Here I am again, sitting where I sat a month ago, watching very similar people march by me. Ten o’clock, and the sun hasn’t even finished setting yet.
Walking around the block here, on the corner of Passeig de Gracia and Whatever, I found more than one restaurant to have dinner at (even the tourists here don’t try to have dinner before eight o’clock pee emm), but settled on one horridly comfortable steak place.
Long, silent brick passage into it — the sort of alleyway which discourages most tourists. A nice young waiter who didn’t even know pidgin restaurant English. Menu in Catalan. I see a slab-o-beef on the counter, and point at it. Some Catalan from him, some English from me. Long stretch of silence (I’m the only customer yet) wherein a late soap opera (in Catalan, of course) drones on.
A bit more Catalan from the nice waiter-boy, apparently to find out how I like my steak. I believe, in my heart of hearts, that my pidgin Spanish and virulent hand gestures have given him to understand that I want that red piece of meat cooked medium, on that nice smoking charcoal grill behind the counter.
It turns out that our attempts at communication were successful, since I end up with a plate of what the French, bless their fat little hearts, would call “steak frites.” Cooked medium. Yeah. Happy tourist.
white pebble 