Chinatown in Boston!

You can take the girl out of Asia, but you can't take the Asia out of the girl.... or something like that. This week I've been into Chinatown twice. Once with an ex-coworker from Korea and another time with my Korean-American friend. Neither time, though, did we eat Korean food. It's strange, but I've been out of Korea for a month and I haven't craved Korean food once. I'm not sure if I just Korean fooded myself out over the past year and a half or if it's because somewhere inside, I know that the Korean food I will eat in the States is not only sub-par compared to what I eat in Korea, but it is also 4X the price. I get angry when I spend more than I think I should on anything. And even more so on something that doesn't taste as good as I hope.

So, so far, I've been sticking with Chinese food which is cheap and delicious, even if it's not authentic. (Plus, I've never lived in China, so I don't know what's good and what's bad, I just know what I like)

Steamed buns! But, filled with 밭; red bean. Not my favorite in Korea or America, but edible.

Monday was a stop at Hei La Moon, which I first visted just before coming to Korea back in 2008. This time I actually had my camera on me (when don't I have my camera on me nowadays?) and documented what we ate. This is about as authentic as it gets for dim sum, people, and probably not for the weak at heart (or stomach). We were the only non-Asians in sight in this huge place.

Beef filled... rice cakes? Very yummy. 

 Dumplings filled with shrimp and veggies... yummy! 

The Chinese fried bread I wanted to try so badly in China and never got the chance. Exactly how I imagined... fried bread. 

Tuesday night another friend of mine and I headed back to Chinatown and went to Taiwan Cafe in search of those soup filled dumplings I had in Nanjing a few months ago. 

But though we found them, and they were good, they were not nearly as good as that little shack on that side street in Nanjing. But, how could they have been?

 Crispy noodles, beef and veggies. Best of the evening

 Our table spread. In the middle is a beef and watercress dish that was also delicious!

 After dinner we headed over to our favorite bubble tea shop and got an avocado bubble tea. Mmmmmm

This is, I'm sure, just the beginning of my adventures in Chinatown while I'm home, so stay tuned!

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!

Cádiz

After a week of traveling in Spain, we finally made it to the Mediterranean. The city of  Cádiz has a history like no other. The oldest city on the Iberian peninsula, and possibly in all of western Europe it was founded by the Phoenicians as a port city, then was later taken by the Romans, then the Visigoths, next the Moores and of course the Spanish who control it today. The city itself can not grow any larger because it is built on a tiny peninsula. The landscape today hasn't changed much in the past 400 years or so.

While outside of the city has some beautiful beaches to offer, in the city proper, the beach feels a bit like Haeundae beach in the summer, except for the fact that, while there are many umbrellas, there are just as many people sitting away from the umbrellas basking in the sun instead of hiding from it like the do in Busan. 

Cadiz does its best to keep its history alive for visitors with many museums around the town. One of the city's most famous sights are the Phonetician sarcophagi in the architectural museum. 

But, while the Phoenician  sarcophagi bring the tourists in, the rest of the museum, chuck full of remains from Roman times, Phoenician times and all the rest of this city's 3,000 year history can be found here as well.