Oh joyous day…Jason turned 35 on July 18th. To celebrate we met a few friends at one our favorites plaças (Virreina) for a few drinks. Monica got us the greatest gift….a small BBQ for grilling (we have been unable to break it in though, the access to the rooftop is locked) Well the fun didn’t stop there. The surprises this town holds…cool bars hidden on small streets just a stone throw from our apartment.

We found Bar Raim, an old Cuban Bar. I could have sworn we were in Cuba, once inside. The place is over a hundred years old, and hasn’t been updated (or cleaned) since it was built. It still has the original wooden cooling cabinet, none of those new-fangled refrigerators here! Ivan insisted that a great cuban drink is a dackEEErah. Turns out that this is a daiquiri, but it’s not the foofoo drink you’re thinking of. A cuban daiguiri is about 907 shots of Havana 3 year, a little bit of lemon juice, and a little bit of sugar, shaken with ice. Makes the hair grow out of your ears… They also had very good Mojitos, which have the benefit of not requiring a post drink ear-waxing.

After the Cuban bar, we hit an Argentinian bar for a final mellow Caipirinhas before calling it a (rather drunken) night.

It’s interesting, though, how common Mojitos and Caipirinhas (and their cousin, Caipiroskas) are in Barcelona. They are literally everywhere, which is surprising given how rare they are in the states. Barcelona’s per-capita mint consumption must be astronomical…

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 6:15 pm by Corrie and is filed under Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.