In other news, this is what I'm dealing with at Duo right now.

The neighbor's balcony on top of our sitting room has been leaking since we've had the place. The neighbor is a little over zealous in watering his plants and refused to stop. Complaint after complaint went ignored until finally the ceiling caved in. Thank god it happened at 4am when no one was around, but now we have this gaping hole and all sorts of water damage to our beautifully painted walls and trims. To top it all off, we had torrential rain overnight so we've got buckets everywhere catching water. It's a little ridiculous that it takes a ceiling collapsing to get any attention, but they're repairing the terrace as we speak and hope to be done with all repairs by Friday.

Meanwhile, our neighbor wants to move all of his plants down to our terrace and wants us to water them. The building administrator actually brought up the idea of him signing a contract absolving me of any blame/damages in case I kill the plants. I'm not touching any of that with a ten foot garden hose.

In good neighbor news, we invited all of the neighbors to the hostel last night for a little open house and a few glasses of cava. We invited them before we knew the ceiling would collapse, hoping we could use the whole space and the terrace. Regardless, it was a great event. Everyone was excited to meet each other and see the hostel. They were all very friendly and warm, unlike some other neighbors we've had... Special thanks to Candi the door lady for playing hostess and introducing everyone.

Unbeknownst to Lee and I when we selected the name, Duo means many in Chinese. As in "This summer we have had duo Chinese guests."

Nationalities of guests come in waves. We had a period with a lot of Japanese guests, another of Brazilians, and now Chinese. We have theories about customer reviews being left in languages attracting other guests that speak that language or write-ups in guidebooks and blogs of these nationalities that we don't know about. This Chinese wave is significant and seemingly lasting. Glancing at the book, I have one day in September with reservations from Yaohua, Zhao, Qianli, Zhung, Wang, Pan, Qing, Hu, Mao, Chen, Feng, Nie, and Xia (my apologies if I've included a name that isn't actually Chinese....I'm working on it).

Know anyone who speaks Mandarin that's looking for hostel work??

I've been reminded recently that I haven't blogged a lot in the last month. I did forget one big event - The 10th anniversary party for Comcerç 24 at the W Hotel.Lee and I are regulars at Tapas 24, the tapas bar Carles Abellan owns in our neighborhood. We're there at least once a week and know most of the staff. A few weeks ago Lee got a call from our friend that works there, Sham, inviting us to this party. The day of the party came, and we never got an invitation. Luckily, our names were on a special list. It was amazing.

The party started at 8pm and took place on the deck of the W overlooking the Med. There were countless food and drink stations set up serving some Tapas/Comerç standards (McFoie burgers, Callos, plates of Jamon, Bikinis) plus a few raw bars, a wonderful cheese bar, amazing giant paellas, passed plates, grilled sausages, a salad station, a Moritz tap, a huge wine bar, and three cocktail bars.

Lee and I were in heaven. For dessert, they brought out a giant table surrounded by a sheet attached to balloons. They removed the weights on the sheet, and the whole thing floated away with the sheet to reveal a beautiful spread of pastries set up to look like a giant birthday cake. I´ll post pics of this later. All in all it was a fantastic party. Thanks to Susana and Sham for hooking us up!

Great new find in El Borne- Picnic

Lee and I split fried green tomatoes stacked with feta and a corn salsa, a barbecue pulled pork sandwich, and a delicious strawberry crumble with homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert. Lee tried a chipotle bloody mary. It was all delish. It replaced a "tacky" bar on a cute corner of Comerc (their words). They´re open for brunch 12pm-5pm Saturdays and Sundays in addition to lunch and dinner during the week.

Happy to have another addition to our growing list of cool brunch spots in Barcelona. I think that brings us to a grand total of 4!