Spain Food Diary

Bread with meat and cheese (Tapas) and two glasses of Tinto de Verano

Ah, memories of our first real meal in Spain. This meal would shape the rest of our meals for the rest of the trip. Out at a little local joint in Fuenlebrada outside of Madrid, we learned the true definition of tapas (free sides that come with your drinks. Of course, nowadays many places will charge you for them), tinto de verano (wine with soda and lemon) and patatas braviolis (a combination of patatas bravas with a red sauce and patatas ali-oli with a creme sauce... a combination apparently only known to this one tiny joint in Fuenlabrada because despite our requests for it elsewhere no where even knew what we were talking about). 

Patatas Braviolis

Another dish that's hard to avoid in the Spanish summer is gazpacho. It seems most people have had gazpacho in America, but not the real Spanish version. It's a soup made of blended vegetables, served cold. Super refreshing on a hot day in Spain.

 Gazpacho

Coming from Korea and seeing a sight like this one above was like a dream come true. Every meat and cheese available, by the slice upon request. I couldn't help it, I bought a sandwich here for one euro and enjoyed every minute of it. 

I spotted this chocolataria and recognized it almost immediately as the place I had visited in 2003 on my last visit. We made a point to come back here after the performance of Carmen to get some Chocolate con Churros. In my opinion, there is no other way to eat churros than with "chocolate" which is actually a cup of liquid chocolate of the consistency that you might get by filling the cup 3/4 with Hershey's chocolate syrup 1/4 hot milk. I have no idea how they actually make the chocolate, but it's probably nothing like you've ever seen before and nothing resembling your typical Starbucks hot cocoa.

Can anyone tell me if this anomaly known as "Dunkin' Coffee" is owned by Dunkin' Donuts? It looks exactly the same... just ... not. 

 Hummus and Moroccan Tea

It's hard not to eat Arabic food while in Andalusia. It's everywhere in Granada and we also got some in Cordoba too. Here was my first introduction to Moroccan mint tea. I love it, but while the glasses are beautiful, they are not very helpful to the enjoyment of the tea as they are very hot and have no holders on the side like a western style tea cup. 

 Lamb and Veggies

 Couscous

 Tortilla Española

We were introduced to the Spanish tortilla at our next couchsurfer's house outside of Sevilla. No, it is nothing like a Mexican tortilla that you make your burritos with. The best way to explain this is a potato omelet, but it's really more like a pan fried potato and egg cake.. or something. But whatever it is, it is delicious and one of Spain's most famous dishes. 

Paella de Carne

Spain's other famous dish is the Paella, which is a pan fried rice with meat. Usually this comes with seafood, but we were lucky enough to find a meat variation because my friend doesn't eat seafood and as for me, it's really not my favorite (not to mention bad memories of a seafood paella back in 2003). 

 Huevas (roe)

Three more tapas, in various forms. Some big like meals, some small like sides. 

Chicken and the most delicious potatoes

 Croquettes- free tapas in Granada

We ate our last meal out in Spain with a couchsurfer and her friend. They took us to a fancy vegetarian restaurant with a waitress in a bad mood but an amazing chef. Honestly, I can't remember what this was, but I forced myself to eat the whole thing because it was so delicious and we couldn't take it with us since we were leaving early the next morning. 

And here, my readers, is my last meal in Spain. Yes a Happy Meal at the airport in Madrid. It was pretty much the most filling and healthy thing I could order with the 5 euros I had left. I was incredibly happy with this Happy Meal because I was able to choose carrots instead of fries (with Laughing Cow cheese to dip!), apple juice instead of soda and and a side of pineapple. :-) Are Happy Meals in America (or other countries) this healthy nowadays too, or is this just a Spanish thing? I know I never had these options growing up.

Flamenco

Flamenco is kind of everywhere in Spain, whether you're looking for it or not. On our first full day out in Madrid, we saw an add for a 15 euro rendition of Carmen and we jumped on it, not knowing if we'd get to see any flamenco on our trip. The production was just OK.. for 15 euro, you can't have very high expectations and the parts of the show when the flamenco musicians played, it was excellent... just the opera part was a bit of a flop. 

But, then while in Granada, we accidentally stumbled upon a flamenco show. Or rather, where a show would be held a few hours later. Because it was just practice, they let folks into the seating area to watch the rehersal. Surprsingly, the flamenco dancer was a Japanese woman. It looked like the show might be some kind of fusion performance, because at one point she pulled out a samaurai sword, but she didn't do much with this during the rehersal. Once it was time to get ready for the show, we were all kicked out. But, we couldn't complain because we got about 30 minutes of free entertainment. 

And according to Wikipedia, there are more flamenco schools in Japan than there are in Spain. Random Wikipedia fact of the day. 

But, the best, and most authentic of all was when our couchsurfing host brought us to this little hole in the wall on some backstreet of Sevilla. You can't see it in this photo, but the place was packed, and is packed every night for the flamenco show. Some tourists find out about this place, but it seemed that there were a lot of locals as well. As we walked in, there were some musicians in a back corner hanging out and playing music together. Then the real show came on. One guitarist, one singer and one dancer, the three essential elements of flamenco. 

I tried my best here to capture not only the dancing, but the music as well. Unfortunately, the dancing got more and more passionate as the night wore on, but unfortunately my camera battery was not up to the task. What you see here is a rather tamed down version of the actual show. I wish I could have caught that moment when the duende took over and things got crazy.

Toledo

I first visited Toledo as a senior in High School and was absolutely breath taken by it's beauty. Despite the fact that Toledo was on the last leg of our trip this time and that we had a bit of a transportation nightmare arriving and getting out which added a lot of stress, I still believe that Toledo is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The beautiful back streets and the river that surrounds it, it's no wonder the whole old city is a UNESCO world heritage site.

