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Bar Marsella (Absinthe Bar)
Click here to view map I’m not sure there’s actually much pleasure to be obtained from drinking absinthe. It tastes really bad and gets you drunk in about four and a half seconds, which means that if you drink anything else at all in the following hours you’re guaranteed to end up doing something stupid, losing sections of your memory and spending the next day making noises of agonised misery and claiming you’ll never drink alcohol again. So, if you do have to drink it, the only place really worth doing so is in Bar Marsella in the Raval. The place looks like a French style nineteenth century theme bar when in actual fact it really is a French style nineteenth century bar. The walls are lined with no-longer reflective mirrors and dust caked wine bottles behind cracked glass cabinets. The rickety fans overhead do little to cool you down once the place gets totally crammed at around midnight, as it seems to most evenings. It’s a beautiful sight to watch the little blue flames popping up all around the bar as sugar gets dipped and the absinthe gets lit (see beginner’s guide below) and though they apparently sell other drinks, besides beer, I have seen few signs of anyone choosing to drink much else. It is rumoured that such luminaries as Hemmingway, Picasso and - I think – Jesus Christ have all dropped in for a quick one over the decades and who can blame them? Surely the fact that I will happily walk all the way over to Raval to have a drink I hate the taste of in a boiling hot, overcrowded bar shows just how cool, authentic and unique this place is. Absinthe Drinkers Guide: 1) Buy a glass of absinthe, with sugar and fork, (this is very important, failure to do so will affect all remaining steps) 2) Drop sugar cube into absinthe momentarily then fish out with fork 3) Rest fork with sugar cube on rim of glass and light the sugar. 4) Say “ooh look at the pretty blue flame” 5) Once the flames have died, spray the water over the sugar until it crumbles into the glass and stir so that it dissolves. 6) Drink! Tips: Water is optional you could theoretically just stir the sugar in. One bottle of water is enough for 2 drinks. If you’re not so keen on the taste don’t add too much water or else it takes forever to drink, but it’s a good idea to drink any remaining water for the sake of your head the following day.