallel to each other, full of shops and the cross and diagonal alleys. The original use of Las Rambla was somewhat of a sewer system, giving a path for wastewater to run from the city to the sea. In the 15th century, the area was turned into roads, making room for markets and squares. The buildings in Las Rambla are very similar to French buildings, and much better looking than the Communist area buildings we saw in parts of Warsaw and Krakow.

Today, Saturday, we walked again around Barcelona. While researching locations near the hotel, I clicked on a park a few km away and saw pictures of green birds. That park became our destination today as it is where a colony, informally called “green pigeons” but actually Monk parakeets, have nests. Green pigeons were first seen in the parks in 1985 and now there are an estimated 2000 of them in Barcelona. They were probably released from local bird markets and found Barcelona to their liking. They live peaceably with the regular pigeons and doves. The nests were huge, and the birds were noisy, but it was fascinating to watch them work on the nests. These green birds were bigger than the parakeet-sized birds we saw near the zoo.

A local man, apparently known to the birds, brought food and water for them and the three varieties of birds politely came to him. It was a totally different scene than when tourists feed pigeons and all the pigeons for 20 meters crowd in to get their morsel.  

Tomorrow: boarding the Symphony of the Seas for our 14-night cruise to Fort Lauderdale. One night in Florida, then we fly back to Texas. 

Warsaw: Cooking Class, the Little Insurgent, and Autumn Colors

Phillip and I are now in Barcelona, but I need to share our last days in Warsaw. We like Warsaw and would return if a flight took us there, but Wroclaw and Krakow were our favorite stops in Poland because of the dwarfs in Wroclaw and the friendliness and number of things to see in Krakow. Food and plenty of museums are what we will remember about Warsaw. On Monday, we had a great cooking class, learning to make pierogis.

It was a hands-on class with Nina, the instructor, giving us tips such as how long the dough must rest (at least 10 minutes, 20 is ideal, and no more than 30), what to do if we have a blow-out when we fill the pierogis, and the importance of thoroughly squishing the edges to seal the pierogis before making them fancy with a fork or special crimping. Four students for the class, so four different fillings for the pierogis that we ate after cooking them! Delicious….

Warsaw has a lot of museums. We walked to the POLIN museum. POLIN is one of the larger museums focused on Polish Jews, from their arrival in Poland thru their decimation during World War II.  During the Middle Ages, Jews became merchants and bankers because, due to religious intolerance, they were prohibited by the local rulers from owning land. Some Polish rulers integrated Jewish people into society, however, over 90% of the Jewish population in Poland was killed by the Nazis in just five years.

While the weather was good, we walked in the Stare Miastro (Old Town). Warsaw’s Old Town was actually almost totally destroyed during WWII, but the reconstruction after the war was so accurate that the Old Town got a UNESCO World Heritage site designation.

Some pieces of the city walls from medieval times remained.

The center Market Square was much smaller than that of Krakow and Wroclaw.

The Square was graced in the center with a mermaid statue. The mermaid as a symbol of Warsaw dates from 1622, when she appeared on a Warsaw coat of arms. The legend is that the mermaid decided to stay after stopping on a riverbank near the Old Town. Fishermen noticed something was creating waves, tangling nets, and releasing their fish. They planned to trap the animal, then heard her singing and fell in love. A rich merchant trapped and imprisoned the mermaid. Hearing her cries, the fishermen rescued her. Ever since, the mermaid, armed with a sword and a shield, has been ready to help protect the city and its residents.

Tuesday, we walked in the largest park in Warsaw, Lazienki Park. We didn’t go far enough in to find its peacocks, but the changing leaves were beautiful.

We saw the Chopin statue in the park. I had to use Google to find that it is a willow tree represented with Chopin in the statue, that he sat under the trees in the park to consider his musical compositions. Looks like an alien or a ghostly hand to me.

And like Berlin, the trees were reflected beautifully in the water in the parks. This is from another park, Ujazdowski Park.

Saxon Park had trees that showed the changing to autumn.

Just east of Saxon Park, we found, near the Presidential Palace, Poland’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with an honor guard and an eternal flame.

The following day, we returned to Stare Miastro so that I could take a proper picture of “The Little Insurgent.” In addition to mermaid statues in the souvenir shops, we saw replicas of this guy. At one of our many museums (we were in more than I’m describing), we found the story of the Little Insurgent. During WWII, twelve- to fifteen-year-old boys volunteered to join the Resistance effort. They were mainly couriers and sentries, and their contributions were vitally important.

Also, during our second visit to Stare Miastro, we visited the wishing bell. According to a legend, it grants wishes, but you must walk around it while keeping your hand on its top. So, Phillip did!

