Travelogue: Barcelona Eats

A few months ago we had the great fortune to be able to spend a week in Barcelona, Spain. We had been to Spain once before (other parts - Madrid, Sevilla, Costa del Sol) and we loved it there, so we were very excited to get a chance to go back. Overall, we loved Barcelona. The weather was terrific, the people were friendly and there were a million things to do. During the time we were there, there was an International Food and Beverages Convention - so I figure I might as well start writing about Barcelona with food.
We had been told by friends and other people we know that Barcelona was more about "sit-down" restaurants and less about tapas. So, we started our dining adventures in the restaurant Agut (Gignas 16, Barri Gotic). Our travel guides listed this as a great place to get lunch and a very good place to get dinner. We opted to go for dinner. Overall, it was good. Not great, but good. I remember having the fried artichokes and duck with a strawberry sauce. The next night we went to have some paella on the recommendation of our concierge. Unfortunately we didn't stick to the guidebooks on this one. It down-right sucked. Sadly, it put me off of paella for the rest of the trip.
After these 2 failed ventures, we decided to try some tapas instead. Cal Pep (Placa de les Olles 8, Born-Ribera) was terrific. This is the place to go if you're looking for some fresh seafood tapas. We had the fried fish place, some garlic shrimp and a couple other dishes I can't quite remember. This is probably because they don't serve wine by the glass here - only by the bottle. And their house white went down rather easily (my wife, being pregnant at the time could not help me finish it either). We also tried Taller de Tapas (Placa de Sant Josep Oriol 9, Barri Gotic). There are two locations for this place in Barcelona. The one we went to was great. We went here the night after going to Cal Pep, so we decided to avoid the seafood tapas only because we had so much the night before. Here we had more traditional tapas - chorizo, spinach with chick peas, probably a tortilla. One last tapas place we tried was Els Quatre Gats (Montsio 3, Barri Gotic). This place we went more for the history of the place than the food (Picasso, Casas, Opisso and more used to spend a lot of their time there). Here we had more traditional tapas, but I remember it being very good too.
One last place that I can remember going to was Caelum (Carrer de la Palla 8, Barri Gotic). This is a tea and coffee shop where you can also buy treats, cakes, wine, coffee, jams, honey, jellies, etc from all over Spain. We stopped here on more than one occassion to have a snack and a caffeine pick-me-up.

NP: Mike and the Mad Dog, 660 WFAN