Hi All!
Boy are we tipsy and stuffed...well not really but we did do our fair
share of eating and drinking while in Spain! Excellent food and wine are
really what motivated our visit to Spain. Neither of us were really up
on our Spanish history so we were really just following our stomachs and
some beautiful scenery in this part of the world. Actually, that's
been the winning motivation for most of this trip. That and an
incredible opportunity to spend every day beside each other in another
incredible location! The wine, cheese, tapas, sangria, and vermouth
were just out of this world and widely available EVERYWHERE. We love
the old tradition of offering a free small tapa plate with every drink
order and fortunately this still lives on in some areas. Come on NYC
and take a lesson from Granada! Needless to say we had a wonderful time. We
didn't do anything out of the ordinary really but just enjoyed the vibe
of the three cities we visited and the region's beautiful weather. It was exactly what we
needed to get us right back into the groove of traveling for a bit
longer.
Madrid
We arrived early in the morning after an overnight flight from Philadelphia so we were quite tired. We grabbed a "quick" nap (meant to be 1 hr turned into 4 hrs, haha!) and went out exploring. In Madrid, we visited the yearly rose exhibition in the Parque del Oeste with roses from all over the world in every color you could imagine. It was beautiful and smelled great all through the park! We also enjoyed time in both the Botannical Gardens and the Retiro Park which was very similar to Central Park with a Spanish flair.
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| Rose exhibition |
Since recognizing in Athens that we aren't so much museum people we decided to take advantage of the free museum hours at the Prado museum and boy are we glad we did. Not to sound cheap but you don't feel nearly as guilty breezing through a museum when you didn't spend money to get in! While we were quite impressed with the Prado and all of its art, we may have been more impressed with the Museo del Jamon ("ham museum" but really a small chain of Spanish food shops). Check out all the different kinds of ham!
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| Museo del Jamon's racks of hams |
One of our best memories from Madrid is seeing a Flamenco show in a tiny theater in the back of a restaurant. We enjoyed the traditional band that played along with the man and woman dancing but our eyes didn't leave the dancers feet! Finally, the food....our favorite place to eat was called Mercado de San Miguel and it was so great we ate there 3 times! The market is composed of dozens of stalls run by different vendors selling different kinds of food from fresh and cured fish, cheese, paella, pastries, ice cream, tortilla (spanish omelet), sausages, olives, and various wines and cocktails. Each vendor has a small standing room eating area and the market has a general seating area in the middle. We tried almost everything over our three visits but our favorites were fresh mozzarella on toast with tomato jam and balsamic reduction, goat cheese with grilled onions, and garlic marinated olives. Vermouth on tap is a new favorite for Wes and Christine loved the Sangria! We were sad to leave, mostly for the food, but luckily we had no idea what the next stop had in store for us. We caught a six hour bus down south to the Andalusian town of Granada. The trip was an experience in itself through endless olive groves, vineyards, and across beautiful mountains.
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| Madrid isn't the best place to see Flamenco apparently but we loved it! |
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| Mercado de San Miguel, our food home for three great nights! |
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| The chaos inside. You have to be a bit pushy to get a spot at the vendor's bars. |
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| Two weeks later we can't look at this picture without our mouths watering. |
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| Definitely the most modern paintings we've seen in a church on our trip. We loved the colors! |
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| One of the numerous open squares throughout Madrid. |
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| Just the post office. What, your local post doesn't look like this? |
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| Endless olive groves on the way to Grenada. |
Granada
We loved the smaller city feel of Granada with the beautiful cobblestone streets, a great boutique hotel, and amazing food. We visited the "must sees" of the Alhambra and Generalife which we were both very impressed with even after all that we've seen on this trip. We walked the Albaycin which is the original Moorish town that Granada started from centuries ago and enjoyed the views over the city. We enjoyed having coffee and churros with melted chocolate for breakfast, taking a long walk by the river through the center of town, visiting centuries old churches, and just absorbing the relaxed Spanish lifestyle.
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| The NH Victoria, our home for a few days. |
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| View over Granada from the Albaycin hilltop. |
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| So many windows and balconies look like this in the area. Beautiful! |
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| Generalife gardens just outside of the Alhambra. |
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| Arches inside Generalife walls. |
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| Lots of Islamic architecture similar to sights in Turkey. |
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| We've seen more pretty tile work on this trip that we know what to do with! |
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| River Darro through the center of town. |
For our first dinner in town we found Bodegas Castaneda, which would become our favorite restaurant in all of Spain. We enjoyed it so much that we returned two more times! See a pattern here? Some favorites were smoked salmon with avocado and caviar, bacalao (salt cured cod), grilled pork loin topped with roquefort cheese, steamed mussels, shrimp, tortilla, and marinated mushrooms. Their vermouth and sangria were stellar as well. As we previously mentioned, they give free tapas for every drink ordered so sometimes we would only order one or two plates of food and end up having eaten seven or eight plates. We did find the time to visit several other traditional tapas restaurants and they all had something that we will definitely remember. If you're ever headed toward Granada, we can certainly tell you where to eat that's for sure!
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| Christine bellying up to the bar at Bodegas Casteneda. We were waiting at the door when they opened to avoid crowds! |
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| Wonderful smoked salmon on its own, but topped with avocado and caviar, on toast. |
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| Camembert cheese wedges fried in breadcrumbs on blackberry jam with raspberry syrup. Not a free one but sooo worth it! |
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| This is a torta from Los Italianos which is basically an ice cream cake slice stuffed into a cone. Apparently the First Lady loves this place but as pretty as it was, we were a little disappointed. |
Just a quick note on all the talk of vermouth... Whereas most of the USA keeps vermouth for a splash in a Martini, Manhattan, or gathering dust on a shelf for other occasional cocktails, in Spain it is common for many tapas bars and restaurants to keep their own vermouth in a barrel with a tap (Vermut del Grifo). It is frequently served with a quick spritz of seltzer, maybe a slice of orange, and a little simple syrup if preferred, and it is wonderful.
Barcelona
