Lindsey's Trip to Spain

I mentioned in a previous post that I was in Spain for four days for work. We had two days of meetings there to talk about house dust mites, and they were totally productive and engaging, but the rest of the time, I got to enjoy my first trip to Spain!

Madrid city center is big, bright, and full of life. It's a little loud and a little crowded, but it was nice to experience a new big city. I think it's unlike any other I've seen!

Tapas tour

We went on a tapas tour that included visits to some of the oldest family-owned restaurants in Madrid. When a restaurant has been owned by the same family in the same location for 100 years, they get a nice plaque engraved and secured into the street in front of the building. It's kind of cool.

If you don't know what tapas are, and at this point, you're too afraid to ask, I gotchu.

Tapas are small plates of food, kind of like an appetizer or a snack, that are typically served in Spain to accompany some kind of alcoholic beverage. You can order many plates to share and just kind of sample a bunch of different (usually delicious) plates.

It was pouring rain during our tour, but we were happy to go anyway. We had a local guide, and she took us to four locations.

First we went to [insert name here] <-- I totally forgot to document it. :(

Here, we learned that most of the restaurants make their own vermouth. We also learned that Spain is famous for vermouth that you drink on its own rather than using it as a mixer.

This vermouth was herb-y and different and really good.

We had some toasted bread with smoked salmon and another one with manchego cheese and quince. It was delicious.

Second, we went to Restaurante Taberna Parrilla.

Here, we sampled another vermouth, and as promised, it was distinctly different than the first. The feel of the restaurant was very different as well. It was much older, with painted tile-work and a very traditional menu. I was a little shocked when the first tapas served were tripe (that's cow stomach, if you were unaware) with chickpeas, but I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I've eaten a lot of things I had a mental block about that turned out to be delicious, and took a (small) serving.

(Also, I was seated next to Manuel, our esteemed colleague from Spain, and I didn't want to balk at something he seemed excited about.)

It was not good. I didn't care for the texture, and I couldn't swallow it fast enough. But I tried it, and I'm proud of myself.

Next, we were served a kind of lemon-battered shark, which was actually pretty good. It was served with ham and pineapple, and this was my favorite tapas dish at the second restaurant.

Blood sausage came next, and again, I had to get over the ick-factor of the name and just eat it. The flavor wasn't terrible, but it had some kind of rice grain in it as well, and the overall texture was kind of unpleasant.

Next on the tour was La Casa del Abuelo. 

This place was goooood. I'm a sucker for garlic shrimp and bread.

Oh, and more vermouth.

Our fourth and final stop was Los Galayos.

They had the fanciest vermouth glass, but it was only the second best vermouth. The first one was definitely my favorite.

Here, we had a slice of some egg-and-cheese thing that's very popular in Spain, followed by croquettes filled with bacon and cheese. I started to feel safe. Comforting ingredients, things filled with melty cheese...

Little did I know that the fried baby squid with their in-tact eyes were coming. Yes. I ate them. "When in Rome," right? (Or in this case, Madrid.) The eyeballs were mildly gritty in my teeth and I hated the feel. I don't even remember if they tasted good.

Thank God we finished with the most amazing cheesecake I've ever eaten in my life. It was gooier than a standard cheesecake. I asked if it was the Basque cheesecake I've heard about, and our guide said yes, but when I look up pictures of Basque cheesecake, it has a dark brown kind of burnt layer on top, so I'm not sure if it really was or if she just misunderstood my question.

It was hard to take pictures walking around Madrid because there were just crowds of people everywhere, and they kind of moved you around like a riptide. It was really difficult to stay together with even one other person walking around! There were Christmas markets and lighted decorations all over the Plaza Mayor area, and I tried to capture a little of it. I did poorly.

You're welcome. Haha.

Insectos

On Friday night, we decided to go see an insect-themed Christmas light show at the Botanical Gardens. We stopped to get a drink and some food at a strange little place, and while some people in our party were impressed with the drinks, I was impressed with the amazing burrata "salad" that Alanna ordered. It was the biggest ball of burrata I've ever seen, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sitting atop a bed of fresh diced red onions and tomatoes. Lucky for me, she shared and it was the best thing I ate in Spain.

After some intense confusion over where we could actually find the light show, we took a taxi part of the way and jogged the rest of it. We made our ticket time with a few minutes to spare! The show was a little light on the "Christmas" and heavy on the "Insectos," but it was really fun.

