This is the Queen City of the Mediterranean.

It is a European capital of design. Developers and the goverment continue to rejuvenate formerly distressed neighborhoods. Abandoned buildings from the Middle ages forward are continuously transformed, an unstopping parade of new museums, cultural centers, colleges, residences. Its acclaimed chefs and restaurants set the gastronomic bar ever higher, sending their international colleagues scrambling to keep up.

Barcelona bursts with energy, dawn to dawn. It revises itself. Ceaselessly.

This urban phenomenon has been written about before on aKeyintheDoor (see My Kind of Town, Barcelona Is), though, so here are some more recent, more specific, observations.

Transatlantic flights arrive in Spain in early morning. If you’re lucky, you get two hours’ sleep on the plane. Try to avoid walking into walls. Take a taxi into town (about $25) and hope the hotel has a room available at that hour. Last time, we chose an old favorite, the Colón (www.hotelcolon.es). It faces the cathedral, one of the old city’s principal attractions across a wide, busy plaza, and is at the eastern edge of the historic Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), which contains remnants of the long Roman occupation, including walls, columns, and an entire underground village. Sundays at noon, a band plays for the dancing of the traditional sardana, and on Thursdays tents are set up for the weekly antiques and collectibles market. The front desk staff is efficient and knowledgeable, if not warm and fuzzy, and they always seem to be able to come up with a room well before the normal check-in time of 2:00pm.

There were two immediate signs of the decline in tourism due to world-wide recession. First, the rack rate for our comfortable room was 204€ (about $285), but we got it for 118€ (about $165). Second, the young bellman who took our bags - an American - took the job because there wasn’t enough business for his regular gig as a tour guide.

A Walk To The Beach

One way of dealing with jet lag after arrival is to get breakfast, take a nap, shower, go find lunch, follow with another nap, then out again for an evening walkabout and dinner. Wake up the next morning on local time. Works for me, anyway. There are any number of walking routes that can be plotted from the Colón. Our choice this time was east three blocks to the Mercat Santa Caterina, the market given a distinctive wavy roof in its recent renovation. Inside, it’s almost as well-provisioned as the better-known La Boquería on La Rambla, but without the cachet and the camera-toting tourists.

Continuing front to back of the market, noting the names of provender likely to appear on your dinner plate that night, walk in the same direction into the La Ribera quarter, which has benefited from the presence of the Museu Picasso, just south of the career Princesa. That street, career Montcada, also passes the Museu Tèxtil i d’Indumentària, which documents Barcelona’s prominent 19th Century textile manufacturing history, and the Museu Barbier-Müller, which houses a small but fine collection of pre-Columbian artifacts. Galleries, bars, and not-too-kitschy souvenir shops occupy most of the rest of the buildings until the street ends in the Passeig del Born, a narrow, two-block plaza with more bars and nightspots. Over to the right is the impressive Gothic parish church Santa Maria del Mar, deserving a brief detour.

Further along in the original direction, the narrow streets open up into plaça del Palau, heralding the proximity of the harbor. In a few more blocks, traversing the furious traffic of the passeig Isabel II, enter Barceloneta, the arm of land that contains the northwestern edge of the Port Vell, the old harbor. Once a darkly ominous place, the harbor was reconfigured as a marina for pleasure boats and an amusement center on the wide jetty called the Moll d’Espanya. It contains a complex of shops, eateries, and an important aquarium, claimed to be the largest in Europe.

We had in mind eating fish, though, not watching them. Barceloneta was historically the fisherman’s quarter, a grid of short compact rowhouses leaning over dark narrow streets. It still bears a working-class identity, including a visible Arab presence, but some apartments here are going for a million dollars and more. Walking down the center of the barrio, enter another market, Mercat Barceloneta, and continue to the back to find  Els Fogons de la Barceloneta, which faces the broad and deep Plaça de la Font. The fixed price menu del día is three courses for only 13€ (about $18.25), a very good deal in what has become an expensive city. But that card is mostly land-based food and we wanted seafood, so we ordered from the tapas section of the menu. Ensaladilla rusa and patatas bravas are potato dishes, but I ordered both anyway because I missed them. The first is , basically, potato salad, with peas and carrots; patatas bravas are fried potatoes with a mildly piquant tomato sauce topped with alioli (garlic mayonaise). These went with a pear and Parmesan salad with mixed greens. The hits, though, were five large grilled sardines and pulpo, chunks of impossibly tender and savory octopus. With a full bottle of wine, two coffees and a generous snifter of Duque de Alba coñac, the total was 63.50€ (about $89).

Before returning to the hotel for, yes, another nap, we walked east to the beach that was reclaimed from rows of dilapidated structures back during preparations for the ‘92 Olympics. New restaurants with attractive hawkers out front line the sand’s edge, and in the distance looms a tall glass tower shaped like a sail (or a shark’s fin) - the new W Hotel (www.starwoodhotels.com/wbarcelona). Expect to pay around 300€ (about $420) for a double. On the newly trendy passeig de Joan de Borbó, facing the Old Port, it was designed by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, and is the only hotel in the city with direct access to the beach. Nearby is the eastern base of the Transbordador Aeri, a vertigous cable car that runs far above the harbor on its way to Montjuïc, a hill on the opposite side that now serves as a multi-functional recreational and cultural complex. The ride is not for the acrophobic.

This walk can continue southward, beside the harbor, turning inland along the gentle upward slope of La Rambla, the must-see pedestrian concourse that ends after a little over a mile at the Plaça de Catalunya.

Or, you could take a taxi back to the hotel for a nap.

