We had our last Barcelona dinner close to home, at the Arola restaurant at our hotel. Sergi Arola is a Madrid chef who runs La Broche, probably our favorite restaurant there. His Barcelona outpost had opened just a few days before our arrival, and we were quite eager to try it. Decor was very funky, a bit space age mixed with a '70's, Wallpaper magazine furnishings style. The restaurant was very high energy, and the whole place felt like a crowded bar rather than a restaurant. Service was fun and friendly, although a bit off in a couple respects, probably because it's a new restaurant. The best example of this is when the maitre'd seated us and handed us our menus, he put his hand in the candle on the table, setting his sleeve on fire.

Food was great, although less grand and less experimental than the Madrid restaurant. It was basically a tapas style restaurant. We mangled the ordering, though, because the waiter insisted we order lots of starters since they were tiny, and only one main, because they were substantial. This didn't sound very tapas-like, but we did as we were told, which was a mistake, as the starters were huge, and everything else was tiny. (Food-17, Decor-17, Service-18)

We departed early the next morning, which was a disaster. We took some no-name airline, Spanair, from Barcelona, and check in took an hour due to the idiocy of the check in person. Then they managed to lose one of Somchai's bags on the 45 minute direct flight. We had to choose between waiting for the lost bag or catching our flight to Bangkok, so we sacrificed the bags. Unfortunately this bag was full of Somchai's new clothes, so he was very moody, but when our Thai Air flight stopped in Rome, we got the good news that they had found the bag and it would be following us on the next flight to Bangkok.