Spain. A tasty country...

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For me, Spain has been all about the food. Tapas, churros and all the rest, I can't get enough of it! I'll definitely need to go on a diet when I get back to London...if you're hungry right now, it might be worth grabbing a snack to eat while you read this one! 😊

Barcelona
Even for a non big city person, Barcelona is a very cool place. I was nervous about going there because leading up to it all I heard about was people getting pick pocketed and having their bags stolen. By the time I arrive in Barcelona I was so freaked out that when a fellow female traveller and I headed out on our first night in town to find the supermarket to buy food for dinner, by the time we got halfway down the reasonably dark and empty street I was so convinced that every person that walked past us was going to rob us that I encouraged an abandonment of our plan. We headed back to the hostel to find an alternative. It all got better from there though, we ran into another guy we knew and in the relative comfort of a group we went for a wander around the streets of old town and ended up finding a cool little tapas bar off a street off La Rambla (the main street in town). It was my first taste of several things that have since become staple items in my spanish diet, patats bravas - roast potatoes with spicy tomato sauce and mayonnaise, San Gria, and many different types of meat. It was a very tasty spread and the plates were polished by the end!

Unfortunately I got sick in Barcelona, just a nasty cold, but for the next few days I took it easy, I had a day in bed and then spent a couple of days on the tourist bus so I didn't walk around too much, but also didn't miss out on the amazing Gaudi architecture and the rest that Barcelona had to offer. I loved Park Gruell and could have spent a lot longer there wandering around looking at the tiled mosaics and the curious stone structures.

Oranges, Chocolate, Churros, Horchetta, Tortilla....the list goes on in Valencia
Turns out, orange juice doesn't get any better than that served in Valencia. And while I'd love to say that Valencia wasn't all about the food, unfortunately for my wasteline it was. I discovered churros in Valencia, at a little chocolaterie called Valor in one of the main squares (Plaza de la Reina for those who may know it!) Valor was established in 1881 so they've had plenty of time to get their drinking chocolate right, and right it was, a thick, bitter chocolate perfect for dipping in freshly fried, cruncy churros covered in sugar. Mouthwatering goodness! After tasting it on my second day I felt it was my duty to introduce fellow travellers to it, also giving me the perfect excuse to go there...again, and again. Another interesting beverage I tried in Valencia was Horchetta. Made with tiger nuts (also called almonds of the earth), sugar, water and possibly some milk, it tastes somewhat like a nutty, lighter version of yakult, but it's like drinking pure energy, it's effect was a bigger kick tha caffeine, so I guess it must have had a fair bit of sugar in it!

The highlight (yes it gets better) of Valencia for me was the big fresh produce market. By my second last night in Valencia I was able to gather a group together to cook for, I made a pasta of chorizo, beans, tomato, olives, onoin and garlic. Shopping for ingredients was great fun, as none of the shopkeepers spoke much English so it was a 'see it, like it, buy it using various forms of sign language' type affair. My favourite was buying the olives. I wanted pitted olives but couldn't tell if they were or not just from looking. I tried to ask the shopkeeper for pitted olives when he gave me an olive to taste that had a pip in it. I pointed to the pip and asked 'no pip'? He offered me a rubbish bin for the pip then gave me another olive with a pip in it. I tried again, third time lucky, and got a little bag of pitted green olives. He gave me the bag and said 'this is a present for you' and wouldn't let me pay. A lovely guy, and another happy travel memory. Everyone seemed to like the dinner which became a fun team effort in the kitchen. Add to the food a lovely day at the beach under the shade of a 'parasol' and some lovely walks through the old town and local parks, and you've got my Valencian experience.

