As soon as we landed in Spain I felt at home (I have previously lived in Sevilla, Spain for 6 months for study abroad in college). It was fantastic to understand the language and get to use my Spanish again!
We started in Barcelona, picked the car up at the airport and drove it into town to get Rick's things and visit a friend there. As excited as we were to be in a car, we were not mentally prepared for driving, not only in Europe, but a manual car in the crazy, frenetic traffic of downtown Barcelona where the ratio of mopeds dangerously driven by stylish women in stilettos and men in suits to normal cars that obey traffic laws is 27:1. It was frightening and very tense in the car for the first hour. But, we survived and made a brief stop in the city. We picked up some jamon for the road and had sandwiches in a gorgeous old plaza with a church, the steps of which are home to a crazy man wearing only tight red underwear and flailing around the square, totally ignored by the native Barcelonians (?). We drove out of the city and the road trip had begun!
Streets in downtown Barcelona:
A beautiful street, once we were out of the car we could appreciate it!
The cafe in the church plaza.
More of Barcelona
Ahhh Spain! Jamon!
Our first destination was a small town called Roses, on the Costa Brava, which is about 2 hours northeast of Barcelona BY CAR, don't ask me how far it is on horseback! (Reference to a previous post, did you get it?!) The drive was gorgeous and we could have spent both weeks going from town to town along the Costa Brava. They produce sunflowerseed oil there and so there were rolling hills covered in sunflowers. The reason we were going north to this town is a restaurant called Rafa's, owned by a man named Rafa (creative, I know). El Bulli has been voted the best restaurant in the world, and is run by a man named Ferran Adria, who, when asked HIS favorite place to eat, he answered, Rafa's. So, we decided it was worth a visit. El Bulli costs over $600 per person, serves 32 courses, uses molecular gastronomy (a new cooking style) and you are there for at least 5 hours. Rafa's is quite the opposite, except for in uniqueness. Rafa's is a testament to simplicity and highlighting the quality and flavor of incredible ingredients. There is no website, we just found the phone number online a few months ago. We had read from other travelers that the restaurant is not open all the time, and there is not really rhyme or reason to when it is open. So, I called the restaurant in an attempt to make a reservation.
The phone call went a little something like this (translated from Spanish)
-Hello?
-Hi, is this Rafa's?
-Yes, this is Rafa.
-Oh, hi, I am traveling to Roses soon and would like to eat at your restaurant.
-Okay.
-Do you think that you will be open on Friday, July 3rd?
-When?
-Friday, July 3rd.
-It's a Friday? Then yes, we'll probably be open.
-Could I make a reservation?
-Sure, what time?
-What time is best?
-Um, 8:30 sounds like a good time to eat.
-Okay, great, 8:30.
-Okay, bye!
-Oh, wait, excuse me, could I give you a name?
-Sure, what's your name?
-Sandra.
-Okay, bye Sandra.
So, we weren't entirely sure if the restaurant would be open, or if this "reservation" would hold up. Needless to say I didn't receive a confirmation email moments later from opentable.com. But we were hopeful and got to Roses and asked at our hotel about Rafa's. He gave us directions, we changed quickly, and on our way out the man at the hotel said we were in for a really special dinner.
When we arrived, we chose one of 4 tables outside, there were 4 more inside, and the waitress, a daughter of Rafa's came and greeted us. There was no menu, only the fresh seafood that had been brought in that day. She told us what was available, and we basically said one of everything, to share. It ended up being about 6 appetizers and 2 main dishes. We could see Rafa through the window, working hard and cooking everything that went out to the tables. He had a huge flat top grill, a bottle of salt water, and a bottle of olive oil. And all the seafood behind him. That was it. They didn't serve any salads, vegetables, starches. Just the seafood. His wife was serving, and his daughter (our server). When they needed to do dishes, they carried them out the front door and down the street, a few doors down, to where they used the dishwasher. Then came the food!
Downtown Roses, setting up for a festival, walking to dinner
Rick is REALLY ready for this meal
Our first dish, spiky snails. They were delicious and served cold with a lemon/butter/pepper sauce. We were given special forks to reach in and pull out the meat.
Next were clams, with the exact right amount of grit and the flavor of the ocean.
Mussels
Our view down the street as we were eating dinner
These razor clams were incredible, with such an interesting texture.
