Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Barcelona Travel Tip: Just get drunk

9.90 Euro - 2 tapas + paella

Sweet. We signed ourselves right up--low on cash, this was just the meal price we were looking for.

    "What'll you have to drink?"
    "Oh, nothing, thank you."
    "I'm sorry, but I can't serve you if you don't order a drink."

Catching each other's eye, SilentR and I each ordered water (knowing it'd probably be a bottle of it) to pacify our server. Out came our 500ml bottles of water--which we drank--our tapas and paella--which we ate--and our bill--which we gawked at.

3.60 Euro for a bottle of water? Each?!

If we had to go back and do it again (as someday we probably would), we'd order alcohol. For probably pennies more (if any at all), it'd be worth paying to get drunk!

I think what made it the suckiest was that each of us had planned for a long day and each had a 1.5L bottle of water in our bags. Boo.

Definitely not like back in North America where it's all about ordering exactly what you want, and all the free tap water you could drink. Because later that same night, Silent and I ventured out of late night tapas. Neither of us were hungry enough for a meal, so we stuck strictly to the snacks, and we were shafted for it.

At first, we were seated and our table set for two--two placemats and two sets of utensils. After we'd ordered only 2 tapas dishes (we started with just 2 because we didn't know how much we could eat), the man who appeared to run the restaurant came by, seemingly scolding our server in Spanish, and re-set our table. He whisked away one of the placemats and moved the remaining one to the middle of the table, and removed both of our utensil rolls, replacing them with just one (which contained 2 forks, at least).

You shouldn't have to bite off more than you can chew, just to get regular service.

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