Cured Meat and Cava

Hola a todos, y bienvenidos a mi Blog, via SPAIN!

Jarred and I made it hear alive...close to a week ago. Clearly. my New Year´s resolution of keeping up with my writing forum has already fallen to the wayside. Writing a few things every day would have been much more productive than cramming 3 pages into a blog of a 7 day experience; chalked full of New Year´s decisions, (good and bad), 5 € bottles of Champagne, a cabbie getting into a car accident in Granada, the ultimate search for Spain´s official dish of Pallea, tales of Ryanair and the European teeny-tiny Airbus industry, a hostel where (And I quote from a previous reviewer, and in what I imagine to be a Brittish accent), ´´The owners are directly from Woodstock, and walk around in YOUR bloody bathrobe.´´

What I will do is give you the bullet points and skip the boring details. And since the BF is now using the phone and not s¡itting next to me, I most definitely can regale you with his hammered stories...After all 4 beers.

We first arrived in BARCELONA on the 29th. Got to hostel, checked in, brushed up on my ever so clever Spanish speaking skills, and went for a walk. We ended up wandering around for about 12 minutes before I decided it was time for a cocktail. Sure, it may have only been 8:45 in the morning, but it´s EUROPE for crying out loud. And then we stopped for some cava, local sparkling wine. The wine plus the jet-lag, plus a non-sleeping flight, put us directly into sleep mode. Night was pretty uneventful, other than some more cava, the beginning of our cured meat eating frenzy, and some more wandering.

Day´s 2-4 were mostly filled with amazing sight seeing expeditions, Segrada de la Familia and other Gaudi works. (ALL AMAZING). In addition to the beautiful architecture, we had beautiful afternoons full of wine, beer, sangria, cava, and naps. Around day 3, Jarred made the distinct observation that locally, other than a few dishes specific to the region, cured meats, cheese, and olives were the cuisine of choice. Personally, I could live the rest of my life off of raw salted meat and bowel obstructing cheese, complete with marinated olives, apparently however, I´m easy. Being from Texas, and this truly being the first time he had traveled over seas, Jarred was more than ready for a medium grilled steak and a larger than life baked potato drowned in sour cream, ranch dressing, cheese and bacon bits.

Post afternoon siesta, (where our naps the first few days went from early afternoon to early evening) the 2 of us went for what we thought was going to be a ´´nice´´ dinner. We showed up to a little restaurant, and were told there were NO tables inside. No problem, being that we did not make reservations, and really, for me, dinner was about the cava. So the waitress let us sit outside where we had the wine and brought us the finest Tapas. Spectacularly fresh Ahi tuna, seared rare, and an egg carrpachio dish. Oh yes, we consumed the hell out of some raw egg. (No worms to be reported...yet). This night turned into a night to remember when we walked across the street after our 56€, 2 tapa dinner and got lit off beer and Gin Gimlets. We ended up and a quaint part of Barcelona that the both of us don´t believe really exists (None of the streets we remembered were even on a map) and we found ourselves walking around with a few guys and a very tini Italian girl with too much to drink, and attitude taller than she. She spoke English very well, and at 4 foot 8 inches tried to fight with a massive man who wouldn´t give he a cigarette. We absolutely loved her. At one point she demanded Jarred´s phone number and after he gave it to her, she tried calling. (Boy is she going to love looking at that cell phone bill in a month and realizing at 330 am she made a loooong distance call to New Mexico). We ended up lying our way out of going to an after hours bar by saying we had an early flight...and after getting into a cab and searching for food at 4 am, ate a raw hot dog.


Considering I´ve only tapped into the beginning of the trip at this point, I´ll post more later, allow everyone the time to consume and adjust once again to ´´The Blog.´´

Be on the look-out for New Year´s eve blog, as the stories only become...more colorful.

Salud!