Day 21 - Cassuolet aftermath, scratched car, and Barcelona!

I weighed myself this morning, out of curiosity mainly, and to determine whether I was winning, or French food was winning. I’m winning…woo hoo! Despite the cheese, bread, and butter being consumed, all the walking has paid off and I’m only 300g up after 3 weeks…and that was probably made up of pure cassoulet anyway.

I travelled once more from Villegailhenc to Carcassonne to have a proper explore by the light of day. I went through the museum/castle walls and admired the country view, whilst the drizzle started to come down. It was freezing, and as usual, I was not appropriately addressed for the climate, so I made my way towards somewhere warm for lunch, but got turned away from one place, made to wait for 20 minutes without my order even being taken at another, and ended up having a dodgy kebab-shop cheeseburger in the rain instead. It was time to move on to Barcelona!

I drove to Perpignan, only an hour and a bit away, dehired the car (after negotiating down the claim for the scratch), and found the station and purchased my ticket. Thankfully, the train had been delayed so I wasn’t quite as rushed as I’d thought I’d be…but I did stand on the wrong platform until one minute before the train arrived, realised, then ran across to the other platform just in time!

I arrived in Barcelona, and changed onto a couple of metro trains to arrive at the hostel which was quite lovely. I finally did three weeks of washing too, so I would finally have clean clothes again! And to my delight, I am not in the land of the napping…so a good three hour nap was in store, before a very late dinner and MeetUp event in the Gothic quarter.

I headed out and found a few recommended restaurants, all full, before stumbling onto a lovely little tapas joint called Agueloo13. Absolutely the best sangria I’ve ever had …sweet, flavourful, delicious!

Relaxing over my sangria, I read Julia Child whilst waiting for my dinner. Salmon tartare with roe and dill mayo, and fois gras with salted caramel, clarified fat, and some sort of berry jam on crunchy little bread circles. Extremely interesting, and thoroughly tasty. However, accompanying it, and what I would discover is quite a popular dish, was ‘tomato bread’…toasted bread with tomato mush on it, which would render the bread…moist.

After dinner, I joined a MeetUp group around the corner at a stand-up comedy event, although I was only in time for the last act-and-a-half, so didn’t quite manage to get my giggle on. I met a lovely couple who were with the MeetUp group – Olga and Andrew – who had actually only met the week before at a walking event! A lovely chat, a taxi home, and I was ready for another good sleep in Spain.

Daily summary:
Hours napping – 2
Times I’ve said ‘this is the best food ever’ – 8
MeetUp people met – 2
Minutes of terrible comedy endured – 8
Moist tomato bread…priceless…