Thanks for clicking on the Free Barcelona Travel Guide. There are 10 chapters total, listed at the end of this post. Check out the introduction for more information.

Sitges is an excellent little city/town. It's small enough that you can walk all over everywhere and walk by the same streets until they become familiar, but big enough that it's still interesting to see everything a couple times. Right by our hotel was a block without an official name, Calle del Pecado, or Sin Street, with cafes on either side of the road. The outdoor tables for the cafes are lined up 4 deep to give the maximum amount seats for people watching. This was my favorite part of Sitges, I thought of it as walking the gauntlet. Watching people people watching is more fun than I would have thought.

As I said yesterday, the weather became perfect about as soon as we got to Sitges, so we were excited to head to the beach after slathering on the 800 SPF sun block J had gotten for us. The hotel was a block and half from the beach, so we were basking in the sun reading trashy novels in no time. This being a European beach on the Mediterranean, you should be warned that there are a fair amount of Speedo bathing suits for the fellas, and not all of the ladies wear both parts of their bathing suit.

After about 2 hours of basking and trashy novels among the half-decent Europeans, we walked over to a Creperie on the corner of Sin Street for lunch. Has anyone ever had a bad crepe? I doubt it. By that point, we were exhausted and needed a nap, after which we promptly went back to the beach for several more hours of basking and trashy novels.

After another nap, which admittedly I spent reading trashy novels, we headed out to find some food. Douglas at the hotel had suggested Al Fresco as the 2nd best restaurant in Sitges, but we ended up at their sister restaurant next door, the Al Fresco Cafe. J got the menu del dia which came with vegetable soup, lasagna, and this delicious mango bread for dessert. I can't remember what I got, but I remember liking this restaurant, so it must have been good.



There are 10 chapters in the Free Barcelona Travel Guide. I hope you find them useful.
Introduction
Day 1: Barcelona to Boston: Plaça de Catalunya
Day 2: More Walking: Santa Maria del Mar, Picasso Museum, Ciutadella, Euskal Etxea
Day 3: Gaudi and Eating: Casa Milà
Day 4: More Gaudi: Parc Guell, Sagrada Família
Day 5: Sitges and Birthdays: Barcelona Cathedral, Parrots Hotel, The Beach House
Day 6: Sitges and Beach
Day 7: Sitges and Montserrat: Montserrat
Day 8: Sitges
Day 9: Too Hot to Shop: Aparthotel Calabria, La Boqueria, Tapaç 24
Day 10: Montjuic: Montjuic

Map of where we went or wished we had.

Click here to blow out the map and get the full effect

Rachel and I just got back from a week in a Caribbean paradise, so getting off the plane in 5-degree weather (in short-sleeves, no less) was a bit of a shock. It was probably that, coupled with a desire to eat in a somewhat more healthy manner, that led us to dub this week the Week of Soups.

We spent Sunday morning searching the magical Internet for soup recipes, and found three that sounded pretty good. The first one was this butternut squash soup recipe from All Recipes.

I shan't reproduce the recipe here, since you can click that link and see it for yourself, but it basically involves roasting a squash, a head of garlic, and some onions, pureeing them, and then simmering them with spices in vegetable broth. Really can't be simpler.



Rachel liked it, but I thought it was only OK. It had the sweetness that you expect from a butternut squash soup, but it interacted kind of oddly, for me, with the curry flavor. (It's entirely possible that lame curry powder and broth are to blame.) If I were doing this again, I might have sauteed the squash with the curry powder to bring out more flavor. I also think it needed some heat -- when we get the leftovers out of the freezer in a few weeks, I'll probably add a dash of cayenne.

People on Yahoo noticed the ridiculous pants the referees were wearing during yesterday's Patriots/Jets play off match up (playoff matchup? play-off match-up? (I'm uncomfortable with hyphens, now you know (but I LOVE parentheses))).

Instead of the short pants and long socks that referees always wear, Bill Vinovich and crew all had what looked like black track pants with a white stripe down the side. The folks on Yahoo Answers claim these pants are part of the cold weather optional uniform. Now, what I want to know is which ninny referee needed the warm weather option on this brisk, New England, January afternoon? I understand that in the future, when Massachusetts averages a balmy 63 degrees throughout the year, the idea of a referee wearing his winter gear will be outrageous, but… well, the future is now, Sunday was warm, and the refs had on the referee equivalent of snow pants. And it was outrageous.

