The Excessive Beauty of Barcelona

Today is a day of extremes. 

In the morning, I went with Edie, Bill and Lucy to Parc Guell, which was the final Gaudi location of my trip. The Parc is set in the hills above the city. It was a hot day, but Bill went for a run to meet us there while Edie, Lucy and I took the bus.

There are locations in the park for a beautiful view over the city.

Several grotto areas are covered with the iconic tile mosaic that this park is known for.

And of course the famous gecko.

There were also some fun street artists including this guy.

After the park, we went home for a bit before taking the subway to Disfrutar, a Michelin 2 star restaurant that Edie had booked for us back in February. I was really looking forward to this lunch as I'd seen Edie's photos from when they were here during Bill's sabbatical a few years ago.

Everything about the meal was choreographed, from the moment we were walked through the restaurant to our table, introduced to our serving team and presented with each dish. We had about 20 savoury dishes and 4 sweet dishes, followed by coffee or tea in the garden room and some sweet surprises. Each dish was presented on a specially designed serving item. The servings were small but the flavours of each were intense. The servers often had to finish compiling the dishes at the table and not only describe to us the dish but also explain how we should be consuming it. 

One of my favourite dishes was this crunch mushroom leaf. The nest and nesting material were the presentation object. We were instructed to eat the leaf. 

The leaf was so light but the flavour was intense, it tasted like an entire forest full of mushrooms were distilled into the leaf.

Even though the quantity of food was not huge, we all hit a wall at about the 15th dish. It almost seemed like our taste buds were fooling our stomach into thinking we had eaten more than we did.

Towards the end of the meal, as we sat in the garden room with our tea and the extra sweets, it felt like a nice denouement to the 4 hour meal.

After that, we certainly didn't feel like eating dinner but we did enjoy some time on their roof deck watching as the sun set and the Sagrada was lit up.