Tapa to Tapa to Tapa

Not all that long ago, tapas bars were an oddity in Barcelona. They were standard in rival Madrid, a little declassé, like bullfights and flamenco. That’s changed, with a vengeance. They’re everywhere, over a range of traditional to innovative, in glossy and threadbare settings, poorly executed and marvelously accomplished.

A little nomenclature: The word “tapa” means “lid” or “cover”. The practice began when innkeepers laid pieces of bread over tumblers of wine to keep the flies out. One clever barkeep decided to put a piece of cheese or sausage on the bread to attract customers. His competitors noticed. The race was on.

A true tapa is still modest in size - a small saucer of olives or almonds, perhaps. What are now called “tapas” are almost always larger raciones, three or four times larger. Two or three raciones constitute a meal for most people, but a common practice is to order five or six to share with two or three people.

A sub-species of tapa has gained great favor in Barcelona - the Basque version called pintxos. These are, uniformly, served on slices of bread, the toppings virtually infinite in variety. In the customary arrangement, platters of each sort are set out on the counter, which is often twelve feet long or more. Customers ask for a plate and a drink - sparkling hard cider is customary - then browse, filling the plate with as many pintxos as desired. Repeat visits are encouraged. All of the toppings are secured by toothpicks. When it comes time to pay, the bartender or waiter simply adds up the toothpicks to determine the bill. (No fair “accidentally” dropping any of them.)

One of our current favorite pintxo bars is Orio, at carrer Ferran 38 (www.grupsagardi.com), a street that traverses the Barri Gòtic from La Rambla to Via Laietana. It’s relatively new, sleeker than most, with high common tables inside and conventional seating in the adjacent alley. The barmen are congenial and tolerant of any confusion about proper procedures. And, the pintxos are varied and most tempting, but take it slow - start with three. You can always return, and waiters keep circulating with trays of fresh hot items from the kitchen. Our last time, we avidly consumed eleven of them, including two kinds of deep-fried croquetas - one of cod, the other potato - and piquillo peppers stuffed with brandade. All of the photos in the left in this section were taken at Orio. We were more than full, and our check was only 32.43€ ($45) with two beers and tax included, far less than a conventional three-course meal.

That Man’s Brother Is My Father’s Son

To have issues with Ferran Adrià is to consign oneself to a distinct minority. He is probably the most famous chef in the world, the iconic inventor of what has been labeled molecular gastronomy.  Star chefs and noted food writers from around the world flock to genuflect at the altar of his restaurant El Bulli in rural Catalunya. Hard cases like Anthony Bourdain go all soft and gooey in the presence of Adrià’s creations.

Adrià was responsible for foams, the flavored air that subsequently settled over dishes across two continents. He has seriously employed cough drops among his ingredients. He only keeps his restaurant in the mountains 100 miles north of the city open six months a year, retreating to his Barcelona laboratory the rest of the year to deconstruct food components. All this effort to make edible disparate ingredients that are only destined to become quite another product in a few hours or a day or two. This is plain foolishness, and very costly. Thus have I joined the company of grumpy naysayers.

That said, the acclaim accorded the Barcelona tapas emporium Inopia, at carrer Tamarit 104 (www.barinopia.com), got my attention despite certain familial connections. The chef-proprietor is Albert Adrià, younger brother of the maestro. He acts as pastry chef at big bro’s place when it’s open and opened Inopia to keep busy. But this isn’t that. Mario Batali, a super chef who places flavor, taste, texture, and aroma above arty laboratory fabrications, calls Inopia the best restaurant in Barcelona. Good enough for me.

Trouble was, we only had one night left in town, and it was a Saturday night - super-busy, to be sure. What the hell. What kind of foodies would we be if we didn’t try at what might be our only chance.

It was a 6.50€ ($9) taxi ride away, at the far western edge of lower Eixample, the middle band of the city constructed in the 19th Century. There was, as expected, a crowd around the entrance, which was roped off. The doorman was a short, tough-looking little guy in black who took our name and said “Una hora, mas o menos.” (”An hour, more or less.”)

We settled in, remaining close to the door, counting people exiting, raising our hopes, dashed as patrons who arrived after us were waved through. The door guy made no bones about admitting friends, family of staff, regulars, and pros from other restaurants, before those of us unknown to him or the manager. We felt like aged club kids at the portal of Studio 54.

After an hour, more or less, Door Guy took pity on us and let us pass. No seats, but we were inside! He brought us wine to hold us until they could take our order. Apart from keeping lists of supplicants and reservations and clearing an occasional counter, he periodically stepped up next to the tv, turned down the sound, and announced, at the very top of his lungs, that, for example, “NO HAY MAS PIMIENTOS!” Or whatever else the kitchen ran out of during the evening.

Inopia is, essentially, a high-class tapas bar, not in decor or situation, but in the quality of its food. Except for one large table, seating is on stools. No matter. The ingredients are fresh from the morning’s market, and most of the preparation is to order. After our wait with noses pressed to the window, we were ravenous. We inhaled, in order: Pulpo a la Gallega (chunks of octopus as tender as butter), four fat, white, madly flavorful  anchovies (miles from the hairy bottled kind), four croquetas (silky potato with chunks of jamón Ibérico, quite possibly the best ham in the world), a bean salad, classic pa amb tomaquet (crusty grilled bread rubbed with garlic and tomato pulp and drizzled with olive oil)…and some other stuff I can’t remember. To be sure, these were traditional tapas with just a few minor twists, but it will spoil you for any other of its competitors. With wine, espressos, a brandy, and tax, the tab came to 63.05€ ($88.25), every euro deserved.

Tags: Barcelona, Barris Gòtic, cable car, Hotel Colón, Inopia, La Boquería, La Rambla, Museu Picasso, Orio, pintxos, Queen City, tapasa