Was this the best game to try these pants out? Have they used them anywhere else? It was 4 degrees a few years ago for a play off game in Foxboro, that wouldn’t have been a better time for the woolies? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I will pledge to spend a reasonable amount of time trying to quench our collective curiosity.

This evening, JR and I went to the Royal Buffet in Loew's Plaza in Cranston. After surveying the buffet options and sitting down with our first plate, JR said "This is a great place to blog about" and so I am. Although this place comes off as a Chinese buffet, more than half of the buffet options were of non-Chinese options. (Note: Chinese in this instance refers to what Americans think of as Chinese and not traditional Chinese cuisine.) There was french fries, hard rolls, onion rings, stuffed mushrooms, and apple pie. And there was seafood as well, which is how I think they pack them in. I don't go in much for seafood buffets, but I thought I'd check out the crab legs because it seemed like everyone was piling their plates high. The best part about this restaurant was what they were playing on the stereo right before we left. A cover of Michael Jackson's Beat It, in Chinese. Brilliant.

We got Jersey Girl from Netflix, the power of the queue and Kevin Smith. Anyway, this is one of those times where you watch a train wreck involving an actor or director you've previously enjoyed knowing full well all previous happy memories will be forever tarnished. It's unfortunate, when this happens, but what can you do? There are those that would say Kevin Smith's train wrecks started with every movie after Clerks, but I liked Mallrats and Chasing Amy. (Incidentally, JR has been laughing quite a bit, it's a little embarrassing.)

Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement today. I know there's going a knockdown dragout about who Bush nominates to replace her and probably again if/when Rehnquist leaves. We're about to weather some major political storms, but I wonder how the next several months will be remembered in history. It's likely BushCo will nominate someone totally reprehensible to the Democrats, but it's possible that that nominee will serve the court with distinction and not be a board member for Haliburton. If that's the case, history will soon forget the contentious months we're about to experience.


And finally, this is latest gadget I covet, a teenie, weenie, digi-cam.

Yesterday afternoon an intense weather system moved over the Northeast and made for some nasty conditions. Walking across the parking lot from the train, I came as close to having a Luke Skywalker killing his ton-ton moment as I've ever had in my life. One thing that stopped me was my semi-animal friendly disposition and another thing was my lack of ton-tons. I accepted my lack of ton-tons and trudged furiously to my car.

The locks on my car have a habit of freezing up when the temperature drops suddenly. I finally got in through the passenger side after several desperate minutes in the 100 million mile an hour winds and the snow, sleet, and hail, that was actually blowing up. After I got into the car, the windshield needed serious attention, except since I couldn't get out of the driver's side door, I decided to drive home and hope the windshield wipers would do their job. They didn't and I think this driving was the worst of my life including van and trailers in torrential downpours on steep mountain roads.

Anyway, this morning, as I got into my car to drive to the train it was the first beautiful morning in a long time and I was feeling pretty good. That was until I tried shutting the door and realized that instead of my door being frozen closed and locked, the latch had frozen open. The door literally would not stay shut without my holding it. WTF, right? Although I eventually figured out that I could keep the door jammed shut by shoving an ice scraper though the armrest, I drove to the train serenaded by the "Doo-Bee-Doop" door chime. I made the best of it by pretending it was techno.

Because of traffic and my car door, I didn't make the 8:30 train to South Station. Big deal, I'd take the 9:05. Unfortunately, the 9:05 got canceled. AT FIVE PAST TEN! The 10:02? I don't know if it ever came because I left the station at 10:35 with Hillary and Chuck, two strangers I had been chatting with at the train station. After realizing the train probably wouldn't come unil 10:45 anyway, I decided to drive and figured I might as well have company (and maybe some help splitting the cost of the trip?)

Anyway, I found out a lot about Hillary, not because she talked a lot, but because I think Chuck was hitting on her and kept asking her lots of questions. Chuck was probably mid to late thirties and he worked for a marketing company from Providence that had offices in Boston. Hillary, early twenties, was a bartender for a bar near Fenway Park and illustrated children's books. She just graduated from Mass Art and lived in Attleboro with her boyfriend. Chuck moved to Attleboro about a year and a half ago to live more in the woods. Hillary's brother plays music and he's a music teacher, but he's in law school now. He's pretty good with HTML and might help her make a website to display her art. Chuck plays music on the weekends in a Pink Floyd tribute band. Hillary didn't seem to mind Chuck hitting on her and at times she even seemed to be working him for a tip, like all good bartenders. Neither of them offered any money for gas or parking.

Everyone's got interesting stories if you take a minute to ask them questions. You find out a lot more if you let someone else hit on them for a while, though.