Barcelona, el Born

I cannot imagine a troip to Spain without garlic shrimps:

Yes, it was a gourmet trip, breakfast at the hotel, noon coffee, afternoon tapas and dinner in the evening. 

A few years ago we hat an apartment in El Born, which is a part of the old town. We would have loved to stay there, but of course it was taken. You can figure out why by looking at some pictures here.

Here are the most innovative and delicious tapas in Born. The place is called Bubo and it's located next to the Santa Maria del Mar church, which by the way is being built in the famous novel Cathedral of the Sea. It's a beautiful church, we finally saw it from the inside, too.  

We had tomato mozzarella salad and caesar salad plus croquettes and a bikini, the toast which normally doesn't look so beautiful and taste just amazing. This was filled with mushroom paste which was seasoned with truffle oil. I once bought a bottle of it in Italy. It was awful so I threw it away. Now I believe that I just should have used it in teeny tiny drops.

Bubo also has an amazing bakery -beware of the images, they're just TOO delicious!

And then to Mercat de Santa Caterina:

Octopus:

I could live in a place where you can pick up the ingredients for a dinner like this...

So there's also a shop which sells olive oils etc (the bottles in the picture) but when we were heading there to do some shopping, they were closing doors for siesta. So we continued to Pl. de Olles and bought basil and provencal flavored oils as always and these delicious fruit pulp vinegars.

And a couple of outfits, of course: these tops are actually just two silk scarves.