Last day exploring Barcelona - Food market and Self guided Chocolate tour

Today was great.  It started out as usual as Carl had to run off to the last day of the conference.  It is the last day, so it is shortened.

He came home at the end and we set off for the Barcelona food market.

In front of the Food Market

 On every aisle there was a fruit juice stand.  We tried two; Strawberry coconut (yum), and mint coconut (yech).

Every other stall sold some kind of pork.  Some, such as this one sold just pork.  We may be bringing home some delicious cuts for the family.

There were some seafood bars that were packed.  We were lucky to find a seat after only a few minutes as people were huddled around waiting for a stool for a long time.  We had mussels and shrimp (or shrimps as they say over here).

I know this seems silly but I don't see beautiful lettuce such as this in UAE.  Especially not this time of year.  Look at the price, I would have salad for every meal, love leaf lettuce.

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Avocados cost a small fortune in UAE and usually half of the ones are bad.  There were huge beautiful ones everywhere and again, look at the price, that is 1.5 per kilo.  What I don't get is why guacamole was not offered at the restaurants, guess that is a Mexican thing not Spanish..

We found this Crepe stand.  They had sweet and savory options.  

I was getting a kick out of the cups of sliced ham (pancetta) and cups of sliced cheese offered.  People were buying them and eating them as is.  

I like marzipan a little but I could not eat a whole bite of it.  I thought these creations were really pretty.

We had not tried Paella yet.  When we saw it offered I was not impressed, it looked dry and smelled fishy.  I was surprised when I was walking towards a wonderful smell and it turned out to be Paella, I talked Carl into buying some.

We told the server we didn't need that much because we weren't too sure we would like it.  He filled up the container anyway.  We ate it all, it was sooo delicious!

These potatoes are offered at every restaurant.  They serve them with a garlic aeoli, usually.  

We decided to order a panchetta, grilled onion, spinach, and cheese crepe.

It was amazing!

I should have made him get his own, look at him eating my crepe!

The market was so colorful with all the fruit!

     We left the Market and went back to our favorite haunt, the Gothic district.  We love wandering the streets and looking in the shops.  Today our goal was to create our own chocolate tour by stopping at all the chocolate shops and trying something.  We also wanted to try a few other foods we had enjoyed before since this was our last day.

We stopped at the Empanada restaurant again.  They were good but I was sad they did not have my goat cheese option that I had seen before.

The first stop of many on our chocolate adventure.  This is the only chocolate place that we took a picture of.  I guess we got into the tasting and forgot about documenting.  The truffles from here were simply divine!

Not a food stop but we had to take a picture and look in this hat store.  It made us think of little Carl since he loves fedoras and wears his out almost everywhere he goes.  These fedoras were really beautiful.  Most were wool since they are getting ready for winter here.  That may be a bit hot for Abu Dhabi.  

We also had to stop into a cafe and have some Xocolate and Churros one last time.  They were good although not nearly as good as the 1/4 kilo churros we got on the street.

We also stopped at Manno's Gelato.  It was sad to say goodbye.  I joked with Carl that we should have gotten one of the frequent customer cards at the beginning of the week since we went so often.  The ice cream chef came out from the back to make sure there was some peanut butter gelato for Carl since she knows that is what he likes and she was making more in the back.  I am really going to miss that shop.

After today I need to make a retraction.  We had not found great food other than the afore mentioned ice cream, chocolates, pastries and sandwiches.  After today we can say there is amazing food, we just had not found it yet.  I guess we just had to go to the food market to find some other options.

Back to the hotel and fly out in the morning.  By morning I mean the taxi comes at 4am.  It will be great to see the kids, miss the so much.  Last time we talked to them MJ said she can't wait until we get home so she can see what we got her.  I joked and said what she get is us coming home.  She responded that is the best thing she could get.  I smiled, we might have gotten them a little something, maybe :)