Sea cucumbers (my personal favorite)
Deliciously charred and crispy calamari
Whole John Dory
More main course whole fish
After the meal, which was incredible, we went in and talked to Rafa for a bit. We looked at his case of seafood and told him we loved the meal. We talked about El Bulli and Ferran Adrian, also told him we were from DC so we talked to him about Jose Andres, who is the owner of a lot of famous restaurants in DC, including Oyamel and the 5 seat Minibar. We asked him for a recommendation for a tapas place for lunch the next day, in town, and he suggested La Sirena, gave us directions, and we thanked him again and left. As we were walking back to our hostel, we walked through the center of town. It was beautifully lit with white Christmas lights and decorations everywhere, there was a band playing near the water, and lots of people dancing in the square. There was a long line of people waiting for something, so naturally, we got in line. As we moved slowly through the line for about 10 minutes, I asked the people in front of us what we were waiting for. They said, after expressing their shock that we didn't know, that of course it was the holiday for the patron saint of fishermen! So this town, Roses, had a huge celebration, passed out free cava (sparkling wine) and special "patron saint of fishermen cake". So we waited in line for our free cava and cake, went and listened to the band, I learned some Spanish line dances from some wonderful older members of the town, and we celebrated fishermen! It was incredible to stumble upon this small town on such a great night and we stayed out late listening to the music, walking down by the river, and talking about each bite of the dinner we just ate.
BONUS: Video at the end of the blog post of the people in town dancing and the live music!
The next day we got up and headed through town to find the recommended tapas bar, La Sirena. We walked down by the water and then through a small park that had food stands set up. We tasted some delicious, local meats and cheeses, pastries, and anchovies. We bought some cheese to go with the meat that we had bought in Barcelona, and a foccacia type pastry for a snack on the road.
The town during the day:
Great view of Roses with mountains in the background:
The market:
After the market we found La Sirena and sat down for tapas. They brought over a menu and this cart, from which you could pick which seafood you wanted, and how much. We were still full from the night before, and had one of the best meals of our lives coming up later that day, so we didn't eat much. But this cart was fantastic and everything looked wondeful!
Seafood cart:
One thing we did try were these very very little clams, which were delicous and incredibly delicate, again, with just the right amount of grit. (Rick, my pile of shells was bigger than yours, I don't care how well you stacked them! )
After lunch, we got on the road and headed to Madrid. It was a long day of driving and we wanted to get there in time to research and find this restaurant Rick had looked at online. Well, that was not going to happen. We took our time leaving Roses and drove across the country. It was a beautiful, but long drive, and I did most of the driving, even though my manual driving skills are severely limited. Once I got the car out of the rest stop and onto the highway it was fine, and I only stalled out once, when trying to park and going in reverse. I was SO nervous though. Anyway, about an hour outside of Madrid, and 8:00pm, we switched so that Rick could drive into the city, and thank goodness we did that! I had directions to the hostel, which proved completely meaningless. We lost track of street signs and there was a lot of traffic so we decided to ask a cab driver. It was the 4th of July, but we were sure that couldn't be the reason for the traffic! We were dying to get out of the car and celebrate our independence, in Madrid!
So I get a cab driver to talk to me and I ask him how we can find this certain part of town. He says, "No es posible, todo esta cortado, hoy es el dia de orgullo de gay". Translated, "Not possible, everything is closed, today is gay pride day". We called the hostel and got the same response, that the whole city was practically shut down and it was the worst possible night to try and drive around the city because it was the "Dia de orgullo de gay". And, our hostel was located right in the center of all of it. We spent a good... hour and a half driving around the TINY streets of very downtown Madrid, which were packed with people in costumes, half naked, drunk, celebrating, trying to find somewhere to just leave our car and walk, it had gotten so crazy. But it took forever, we passed famous landmarks 2-3 times, we tried not to fight with eachother and finally parked the car 5 levels down in a parking garage, grabbed our things and hit the streets. We immediately stopped at Cien Montaditos (!!!!!) for some sandwiches and a beer, and then walked to the hostel. We knew it was in the middle of everything, but it was ON THE PARADE ROUTE. We could barely even walk there as we had to cross the parade, there were people, clothes, bottles, cans, trash, decorations, everywhere, loud music playing, singing, etc. It was so wild. We checked in and got right back out there, this time in great spirits and celebrated with everyone! We found some Americans to wish a happy Fourth of July, walked to some of the main sites, and then spent the rest of the night right outside our hostel, in the main party spot, squished in with thousands of people celebrating gay pride, dancing to live music, drinking street beers, singing, and partying! It was a far cry from the day of the patron saint of fishermen the night before, but both were fantastic and we were so lucky to run into back to back holidays!
We woke up and went for coffee and walked through the streets the morning after the day of gay pride. It was very dirty and so different from the night before. We were disenchanted and left.
