Know nothing about Costa Brava ( my understanding is the local cuisine is English pub food :-) )
Barcelona one of my favorite places on earth. I'll dig out my notes. My best recommendation if you like music and architecture is to try to get tickets on line for anything at the Palau de la Musica Catalana ( I actually heard deLaRoche play Albeniz ! ) Mind blowing concert hall ( Art Nouveau / Moderniste ) best appreciated a night at a concert ( the day time tour doesn't do it justice )
http://www.palaumusica.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau_de_la_M%C3%BAsica_Catalanahttp://barcelona.arounder.com/palau_musica_catalana/ES000007251.htmlhttp://mosaicartsource.wordpress.com/2007/01/08/mosaics-of-the-palau-de-la-musica-catalana-barcelona-spain/The first website is in Catalan but between Latin, French and Spanish it's not hard to figure out. You won't get tickets once you're there. so if you know when you are going, book ahead and pick them up at box office.
Everybody should check out that third link !
And on Sundays the locals dance the Sardana - the Catalan national dance - in front of the Cathedral. Don't miss that. Find an old person to tell you how during the Franco years you could go to prison for dancing that dance or speaking Catalan. ( in Barcelona, a little Catalan will get you a lot of good will ) When Franco died they wept in Toledo - they danced in the street in Barcelona. A lot of signs are in Catalan and English. If your Spanish is good enough they think you might be Castillian they might pretend not to understand you. if that happens, switch to English. Like the Quebecois if they think you are Anglophone Canadian only a lot more so.
I'll look for restaurant stuff and get back to you.
>>My Spanish isn't good enough to be of use to you, but I can give you some great restaurant recommendations if you're going <g>
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>We will be in Barcelona and Costa Brava so if you can recommend any good (or bad ones so that I exclude them <g>) restaurants, I will appreciate it.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