On Saturday, we went to Segovia to do a citizen-guided tour of the city, and I enjoyed Segovia a lot. It was about an hour's drive from Madrid and we went through the mountains. It was a little foggy and chilly, but it was nice to see mountains and trees for a little bit on the drive. It was shocking to see billboards again since we never see those in Denmark - haha!

Segovia is an old town with a long history. When it was occupied by the Romans, they built a huge aqueduct out of granite blocks to bring water from the mountains into the walls of the city. The aqueduct still fills with water, but obviously there's indoor plumbing and all that now, but it's impressive to see that it still stands. As our tour guide, Mariano, said, "The aqueduct still works! It used to bring water to the people, and now it brings tourists."

The arches were built by placing granite blocks around a wooden frame until the capstone was placed in each arch, and then the wood frames were removed.

Underside of one of the arches.

Segovia is also the home of the "Cinderella Castle." It's actually Alcazar de Segovia, but the castle, which was originally built hundreds of years ago, but it served as inspiration for the Cinderella Castle, and you can definitely see the resemblance. 

Our tour guide took us all through the castle and talked about the history of the monarchy in Castile and León, including the wild story about how Queen Isabella and Ferdinand came to power. (This is where I saw the tapestry of Queen Isabella's coronation where all the people were missing the eyes - I talked about it in my holiday blog.) We saw the moat, the gardens, the well, and the (very cold) chapel.

We learned that the armor worn by the knights was so heavy, they had to start getting them used to it when they were just children, so there were several suits of armor meant for very small children on display as well (not pictured here, of course).

The thrones.

As expected, the details in the ceiling, fixtures, walls, windows, and exterior were very intricate.

And there's a great view from the top!

We walked through the streets as Mariano shared the turbulent history of the town and the region itself. A huge wall surrounds part of the city, and like many walls, the rich people lived inside the walls and the working class lived outside the walls. There were originally three gates in the wall, but only one remains.

The last gate in the city wall, Puerto de San Andrés.

For a long time, there was a large Jewish presence within the walls of the city, as the Jewish population was more educated and, thus, more useful to the crown. They were given an entire space within the walls to live, work, teach, and thrive. When Catholicism took over, Isabella gave the Jewish people an ultimatum: they could renounce their faith and become Catholic or they could be exiled. It was a really terrible ordeal, and of course, most chose to be exiled rather than renounce their faith. They couldn't even take their things with them. You can see reminders of their presence all over the city in painted tiles hanging on walls and Hebrew plaques set into the stones of the streets.

We saw the massive gothic cathedral, which was build over the course of many decades on land that the Jewish population previously occupied.

The exterior of the homes in this part of Segovia are all stamped with patterns. You can choose to have your home stamped with an existing pattern that you like or you can make up your own, as long as the pattern doesn't resemble a person or an animal or a plant or anything alive. The picture below, if you look closely, has the stamping on the lighter parts.

The buildings were interesting to look at. Mariano told us that we could tell the difference between a normal home and a palace by seeing if there was a crest over the door or not (palaces have crests, normal homes don't), so it was fun looking for those.

See the crest? Palace.

After our tour, we stopped at a restaurant for some food. There are two famous dishes I was advised to try: judiones de la granja, which are these gigantic white beans that are normally pretty flavorless, but when slow cooked in the juices of meats, absorb the flavor and become incredibly delicious, and cochinillo asado, or roast baby pig. It's so tender that there are pictures in the restaurant windows of chefs cutting it with only a plate.

The beans were incredible, and maybe the best beans I've ever had in my life. We shared a bowl of them at our table, but I could've eaten the whole thing as my meal!

Of course, I did not want to be served a baby pig, but everyone at my table wanted it, and one of the Spaniards I was dining with assured me that they would not bring out the entire piglet, just the meat, so I caved. Unfortunately, he was wrong, and we most certainly got a pig placed in front of us.

You can see what I thought about that.

The food was very good, though. As an appetizer, we shared a carpaccio with a sort of thyme ice cream, shaved parmesan, and pine nuts.

After we ate our cochinillo asado, we shared two desserts: a pear mousse and a lemon ice cream with honey and caramel.

Overall, I had a great time in Segovia, and the citizen-guided tour was a wonderful way to see the city and learn some of the history in a part of the world I had never been to before.

On our way out of town, we stopped to do some impromptu cave exploration, see Iglesia de la Vera Cruz, and take some nice pictures of Segovia from afar.

Iglesia de la Vera Cruz

I was happy to get to see a couple vastly different cities in Spain during my trip, and I would love to see other areas, too, someday!