Three of my friends and I decided to reward ourselves for making it through the first week of classes with a crazy weekend trip to Barcelona. While we failed in the crazy department — our plans to check out Razzmatazz, La Oveja Negra and Chupitos never came to fruition — but we ate an incredible amount of chocolate and had the most confusing but delightful dinner experience that ended in more laughing, kissing and pictures than any night out on the town could.
It started when we all needed to rest our feet after a long afternoon of exploring Parc Güell and the Chocolate Museum. The restaurant our cab driver had recommended for paella didn’t actually have paella on the menu, so we meander over to get coffee since it’s too early to eat dinner on Spanish time anyways. We sit with our drinks and examine our map, trying to figure out a good area to explore for delicious paella.
On a whim, when our waiter brings the check, Christine asks for a restaurant recommendation. He tells us his favorite, with pretty simple directions. We don’t catch the name but are too embarrassed to call him back to clarify (especially since there’s a distinct possibility that we won’t understand him the second time, either), so we decide to wander. However, as we gather our things to leave, our waiter comes back with a scrap of paper with “Restaurante Port Vell” on the top, and “De parte de albán” written underneath. He explains the two parts to us and we nod politely and thank him, but as soon as we get outside, Christine and I give each other bewildered looks — we both thought the other had understood. We look to Meredith and Karlee, but they’d been fishing for fruit in the empty juice glasses and had been oblivious to all that had occurred.
We all agree that “Restaurante Port Vell” must be the restaurant, while “De parte de Albán” must be his favorite dish. After looking at myriad café menus since arriving in Spain, I’ve realized that I don’t know the names of any kind of meat: I usually pick a sandwich arbitrarily because there are a multitude of Spanish names for meats (when I ask a waiter what a meat word means, they usually tell me “carne” and move on). So I figure albán must be a special kind of ham or something.
After passing dozens of paella restaurants, we ask some police officers if they know where “Restaurante Port Vell” is, and they direct us away from the row of restaurants, towards the harbour. So we walk. And walk. Finally we see a beautiful glowing sign that says “Port Vell,” (Okay, it’s not really beautiful in the aesthetic sense, but it signifies food, so I think it’s marvelous). The only problem is that it’s on the other side of the water. We debate if it’s worth it, but we’ve already come this far, and we’d unearthed a bag of cherries — from our afternoon picnic — so we’re all significantly more willing to walk with pre-dinner food in our stomachs. We find a bridge, and see a sign pointing out directions of neighborhoods. One says “Port Vell.” Meaning, Port Vell is a neighborhood, specifically the harbor around which we’ve been walking for 30 minutes. Oops. We decide “Restaurante Port Vell” must mean a restaurant in Port Vell, and “De Parte de Albán” must be the actual restaurant.
We retrace our steps to restaurant row, looking out for Albán. We go a block farther than we had before veering off towards the harbor, and encounter a white and blue striped awning greeting us with the name “Restaurante Port Vell.” Wait, what? So now “De parte de albán” is a dish again. So confusing. But now there’s a nice maître d’ enticing us with the deal of the day which includes appetizers, yummy looking paella, dessert and wine. We decide this is the restaurant for us, regardless of what its name.
A cute waiter comes to take our order 30 seconds after we’re seated, and although we’re pretty sure we want the seafood paella special, Meredith asks if they have something called de parte de albán. He grins goofily at us and tells us that our café waiter had just spelled it wrong: his name is Alán and our previous waiter must have recommended him because he’s the best. That doesn’t sound right to us, so we call over our maître d’ friend and ask him. He laughs at us and tells us that Albán is the nephew of the restaurant’s owner.
Apparently having Albán’s name on a piece of paper means that we’re best friends with him, because the maître d’ calls over Albán’s uncle, who is delighted to meet his nephew’s American friends. They promise us free champagne-sangria after our meal, and tell Alán (if that really is his name) to take great care of us.
However, Alán is not our only waiter by a long stretch. Apparently all of the waiters want to talk to the friendly American girls (we get friendlier as we go through several glasses of wine), and different Spanish men continue to appear bringing us bread, wine, gigantic toast with tomato and chorizo (a kind of sausage — so many meats!), and finally paella. One waiter corrects our Spanish pronunciation, although after he walks away, we brush it off as a difference between Andalucía and Barcelona accents. We wish. Another (really cute) waiter tells Karlee that she has the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen, and that he’s surprised she hasn’t killed all of the men in Barcelona with her gaze. It sounds cheesy in English, but it sounds really suave in Spanish. We all swoon a little bit.Then start pigging out again.
We want a picture with our favorite waiters, Carlos (the cute one) and Alán, but when we bring out a camera, another waiter who we’d only seen once jumps on our camera and gives it to the maître d’, then runs to be in our picture. Apparently he really liked us.
However, a few minutes after the photo, our photo-bomber returns, getting on his hands and knees, clearly looking for something. I’m a little worried he’s just trying to peek up our skirts, until Meredith pulls out a notepad from her chair and he lights up immediately. He smothers her with thanks, until he begins mock accusing her of stealing it from his pants. She looks horrified, which makes the rest of us crack up. We can’t hold ourselves together when the 60-something owner returns to our table and tells us that our photo friend is XXX, so we should watch out. The waiter defends himself, saying that Meredith simply is “naughty, naughty.” We have several more moments like this, and finally persuade all of our waiter friends to join us in a picture (even though we had to yell “Carlos, venga!” to get him away from some other clients — how annoying can we get?). Though, a young man from Holland who was supposed to take the photo ended up being in the photo and covering up Carlos, which we all lamented later.
After perpetuating the loud American stereotype for four hours, we finally decide it’s time to return to our hostel, to protests from our new friends (they couldn’t understand why we would want to leave dinner so early at 11:30 — the restaurant is open until 1:00 a.m. after all!). We say goodbye to them outside, and Carlos gives us each goodbye kisses on our cheeks. The maître d’ apologizes for not kissing us, but informs us that he only kisses women if he has a Marvin Gaye-esque relationship with them. We must have looked confused, because he begins belting out “Sexual Healing” to us. None of us wanted sexual healing from him, so we simply shake hands. He gives us a card of a disco that he tells us is Albán’s club. Apparently Albán owns a disco, and we get free entrance and drinks! We congratulate ourselves on making so many great friends in a night, as well as finding a place to go for the night-night. Until we examine the card, and it says free drinks until 2:00 p.m. instead of 2:00 a.m.
Read Sarah’s previous post or next post. | Meet the rest of our study abroad bloggers