The bars and cafés around the Plaça de la Llibertat serve coffee, cold drinks, and pa amb tomàquet — the Catalan staple of bread rubbed with ripe tomato and olive oil, which here costs almost nothing and is better than it has any right to be.
Come early. By mid-morning the tour buses have arrived and the square fills up. But between eight and nine, with a coffee and the bridge visible at the end of the street, it's one of the calmer mornings you'll have in Catalonia.