Barcelona Day #4 - Chill Out Day

Today is a total chill day. After breakfast, we came back to our room where Debbie began reorganizing our bags. We had to open all of them to make room for our recent purchases. It looks like we’ll be carrying an extra-large shopping bag with us tomorrow!

We’ll also have plenty of laundry to do—and to send out—as soon as we board. Anything that can handle a hot dryer will be sent out, a free perk with our status with Princess. At home, Debbie hang-dries many of our clothes, and she does the same while onboard.

Our plan for today is to take a casual stroll around town and pick up a few toiletries at El Corte Inglés. I’ve also been on the hunt for a new fragrance and have been sampling quite a few over the past couple of months. I finally found one that we both really like—Tom Ford’s Black Orchid. El Corte Inglés has a great price on the 100ml bottle, so I think that’ll be coming home with us today!

Well, our “casual strolling” day turned into yet another shopping adventure! 

At this point, we’re definitely going to need at least one more medium-sized suitcase for the trip home — and we haven’t even started visiting our cruise ports yet!

For lunch, we returned to what has officially become our favorite restaurant in Barcelona, Cuines de Santa Caterina, at the Mercat de Santa Caterina. If you are walking from La Sagrada Familia (opposite direction of Las Ramblas), you can see the colorful roof of the Mercat. 

The food has been consistently fantastic, and the staff couldn’t be friendlier. Today we shared an avocado salad with burrata cheese — the burrata was encased in a thin, cracker-like shell. 

Brilliant cookery and absolutely delicious! We also shared a grilled octopus with steamed potatoes, olives, and chives, which easily ranks among the top five octopus dishes we’ve had anywhere in the world.

For dessert, we couldn’t resist their homemade flan, which was almost as good as my mother’s — and that’s saying a lot!

Honestly, if this restaurant were dressed up just a bit more, nobody would bat an eye if it earned a Michelin Star.

Afterwards, we returned to our room to recover from that incredible meal. We’re actually heading back there later tonight for dinner — at this rate, we’ll have sampled half their menu by the time we leave!

By the way, I did buy the cologne. 

We had planned to return to our favorite restaurant for dinner, but by 7:30 we were still too full from lunch. Instead, we decided to head up to the rooftop lounge for a glass of wine and maybe share an appetizer or two. Unfortunately, it was far too windy up there, so we went down to the restaurant bar instead. We each enjoyed a glass of wine and shared a veggie burger. Now we’re back in our room, watching Netflix and winding down for the night. Tomorrow, we board the ship!

¡Buenas Noches!