As it was a Sunday, and we were going broke paying the exorbitant fees to enter the cathedral in every city we'd been to, we decided to go to mass to take in the cathedral, rather than waiting for opening hours, much as we did in Westminster Abbey in London. After a bit of research, it seemed like a rather brilliant idea because the cathedral hosts a celebration of the Mozarabic Rite of the Catholic Church. I'd never heard of this Rite of the church before and was quite excited to see it here. We showed up, read that the mass time for the Mozarabic mass was at 9:45, which was just about the time we arrived, and thought we were in store for something really spectacular. Unfortunately, the cathedral has many side chapels and no one explained that the Mozarabic mass was not held in the main part of the church but in a specific side chapel devoted just to this rite. We sat through the most boring Catholic Church mass of my life in the main hall where there was no choir, no singing and not even a procession at the beginning and end. The only upside to all this was the fact that the mass was also one of the quickest of my life, seeing that all the good stuff was taken out.  After the mass we wondered around a little before getting out and found the Mozarabic mass finishing up in the side chapel.

One cool thing about the cathedral is that every bishop that is buried here can choose where in the cathedral he would like to be buried, and then his hat is hung over his tomb... basically until it disintegrates from old age.  So, all through the church, you can see hats like this hanging around in odd places.

 Toledo is a great place for shopping. The two most famous items to buy here are their swords and their Damascene, a handicraft which inlays gold or silver onto iron.

There's so much more to Toledo, we didn't even have time to brush the surface, but one more nice thing we found time to do was to walk down to the river. Above is the night scene and below is the day scene. Both beautiful and worth the walk. 

If I were to plan this trip again, I would definitely give more time to Toledo. And plan better because there are no trains or buses that go directly from Cordoba to Toledo. Toledo needs two nights minimum and transportation needs to be well planned in advanced. We went for the high speed direct train from Madrid to Toledo for 10 Euro. You get there in just 1/2 an hour.

Cordoba

I think if I were to have taken this trip again, I would have done it backwards, starting in Cordoba and ending in Granada. Granada and Sevilla had so many incredible things to offer that it started to make other beautiful things seem less impressive. It could also have had something to do with the fact that we were getting a little worn out from our vacation at this point. 

Cordoba's main attraction is the "Mezquita" or the mosque. More specifically, it's a cathedral that was once the grandest mosque in Al-Andaluz. Unfortunately, as a cathedral, it just feels very awkward with the grand Moorish architecture mixed in with Catholic images. This place would have been very impressive to us if we hadn't seen any other Arabic architecture in Spain, but after wonders like the Alhambra and the Alcazar of Sevilla, this was a bit of a disappointment I hate to say. 

Cordoba also had a bit of Jewish history to discover. We found the (very hard to find) synagogue that remained hidden for many years and was discovered in the 19th century.  Remember that once the Catholics took over Spain, the Spanish Jews were forced to either get out, convert or face the consequences. Before that, though, there was a vibrant Jewish community of Sefardic Jews in Spain who even brought back the Hebrew language which had more or less died out by then. The House of Sefarad which is next to the synagogue gives a great history of Jews in Spain.

The famous image of Cordoba is of the Puente Romano (Roman Bridge) which connects the old city with the other side of the river. It's the view that always comes up on a google image search. While of course it's been updated since Roman times, it's still incredible to think that a bridge that old has still stuck around.

So, of course, Cordoba is a must see of Spain. Just don't do it after you've been to Granada and Sevilla. And especially don't do it when you're travel weary.

En el Mercado (In the Market)

As I do much of my shopping in the market near my house in Korea, I wanted to find out what a Spanish market was like. While we were in Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cadiz, I finally got the chance. The owner of the bed and breakfast where we were staying gave us many suggestions of where to go, but my ears really perked up when he told us there was a market nearby. On our last day, we went to check it out. We had already made the mistake of going to the market in Cadiz too late in the day and missing the action, so we made sure to stop by first thing in the morning before it could close up on us. 

Now, my first thought was how sanitary it all seemed.... compared to 중앙시장 near my  house where they need to create little motorized brushes to keep the flies off the meat and fish, here everything was indoors, sterile and (apparently) insect free.

My friend with me, on the other hand, had never seen a seafood market like this and was a little revolted by the fact that everything was out on display like this. 

We accidentally ordered these things the previous evening for dinner (silly us, we confused huevos with huevas. Huevos are eggs. Huevas are also like eggs, but not the kind from a bird, but from fish. The English word for them would be roe). They actually don't taste terrible, but we couldn't figure out what on earth we were eating and that made our meal rather unpleasant.

I really liked the presentation on this one!

Puerto de Santa Maria

The tiny vacation town of Puerto de Santa Maria wasn't something on our radar until we sort of accidentally wound up staying at a bed and breakfast here. Right outside of Cadiz, you can reach the city by ferry for something like 2.50 euros each way. The town is just beautiful. We wound up staying an extra day here because we didn't want to leave.

Of course, being next to the ocean means that seafood is popular here. And fresh. Here you can see it being unloaded off the fishing boat only 5 minutes from where we were staying. 

One of three cities where sherry is produced, you can take tours of the "bodega" or winery where they make sherry. 

And we even stumbled upon a real live castle, like right out of a movie or something in the center of town. Unfortunately it wasn't open when we went, but it was certainly a sight to see nonetheless. 

If you have some extra time in Cadiz, be sure to make your way over here, you may find you never want to leave!