Budget Airlines and Cooking Classes

Our voyage from Nice to Barcelona took place on a budget airline I’d never heard of before, nor could I pronounce it: Vueling (turns out it’s pronounced “voo-ell-ing”). It was a perfectly fine budget airline – the rows were more squished together than any other airline I’ve flown, but the flight was only an hour long and I have the shortest legs of pretty much anyone I know, so it worked out OK.

Once we arrived in Barcelona and found our hotel (H10 Raco del Pi, right in the middle of everything, highly recommend it), we decided to kick off our Barcelona leg by hitting up the city’s history museum. The museum was very cool and is basically an excavation site showing multiple levels of ancient Roman stuff throughout Barcelona’s history. You get to walk among the ruins and the audio tour was pretty interesting. Especially the massive wine room where they made their wine. Ancient Romans liked their wine. I may have been OK at being an ancient Roman.

We also checked out an amazing cathedral that was just steps from our hotel. Very fancy.

That evening, we took a cooking class, courtesy of Mom and Dad’s 30th birthday gift! It ended up being just us and a newly-engaged couple who are in the Air Force in Germany. We made yummy pumpkin soup, Spanish omelette, paella, and crema catalana (their version of creme brûlée), plus tomato bread, which is the easiest thing in the world, delicious, and a staple of Barcelona – it was served in every restaurant we went to. You too, can make tomato bread. Here’s what you do:

1. Toast bread (we did this in the oven, but I guess you could use a toaster. It helps to get it really crispy, though).
2. Cut a clove of garlic in half (no need to peel it – hooray!)
3. Rub the garlic on the bread a few times (I went a little overboard on this – a little garlic goes a long way for this purpose).
4. Cut a small tomato in half (they use fancy tomatoes for this, I can’t remember what they were called, but they had less water in them so they’re apparently better).
5. Rub the tomato on the bread.
6. Drizzle olive oil on top of the bread.
7. Eat the bread. 🙂

It was amazing. Here it is with the Spanish omelette:

Also, the wine was flowing throughout the cooking experience, which just makes everything better!