More tapas, an old capital and a new one
They say you can do Madrid in a day. They were right. But I had two days there so on the second day I went to a place that was recommended as a good day trip, the former capital of Spain (until about the 1500s I think?), Toledo. It appealed to me as, like many places I've visited and liked, it had a wall around it. Unlike all of the other cities I've visited however, I didn't really do the touristy sightseeing thing as together with Emily, another traveller I've met along the way, we led each other astray. Em and I caught the bus at the reasonably early Spanish time of 10.30am. We walked into Toldeo and took photos while meandering through cobblestone streets heading in the approximate direction of the cathedral. We got there, and took some photos, but opted not to pay the seven euros to get in. I'm sure it was lovely, but after going to St Marks in Venice, St Peters and the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, I feel I have seen the best there is in churches and have elected not to go into any more (I'd rather eat more tapas). From the cathedral we got distracted by a jewelry store. A cheap(ish), nice jewelry store with funky jewelry. I'm sure you can understand the attraction! I haven't shopped much this trip, but I walked out with new earrings, a ring and a pendant. From there we found the tourist info. There were various tours and museums on offer, so we grabbed some brochures and asked where a good local tapas bars was. The nice tourist information lady, although her English wasn't perfect, understood us well. We asked for good tapas, she replied 'free tapas?' and as she wrote an x on the map where it was she said 'this place good, cheap, and with big plates of tapas.' Now that's my kind of tourist information! It was a bit tricky to find, we nearly gave up, but one more 'blocky' and we'd found it, 'Enebro' was perched on a terrace overlooking a plaza. The tourist info lady was right about it too, for 1.80 euro we got a beer and a big plate of tapas, which varied throughout the afternoon, but we had meatballs, patatas bravas and a few other beady type nibblies. Whoever invented free tapas was a genius. With the beer and food all thought of further tourist activity faded into the background as we enjoyed the surroundings and chatted. By the time we were done eating and drinking we had time for a small wander through more of the town, then it was back to the bus station to head back to Madrid. Not quite the way I had intended to see Toledo, but definitely more fun!

The meal of a lifetime - Bilbao
I've found gastronomic heaven, and it's at the restaurant contained in the titanium coated curvy walls of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As with all good travel activites, the way I found myself eating there was due to a chance encounter with another traveller, Tom from Perth, who I'd met briefly in Madrid but who was staying at the same hostel as me in San Sebastian. The night I arrived in San Seb a group of us had gone out for drinks and he'd told us of his plans to got to the restaurant the next day, as he'd found out that it was owned by a group that ran two Michelin star restaurants in San Sebastian (which incidentally has the highest number of Michelin stars per square kilometre in the world). So the food was of an almost Michelin star quality, but not at the same price, as it didn't have stars itself. He was planning on going on his own, which is no way to enjoy a meal like that! So he was happy to have a dining buddy when I asked if I could join him. The next morning when we were on the bus to Bilbao I was having second thoughts - there was a fair price tag attached to the lunch which most definately did not fit in my $100 a day budget! But by the time we got to the restaurant my stomach was growling, and I can't argue with my increasingly sizable stomach, so I had no choice but to go and eat. And oh my goodness did we eat! The 'creations' degustation menu was a seven course meal on paper, but ended up being nine in total once the palate refreshers etc. were added in. We didn't drink wine, but ordered water which arrived in a designer Evian bottle. It perfectly compemented each of the dishes, which were: A selection of tempura veggies, a melon and cucumber salad with the most splendid foam which was a subtle explosion of flavour that only lasted a second but was oh so good, rock mussels in a citrus sauce - the best mussels I've ever tasted, sea cod with caper berries and a garlic and spring onion infusion - the best fish I've ever tasted, iberian pork with marinated potatoes and a herbal jus - the best pork I've ever tasted (are you getting the gist?), leaves of peach with a vanilla and citrus crumble, coffee sponge with burnt beer ice cream (truly! it tastes like caramelised beer with a bitter kick at the end) and to finish it off, a chocolatty yoghurty custardy type thing - actually had a bit of difficulty working out that last one!

The best part of this degustation was that I wasn't too full at the end, nor too empty, in fact, I was perfectly satiated to the point where I can comfortably say it was the best restaurant meal I've ever eaten. It wasn't even the most expensive, at 87 euros it was practically a bargain! I spent the rest of the afternoon walking dreamily around the Guggenheim museum - I'm a fan of modern art usually, and this museum had a great collection. It was, very simply, a perfect day.

Which takes me to now. I'm here in San Sebastian, which I will have plenty to write about in my next entry!

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