We started off towards Caceres, where we had a 2:30 reservation for lunch at Atrio, a two-Michelin starred restaurant. The rating system for restaurants in Europe is the Michelin star system, and 3 is the most you can have. It is incredibly competitive and neither Rick nor I had ever eaten somewhere with any Michelin stars, so this was a really big deal. I had found the restaurant online and made a reservation. It was a Sunday and they only serve "lunch" so we made our reservation. We got to town, changed very quickly, and hustlted to make our reservation. We walked through a typical small Spanish town, through a cement courtyard that was all grey and ugly and cold, and into a green door into Atrio. It was beautiful. All red walls, rich, deep colors, very very warm, chandeliers, big comfortable chairs, candles everywhere, old old paintings. It was amazing.
The drive to Caceres
More of the drive:
Oh, yea, we made a bocadillo (sandwich) out of the Barcelona jamon, the Roses cheese, and a gas station stale baguette, as a snack before Atrio. It was incredible. Except for the stale bread. And I made it in the car and got crumbs everywhere. And cheese grease, and jamon grease, it was an experience, but it was worth it! Look at that bocadillo!
So, we were seated at our table in Atrio and presented with a gorgeous menu. The choices were, small appetite menu, big appetite menu, of menu of "degustacion", sampling, tasting, which was the biggest and most complete representation of the chef's cuisine. Obviously we went for the degustacion, and then were handed a wine BOOK. Seriously, this wine list has won the award for best wine list in Spain numerous times, they print it once every two years, and it is easily 200 pages long. The index alone was 4 pages long. It has incredible pictures throughout and it is hardbacked and massive. We had no idea where to begin and the sommelier came over to help. He suggested we start with an appertif (cava), which of course we did, and then suggested a bottle of white for the first courses. The cava and the white wine were so delicious. We had a team of 4 people serving us, the captain, who talked to us about food and took all of our orders, the sommelier who dealt with everything wine and alchohol related, and 2 other servers who delivered and presented all of the food.
First: we had these fresh baked olive oil "crackers" with olives in them, which were served right after the cava.
Next, we had the white wine and then this was served. It was first put in front of us without any liquid, just the line in the middle, which was an almond terrine with sunflower seeds, mushrooms, and carrots. Then they came back with silver pitchers and poured the mushroom soup into just the one side of the bowl. Everything was amazing, incredible, delicious, etc. so I am not going to bore you by saying it after I describe every dish.
Next was a foie gras cappuccino. The bottom half of this glass was filled with cold foie and then there was a very thin, crunchy layer of caramelized sugar, topped with cooked mushrooms and a foie gras foam on top.
Here is a picture of the room we were sitting in, the restaurant was quite small and probably didn't seat more than 40 people.
Next we had razor clams, the long thin clams that we also had at Rafas. These came with a red wine, beef sauce and some other things... I can't remember.
Next was a langostine with cauliflower and truffle puree, a mushroom foam, and grated macadamia nuts.
Next was a perfectly seared scallop with a poached tomato, basil oil, and an almond and cauliflower puree.
Next was a red mullet fillet on top of something delicious, in a saffron soup.
The chandeliers.
Finally, a piece of pork, from the famous and expensive pigs whose legs are cured to make the jamon iberico. They only eat acorns and have incredibly dark, nutty meat. So, a piece of that meat, with seared foie gras on top and basil puree to the left.
Before the red mullet we ordered a bottle of red wine, and because the sommelier had done such an incredible job with the bottle of white wine (which cost only about $40 and was so good) we told him just to pick out a great bottle of red wine for us. We assumed he knew our price range and would do a good job. He brought this bottle of red wine which was from 1997 and was the best red wine I have ever had in my life. It was so perfect, and the bottle was beautiful, and relatively old, I had myself convinced that when the check came the bottle would be at least $150. So I savored every single sip and took about 5 pictures of the bottle, so I would always remember the best and most expensive bottle of wine I'd ever have.
Next was the cheese course. There is a special cheese in this region (Extremadura) called Torta del Casar. It is very soft, comes in a wheel but when the wheel is cut open it is pretty liquidy inside. It is extremely strong and made from sheep's milk. So our cheese course was a quenelle of the cheese, bottom right, a stripe of very soft membrillo (quince paste) and then at the top left, ice cream made from the torta del casar cheese. It was really interesting, and the ice cream actually had a stronger flavor than the cheese, but with the membrillo it was delicious!
Finally! Dessert! This was a custard on top of chocolate crumbs and a sweet foam. It was so delicious (I know I said I wouldn't say that, but this deserves it, it was so incredible!)