I had to get a picture of this guy… he looks to be straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I was afraid he would boom out “None shall pass!” as I neared for the photo.

On Wednesday, we went to the Warsaw Rising Museum, the museum that was most educational because it had interactive displays even though the subject matter was the failed Polish uprising against the Nazis in 1944 that led the Nazis to kill 200,000 residents and destroy most of the city. Many displays of weaponry.

The museum had a mock-up of the sewer tunnels used by the Little Insurgents. Visitors could crouch down and walk thru, getting a sense of the confined spaces, but not the smell, that the boys endured in their resistance efforts.

In addition to a 3-D fly-over movie showing the totally destruction of Warsaw in 1944, authentic film clips were used to show how the weapons were used. The video behind this anti-tank device showed how it was used to sneak up on German tanks and disable them.

We didn’t just visit museums and Old Town; we also went to a market. I’ve mentioned the mushroom soup that Phillip loved, here are the mushrooms. Vendor after vendor had stalls selling all manner of mushrooms!

On our final evening in Warsaw, we managed to visit a restaurant we’d passed several times. It always had a line of local people, the sure sign of good food. We hadn’t eaten potato pancakes yet, so I ordered mine with stew and Phillip had his smothered in mushroom sauce. As it was chilly and raining, I also ordered mulled wine. All was indeed delicious, but very, very filling!

We board our cruise ship on Sunday, but we will be wandering around Barcelona for a few days…

Polish Food, Snacks, and Drinks

We are now in Warsaw, arriving yesterday to our final Polish location. It’s Sunday and the first day of the trip with enough rain to keep us in our hotel room. We had drizzle and sprinkles of rain, never even enough to use our umbrellas. Today, however, it’s raining enough to create deep puddles on the cobblestone sidewalks. So, time to talk about food and drink! Pierogis aren’t the only good food we’ve found in Poland, although the pierogis have been delicious.

At our Poznan hotel’s breakfast, one of the items available was stuffed pickled peppers. We were walking thru a local market later and found them for sale. I bought 200 ml (about 7 ounces) and ate them for my lunch that day. Absolutely delicious and the best I’ve eaten, preserved sweet peppers, with a slight heat, filled with a cross between cream cheese and feta cheese, in an herbed oil.

Although potatoes are native to Peru, they have been welcomed for centuries in Poland. We had delicious individual potato casseroles, with layers of cheeses and mushrooms. (Poland is the world’s largest exporter of mushrooms.)

I tried the Polish cabbage rolls. They were good, but I prefer the sarmale cabbage rolls of Slovakia which are more seasoned.

Poles love to serve soup and stews in bread bowls. I had goulash in a bread bowl one evening. Phillip had a pork cutlet which was just like a German schnitzel at that meal, so I didn’t get a picture of it. My goulash had tender meat and lots of mushrooms. I could only eat the top of my bread bowl with the goulash as serving sizes are quite substantial.

Since it has been cool here, high temperatures usually in the 50s, we’ve eaten hot soup several times. Phillip’s go-to soup is mushroom, which he says is very mushroom-y and usually served with noodles in it. Early in the trip, I tried zurek, the Polish sour rye soup. It is a flavor that Phillip would not like, as it is slightly sour, but I found it delicious and have eaten it at least four times. I plan to try the zurek in Warsaw to see if there’s any regional difference.

I’ve written more about my favorite foods, but here’s one that Phillip really liked, sauteed chicken livers. He said they were the best chicken livers he’s had, cooked with onions and mushrooms, tender and savory.

Zabka is a convenience store chain with a store on every block. They advertise a hot dog with condiments in a tube of bread. We decided to try it for lunch one day. The Zabka we stopped at had sold out of the 6 zl (about $1.50) hot dogs, so we got the kielbasa ones (about $2). The kielbasa was already on a roller grill (just like our QT and Racetrac hot dogs). The clerk put the bread tube on a grill to heat it and add grill marks. Then, she squirted the condiments in the bread tube and dropped the sausage in. It was quite tasty and the mustard coated the enclosed sausage all the way to the final bite, but it wasn’t messy because the tube of bread had a bottom.

This is our very favorite snack in Poland. Bacon-flavored. Not just flavored, but thoroughly flavored, as in they taste like eating crunchy bacon strips even though they are some type of corn/wheat snack chip. We go thru almost a bag a day of these. They were 3.5 zl (about 80 cents) in Wroclaw and Krakow, 4 zl here. Notice the bag size, they’d be at least $3-4 in the US. 

Phillip has ordered chocolate milk shakes. In Poland, a chocolate milk shake is blended cold milk and chocolate. No ice cream or the thickness he was expecting. As he said, it is what they say it is, shaken flavored milk. Still tasty to him, he just no longer expects an American milk shake!

