Barcelona dining
 

Okay, I am getting the general sense that my main meal in Barcelona will be lunch, followed by tapas in the evening. What are typical "lunch" hours? Would a good plan include having lunch at around 2:30 or 3:00 and then head out for tapas around 8:00 (following a post lunch siesta, shower and change of clothes)? Also, since we will be there for 5 nights, I think on one of the nights we will want to have dinner in a nice restaurant. Would we be the only ones in the restaurant if we arrived at 9:00?

Thanks!

topping for tom

thx cigale. that was very neighborly of you. : )

hi, Tom,

no, you won't be the only people in the restaurant at 9pm - you'll just be there with all the other tourists. [joke].

Meal times in Spain fascinate me - the hours kept by people seem inimicable to going to work! OTOH, they are great for tourists - you can get virtually whatever you want whenever you want. When we were there last September, people seemed to eat earlier than in Madrid, so some of the locals were sitting down at 9pm - others were just chopping their way through yet more tapas. but they are used to tourists and their funny ways, and many places will be quite happy to see you at what for the locals would be ridiculously early. and many of the best places have long queues so you won't be sitting down early anyway!

haha annhig. 8:00, 8:30, 9:00... I can handle. But I was reading that people don't go to dinner until at least 10 and you can find people dining at midnight. Yikes.

Although I tend to be a little regimented when it comes to meals, I am willing myself to just go with the flow.

tom - yes there are some people in spain who don't eat unti lwhat we [and our digestive systems] would consider to be ridiculously late. but in big tourist centres, they would lose too much business if they stuck rigidly to traditional spanish meal-times.

if you want a "fine-dining" experience, why not make a short-list of your possibles and look at their websites/e-mail them to find out what would be a possible dinner time to suit you and them?