Beach Life

Again, I don´t have time to put pictures here right now, you can see them all at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91387210@N00/sets/72157621908366740/

I am giving you fair warning that this entry is pretty much about food and being lazy. It´s not entirely my fault as I am traveling in a country where they pride themselves on spending their time at one huge and delicious meal talking about, planning and, let´s face it, fantasizing about future meals. If you are feeling ill, hungry, overly full, or over worked you might want to read this at another time.

On Thursday afternoon (over a week ago Thursday that is!) after Arantxa went to meet her cousin for lunch and I had spent the morning at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía we packed up the car (and it was packed!) and headed out of Madrid towards Paloma´s beach house in Tabernes, a small town just South of Valencia.

We took a small detour about half way there to stop for a glass of wine and some olives in a parador built in a the castle Alarcón. It was super cool. As we arrived in Tabernes we stopped at Victor which I´d been hearing about for a week and Arantxa for years, I imagine. It was a simple little restaurant off the side of the road that I wouldn´t have thought to stop at, but it was delicious! We had lots of grilled vegetables and pan con tomate (bread rubbed with tomato and oil) everyone else had some creepy seafood creatures which they loved.

After leaving Victor and before getting to the house we stopped again, this time at Pepe Carbonel´s. This place is even more famous in Arantxa´s family than Victor--and deservedly so! It´s this guy who owns a horchateria which is basically an ice cream shop with lots and lots of other yummy desserts (mostly drinks). And the best part is that they have chocolate soy ice cream. I was crazy full when I got there so I thought I´d have something light, but then Pepe gave me a taste of the soy ice cream and it was so fantastic that I just had to get it right then! I was afraid they might run out and I´d never get to eat any. Arantxa got to have her first horchata of the trip. The horchata here is different from the Mexican kind that I am used to. It´s made out of chufa which my guide book says is tiger nut in English. I don´t know what that is but it´s a tuber so I can drink it. Love it!

After that we headed to the apartment which was adorably cute and totally decked out in 70s style tile that I loved. It was so crazy hot that first night that I didn´t think I would sleep at all, but it turned out to be fine. I don´t think that it was really any hotter than Madrid, but the humidity makes a world of difference. When we got out of the car a Victor, after several days in the dry heat of Madrid, it was almost suffocating how the air was heavy to breath and seemed to stick to you. It cooled down after our second night there which was a major relief.

This is pretty much how life on the beach went for me:
-roll out of bed at 9:00 or 10:00
-hang out/read/do puzzles for while
-eat a yummy breakfast of a wide variety of yummy sweet breakfast foods, including churros, madlenas and last but certainly not least--the toña. All were delicious!
-Around 12:00 head to the beach. Lay in the sun, spend time in the waves and just be lazy until about 2:30
-2:30 head to lunch either for paella at a near by restaurant or at the house.
-Dessert at Pepe´s (this could come in the afternoon or evening--though it´s rumored that on other weekends it´s often both)
-Take a siesta
-hang out/read/do puzzles
-check email
-10:00 eat dinner
-hang out and chat
-1:00 go to bed
Repeat for 4 days!!!

Some things were in a little bit different order on different days, but you get the general idea. It was awesome!

On Saturday, after lunch and with no siesta (life can be hard--I know!) we headed out to check out Valencia. We went to the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias which are these incredible newish buildings by Santiago Calatrava. The only part we went into was the Aquarium which was super cool. I can never get enough of that kind of stuff and we even managed to catch a dolphin show which I haven´t seen since I was a kid. It was fun. The walruses were doing crazy things and the beluga was so ridiculously cute I wanted to die. After that we headed out to walk around and look at the other buildings which are awesome. We had to make a stop at a mall to buy Arantxa bragas (underwear) since she´d left all of hers in a drawer in Madrid and while we were there we picked up candy at a little stand. It was amazing--Yum!

Now let´s really talk about the food! We´ll start with Pepe´s. Pepe is this adorable man runs around meeting, greeting and chatting with all of his customers (and he has a lot!) all day long. So aside from soy ice cream and horchata I also discovered that I love granizados. As far as I can tell a granizado is fruit, sugar, and ice. But, like, soooo good! (Dad, you wouldn´t eat anything else for days) Pepe has them in 9+ flavors. I only got to try a few, but I´m confident in stating that nothing can ever beat the kiwi. It was seriously heaven on earth.

Twice we went out for paella which I got to try because Juan was kind enough to share a vegetable one with me. They´re made for two. It was also super yummy and very hard to stop eating.

And then, in addition to all that great stuff, in the grocery store there in the small town of Tabernes I found two of my all time favorite foods. They are apparently not rare here in Spain, but this was the first time I´d noticed them. I found altramuces (I have no idea what they are in English we used to call them poppers) which are a bean you pop out of its outer skin. I used to eat them with some of my friends when I was a kid, but can´t find them in the U.S. any more. I also found habas fritas which is my all time favorite snack in Perú. I bought and ate a small bag off street vendors there at least once a day during the past two summers. It´s a fried bean. Super delicious.

On Sunday evening we wandered around some booths in town and found huge quantaties of both these things on sale. I restrained myself when it came to buying more altramuces as I already had two huge jars from the store, but I bought over a pound of habas fritas. I don´t know how I´m going to get all this food home!

That´s about it, on Monday after lunch Juan and Paloma took us tot he train station in Valencia and we headed up to visit Emma in Barcelona. It was incredible and there is so much to say about it that it needs its own space so...another day.

---

---