Cherry is a popular flavor in Poland. We tried these tea bags this morning after breakfast. I’ve seen them at our previous hotels, but usually we just have coffee and water. We’ve been missing out as the “tea” from this bag doesn’t taste like tea but rather concentrated cherry juice. We will be drinking more of it this week.

And, speaking of cherry, I mentioned the cherry vodka that our Krakow hotel presented us. It was so delicious that we went looking for it in Krakow to bring some home with us. Zabka and the souvenir stores sold some type of cherry alcohol, but we didn’t buy any of it. I found a liquor store just off the main market square in Krakow. True infused vodkas, cherry and many other flavors, three shelving units of these glass containers! We tasted quite a few of them. The shopkeeper sold bottles, so we bought several 200 ml bottles, and she siphoned our selections into the bottles. Then she wrapped the bottles securely in bubble wrap for travel. We did go back the next night to get more, including one that was not securely wrapped, to drink while here.

We still have five days of Polish eating, followed by a few days of eating in Spain, so maybe we’ll find more notable foods to share.

Krakow Dragon, underground museums, and a Jewish cemetery

We miss the Wroclow dwarf statues, but Krakow has its own “mascot,” the Krakow Dragon. Whereas the history of the dwarfs is only 40 years old, the Krakow Dragon is the stuff of legends. When we walked around Krakow’s castle, we saw signs for the “Dragon’s Lair,” but the upper entrance was closed for reconstruction. Dragon statues and stuffed dragons are sold in town. So, today, we went in search of the Krakow Dragon, and we found him!

The 13th century legend is that a dragon plagued the City of Krakow, demanding a weekly ration of three cows. If he didn’t get cows, he would eat people. One version of the legend says the king’s sons came up with the idea to kill the dragon, other versions say it was the king, and one version says it was a cobbler who came up with the idea. The scheme was to stuff a sheep skin with smoldering sulfur and give it to the dragon to eat. The dragon ate it and died breathing fire just before death. The dragon’s home was the cave below the castle next to the Vistula River. Although it wasn’t open, we did see the entrance of the Dragon’s Lair near the fire-breathing dragon. 

Our first underground tour was Wednesday to the Wielczka Salt Mines, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Steps, lots of steps, took us down the initial 90 meters underground into the first level of the mine. Walking thru the passages, we saw secondary salt on the passage walls where salt water seeped out, evaporated and left a bloom of salt.

The tour only went along 2 km of the 287 km of passages and down 135 meters with the mine’s final depth being 327 meters deep. Archeological records show that as early as 10,000 BC settlers were using salt springs in the area to get salt to preserve food. When the springs went dry, they began digging. The mines were first started in the 13th century. Today’s mines have dioramas built into the passageways, with figures made of salt.

Displays also showed how salt was mined over the centuries, with examples of the cylinders of salt that were removed by human and horse labor and mechanical means.

Huge chambers, once the salt was removed, were decorated over the years.

One method of removing salt was piping out the saline pools.

The passages were easy to walk and securely braced. Visitors have been coming into the mine since the 1700s. The mine stopped industrial production in 1996 because of falling salt prices and mine flooding problems. It is now preserved for tours and small commercial production.

Today, we went to our second underground museum, the Rynek Museum. It is under the Old Town market square. About 25 years ago, the city was reworking the area and dug a bit deeper than usual and came across ruins and artifacts of the ancient city. Archeologists and preservationists created the museum, just 4 meters underground, where the old walls from the 14th century can be seen.

Artifacts such as coins and tools were on display.

Prior to being the city site, this spot was a cemetery. Archeologists dug below the city walls and found graves from the 11th century.

This is a scene today directly above the Rynk museum. Plenty of pigeons on the Market Square!

Yesterday morning, we walked thru a nearby Jewish cemetery. During WWII, the Nazis uprooted the headstones and used them to make a road in a nearby concentration camp. After the war, the remaining Jews in Krakow brought the headstones back and used them for a memorial.

The cemetery itself was beautiful, with ivy overgrowing the headstones.

We leave Krakow tomorrow and we will miss the staff at our hotel, Hotel Wielopole. Karolina, one of the desk clerks, is an English major in college. Over the past five days, we’ve had delightful conversations with her. Another friendly clerk is Ana. Actually, they’ve all been friendly! Magdelina, the hotel manager, has done a great job hiring friendly staff, all college students. We gave Karolina a Texas key chain to remember us. When we came back from dinner, we found a Krakow dragon key chain with a thank you from Karolina and cherry vodka in our room!

We went out another time and upon our return, Karolina presented us with two slices of Krakow poppy seed cake!

We will miss this hotel; it has been one of our favorites during our travels.