Musical interludes

I'd booked us in to see a concert at the Palau de la Musica as this is the best way of appreciating the building. S isn't too keen on classical music, so I reluctantly passed on Mozart's Requiem and instead booked a lightweight concert of four guitarists. The music was "popular classics" and not entirely to my taste, but they did some amusing fooling about too, the sort you can only do if you are very good musicians. So it was a pleasant hour and a half. 

It's not at all easy to take photos of this over-the-top building, especially when there are lots of people milling about and you can't use a tripod. As I'd blipped stained glass yesterday, I decided to skip the most obvious blip (worth a look though!), and go for this quick photo of the stairs instead.

Afterwards we went to the restaurant in the Mercat Santa Caterina for lunch. This is the same kind of idea as the Mercado  da Ribeira in Lisbon, except that the market is still a real food market, and the restaurant occupies one side of it. It was heaving with people when we got there, and we squeezed in on two stools at the long bar running along the open kitchen. Here we were able to enjoy the show of eight chefs demonstrating perfect teamwork while turning out food in industrial quantities. No shouting, hustling, or confusion -- they just got on with it, and were in constant motion all the time we were there. The menu was "fusion" -- mostly Mediterranean with some Oriental dishes. S had some lovely Beijing-style pork ribs, served with Chinese pancakes, sauce, and spring onions, and I had a bunless burger with a delicious mushroom sauce and chips (diet?? What diet?).  On the way out I inadvertently took an AkkuV style photo that I rather liked, and a more conventional one.

Speaking of fusion, we enjoyed the Flamenco Fussion (sic) at the Harlem Jazz Club last night, provided by Calamento -- singer, cajón player, and guitarist. They were excellent musicians, and together they fizzed with energy. I'm not sure what flamenco fusion is exactly; in this case it seemed to mean that it had tunes, singing rather than shouting, and you could understand a lot of the words. A great show, well worth eight euros each. 

Mind you, when we came out we discovered that the metro closes at midnight during the week. We could have taken the night bus, but for reasons one blipper knows, we are very wary of Barcelona night buses. We took a taxi instead -- they are so cheap here, 20 euros to drive us out into the sticks. That would get you about 500 metres in Paris.