My first dinner in Barcelona

I promised to tell you all about my first dinner in España. It was truly a delightful experience.

As I'd mentioned, I was struggling with decision paralysis, so I decided to walk until I found a place that looked promising. I walked for maybe half an hour until I noticed this tiny little restaurant called El Laurel. It had a red door and as I paused to read their sandwich board, someone came out of the door giving me a whiff of amazing food and the sound of women laughing uproariously.

That combined with the especiale on the sandwich board of three empanadas, a salad, and a beer for €10.50 and I was sold.

I walked in and sat at the counter by the register. There were maybe 16 seats visible in the space, five of those at the bar. The waitress was busy with the table of  women I'd heard, so I snagged a menu from a nearby table and figured out which empanadas I wanted. She came by, I ordered in Spanish, she asked questions I maybe understood a little (?), I answered, "Sí!", and then waited to see what I would get.

When the food and beer came, I realized that I'd managed to  order the  right food! Yay me!

And it was good food, too. I'd foolishly ordered one empanada that had spring onion, thinking that it was similar to green onions. Nope! But I ate it anyway, and you know, as onions go, it wasn't awful. 

As I sat there eating, it became clear to the proprietress that I was Americana. She was Argentinean. In very broken Spanish, I explained my trip, why I was traveling so long, and where I would be going. In the middle of this, the waiter comes out from the back room (where there were apparently quite a few other tables), trying to figure out how to say something in English. She pointed at me, and a lively discussion on the word for the tool used to cut wood ensued. I said axe, and the proprietress shook her head with a frown. She was remembering another word from her five years of English in school as a child. I said, "Hachet?" She delightedly said sí! The waiter had written "axe" down on a notepad,  and I wrote "hatchet" next to it. But the waiter wanted the other word, and then there was a discussion on which was bigger. I explained that an axe is often used to cut big trees down, while a hatchet was used for small trees or firewood. (This was all in Spanish, I'm proud to say.)

Finally, I asked the waiter why he was asking. He smiled,  grabbed the pen, and added an L after axe. "Por el nombre de hombre de Norse!" So all the chatter about a hatchet and which was bigger was just that,  chatter. Useless but very interesting to all involved. 

We then began a conversation on how big the US is, especially compared to Europe, and how easy it is to move around here. I mentioned that Argentina wasn't small, either, and she agreed, but said it was a lot smaller than the US. I questioned this, so she turned to a man who had come in to order empanadas to take home. He was clearly a regular, and he also happened to be from Mexico City. 

He argued that Mexico was just as big as the US, and I obviously looked skeptical. He vociferously argued his case, while I pointed out that at the narrowest points, the US was 4000 miles across.  The use of miles totally lost the restaurant owner, and she pulled out her phone to see what that meant. In the middle of all of this, the guy's phone rang and a customer came up to the bar to order take out. So I pulled my phone out and looked it up.

Yeah, the US is more than 10 times bigger than Mexico, and three times bigger than Argentina in land mass. I showed it to the guy once he got off the phone with his four year old (who wanted una empanada dulce, por favor, Papa!), and he looked surprised. Then he blamed/credited Alaska for the difference in size, and declared Mexico similar in size by population. I laughed at  the changed goalposts,  and the proprietress laughed, too.

He went on his way, I ordered a second beer, and stayed to chat a little more, then headed back to the hostel, but only after promising that I'd come back st least once more before leaving Barcelona.