Oh, and we didn't just get the main dessert, we got a table full of desserts, little truffles, big wafer-type cookies, a tiny tiramisu each, and a plate of little cookies and fruit desserts.
Then, because we had been talking to the sommelier so much about wine and food, and what we were both doing in Spain and Europe, we got to know him a little bit and he was telling us all about their wine list. We saw on their wine list a bottle that cost 150,000 euros. Which is about $210,000. The bottle is from 1805. We were shocked. He came back moments later with a leather back that looked like it should have bowling shoes in it. Instead, it had these two bottles:
On the left is the original bottle from 1805. There was an accident in the 1990's and the bottle broke at the neck. They were able to save most of the wine and brought it to the winemaker. He verified the wine was still good, rebottled it, and signed his verification. But, they lost some of the wine, so that price is for about 75% of a bottle of wine. And now both bottles are saran wrapped and kept in the bowling shoe bag. And the new bottle, because it is regular sized, is filled with little crystals in the bottom so the wine goes to the top and fills the bottle without extra air, because the crystals won't affect the wine at all. Anyway, I hope no customer ever buys this, but it was really fascinating to see it, hold the bottles, and hear the story.
And finally coffee (not decaf!)
After the meal, which lasted about 4 hours, and it was then about 6:30pm, we took a siesta. Our timing was off, but we slept until about 9:30 and then got up and went around to see the town. It is a beautiful town with a large old, historic part of town.
This is the main square filled with people, white buildings, and outdoor cafes.
The gates to the old part of town. And me!
Some views of the old town
A church
The square in the middle of the old part, where they had artisans doing old arts and crafts, and actors pretending to be medieval. One man dressed up as a priest came up to me and yelled at me for wearing flip flops. There were torches lit throughout the old part and it was beautiful.
A great view towards the next village
A house
The next day we got up, got cafe con leches and tostadas, bought a lot of jamon to go (Extremadura is known for having the best jamon) and hit the road again, heading to Merida. The drive was short so we were going to stop a lot and look at farms, animals, etc.
We saw HUGE cows. In America, according to Rick, we eat very young cows, who havent had many years to develop and are usually around 3 when we eat them. Here, they let cows live a lot longer before the eat them, they get much bigger, and the taste of the meat is quite different and more complex. They are also more free, have more space, treated better, and arent scared to death in slaughterhouses. So the meat is better. And the cows are enormous!
Here are some big cows, although it's hard to tell. Rick wanted to touch one and get some perspective, but I can't drive manual cars well and needed him for the rest of the trip, so I ruined his fun and didn't let him.
Big cows:
We were getting hungry for lunch and saw a small town with what looked like a little cafe. It was a neighborhood pool and we asked if they served food. It was about 3:30, which is not an eating time, it is a siesta time. So they looked around, confused because we were breaking the routine, and finally, an older woman said that, okay, she could fix us something, but gave us a look like, you are SO not from here.
We got gazpacho, an order of croquettes large enough to serve two families, and a salad. It was perfect, though we had to walk through their storage room to get to the table. I was happy to say this was not a place for tourists, I don't think anyone but people from that town have ever eaten there. Rick and I joked that for years they will have town lore about the day the "man with hair the color of fire" came to eat at the neighborhood pool.
We went a bit out of our way to another town to find this old Roman bridge, which was pretty disappointing and had a very new facade. But, the town we went to to find it was fascinating. It was the site of a lot of battles between Spanish and the Muslims, so there were walls built all over the hills, from different times as they were refortified for other battles. We walked up to the top of the village and saw very old churches, although the town was in complete poverty. Everything was falling apart. It was a really interesting town.
The bridge:
One of the churches in town, and the buildings next to it:
The other church/monastery
Some of the walls and fortresses
A dam
It's hard to capture, but you can see a lot of the walls in this picture going up the mountain, and there was a large monastery at the top.
After we left that town we drove to Merida, and this region of Spain produces a lot of wonderful wines, so the drive was through olive tree orchards and vineyards.
Merida was a very nice town on the water, with ancient Roman amphitheatres and ruins. We walked around the city a lot and had some tapas. The next day we woke up, had cafe con leche and tostadas, walked around a bit more, and I took this picture of a pretty church downtown.
Finally, we left Merida and got on the road to go to: SEVILLA!!!! I was so excited, I felt like I was going home! One picture from the drive to Sevilla, and then the next post will be the rest of the trip: the time in Sevilla, the trip to Morocco, and the drive up the east coast back up to Barcelona!
VIDEO!!! I learned this line dance from this group
