We woke up early on our second day in Barcelona.  We had a good sleep … did not realize how tired we were after all the travelling and going sightseeing while dealing with jet lag.  It was going to take some time to get over the jet lag.  Most people will take one day to get over each hour of time zone difference.  There are nine hours between Vancouver and Barcelona.

We wanted to have breakfast at where the locals eat.  We walked the streets around the hotel looking for one and found one not far away.  It was a pleasant cafe.  When we were poking our heads into the cafe, the staff beckoned us to come in.

Language was lesser of a problem here as one of the staff speaks English.  He knows we are tourists and without having us even asking, he helped us with suggestions.

Cafe Con Leche — strong and creamy.  We love it!  The Spanish people takes their coffee seriously.  In every restaurant we went to, even hole-in-the-walls, has an espresso machine.  As a matter of fact, during the entire vacation in Spain, we had not come across a drip coffe maker.  Vancouver’s coffee seems so pathetic compared to their Cafe Con Leche.  I would think the Spaniard laughs at coffee from Starbucks!

The waiter told us that Cafe Con Leche means coffee with milk.  The word “Con” means “with” in English and “Leche” is milk.

The waiter recommended that we have a very Catalonian breakfast … the Pa Amb Tomaquet.  We just called it Tomato on Bread.  It is just a simple toast and yet so deliciously fresh.  It is easy to make too.  When we came back to Vancouver, Suanne had been making this for breakfast at home too.

It is just toast.  You just rub a ripe (it is important it is ripe) tomato on it and then drizzle it with olive oil.  You can add a little salt for added taste.  Simple.  You should try it at home.  

Before we realized how good the Tomato on Bread was, we had earlier selected a couple of items with familiar ingredients, eggs.  The above is omelette, Spanish Omelettes.  They call it the tortilla de patatas.  It was a filling omelette.

One thing we notice is how often the Spaniards poke the fork into the food when they served us.  Suanne and I was saying that you will NEVER see this done in Chinese meals.  It is a major no-no to stick chopsticks or utensils standing into the food.  It is taboo because it looked like incense used to pray to the dead.  LOL!

We also had another omelette.  We were told this is simply called the Mixed Omelette.  We like this better because it is very moist and cheesey.

We totally misjudged how much omelette they gave us.  We had no idea because it was displayed as pie on the counter and did not know how much they will slice off.  We had the omelettes to go.

Believe it or not, we also ordered a pastry.  I am not sure what it is called but it tasted somewhat like croissant and is light and fluffy.

The meal came up to €9.50.  It was not bad considering the amount of food we had.  The neighboring tables thought it amusing that we ordered so much food.  One person looked at us, raised his eye brows and gave us a thumbs up!