Belgium 2025 Part 2

 Day 3

I got up way before Lise and just started planning a little walking tour. There were a few sights that I’d done research about that were worth going to and I figured I could weave them into a little itinerary. None of the things were that interesting but they gave us something to do until beer:30. When Lise finally woke up, she opened the curtain to reveal a snow-glazed skyline. Even better, it was still snowing. “No way!” I screamed. I was like, let’s GOOO! I was ready to head out, and Lise got ready as quickly as she could.

We started the walking on fairly empty streets with a light snow still falling around us. The first stop on the tour was an unexpected sighting of a van delivering bags of precut, perhaps frozen fries to one of Bruges’ more well-known restaurants. I later looked up the company online and figured that while these fries were precut, they were probably still fresh and so I had not, as I assumed, caught a major restaurant committing a serious culinary crime in this deeply unserious country. The first real stop on our sight-seeing tour was just around the corner where a small stone relief on a building portrayed two young women holding a pair of pants. This marked the sight where, supposedly, a Spanish traveler was staying as a guest in this building. For days he changed his clothes except his pants before going out. One day the innkeeper’s daughters snuck into the man’s room to discover that the pants had a hole for the tail, meaning he was the devil. So the father threw the pants in the fireplace, then the Spanish devil returned and got so angry that he burned the inn down. It seems like a pretty bad story, full of holes, unless the twist at the end is that the innkeeper managed to get away with insurance fraud.

We were suddenly interrupted with a bathroom emergency, then decided to eat lunch in the room before heading back out to finish the tour. There was a bit of tension about the next stop on the tour. I had changed the order of stops on the fly because of the interruption and our next stop would take us out of town. Lise wasn’t super pumped about this, but eventually insisted that we just get it over with. So we left the center of Bruges, and were suddenly in just kind of a bland neighborhood without any of the fairytale aesthetics of little bridges over canals and medieval buildings. We headed to the main cemetery of Bruges, a thirty minute walk, to see a specific grave. Well, the cemetery, being the oldest in Belgium, was a lot bigger than I had expected. There’s a famous grave of a 19th century merchant that is adorned with a very dramatic looking moss-covered skull and crossbones. I couldn’t find any specifics about its location online and the information posted at the cemetery gave no mention of this grave. So we just wandered for a long time, hoping we would find it, but never did. It was still a pretty interesting cemetery though. It might not have been the best use of our time, but it was still interesting.

 

This is the one photo I have from the cemetery and it is very unrepresentative of how cool a lot of it looked. These small crosses were for a specific group of people...WWI soldiers? Freemasons? Former Mayors of Bruges? I can't remember.

We walked through the slushy streets back to the cozy center and did some shopping at a shop that sells all sorts of beer glasses and memorabilia. I got a new beer glass for a euro, which has proven quite useful and agreeable to use. We continued the walking tour and we found some superlatively small window. Is it the smallest window in Bruges? The smalles Medieval window in Europe? There’s no real way to tell what it is, but it is indeed a small window from the Medieval era that allowed someone inside the building to keep an eye on boats passing through the canal to make sure they stopped to pay the toll. Then we paid a visit to the 12th century Basilica of The Holy Blood. This was a unique church, first of all, because it was upstairs. I can’t say that I’ve been to a church that is upstairs before. I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently there is also a chapel on the ground floor. We just went upstairs as that was where the relic we were looking there was housed. It was a piece of cloth that supposedly contained the blood of Christ. It was brought back to Bruges after the second crusade in the 12th century, however recent research disputes this story and it most likely came here a bit later during the sack of Constantinople during the fourth crusade a few decades later.  The vial that contains the piece of cloth is the original container brought back from modern day Turkey. While European churches are lousy with bogus relics, this nearly thousand year old vial with some cloth, was still a pretty cool thing to see. It was watched over the entire time by a nun.

The walking tour took us next to the nearby Blinde-Ezelstraat, or Blind Donkey Street. I came across at least one explanation of the name of this street, that, when I explained it to Lise, didn’t really make any sense, as she pointed out. It turns out that there are several bizarre and untrue explanations of why this street carries this name, but it’s basically just named after the “Blind Donkey Inn” that was here back in the 15th century. Anyway, the street is a very tight passage between the city hall and the Civil Registry. An ornately decorated passage connects the two buildings  above the street. I really wanted to come here to see the black square. Apparently cars used to be able to circulate freely in this part of town, which eventually makes the buildings filthy. After they restricted cars in the ’90’s, they power-washed the side of the building, but left a square meter unwashed to show how dirty it had gotten. It was completely black.  

Waffle time. Lise had been doing research on which waffle place would be best to go to. The weird thing about this iconically Belgian treat is that it seems almost entirely geared toward tourists. Both in Belgium and Bruges, it’s hard to find any waffle place outside of the main touristy areas. Like, are the Belgians only eating them at home or something? I never quite figured it out. So I wasn’t really caring if we didn’t find the hidden spot only known to locals. We went to the one that Lise chose, but it was closed. It had been open just a bit earlier, but not now. It had three locations in Bruges, though, so we walked to the other one. Closed too. They were supposed to be open. Waffles aren’t a morning thing, they’re a snack thing, especially in the mid afternoon. We figured the whole chain must be shut down for some reason. So we chose a different one, and ordered two Liegeois style waffles to go. For some reason it seems that the only the denser, sweeter Liegeois waffles are available to go, while the lighter, spongier Brussels waffles must be eaten at a table. Anyway, obviously they were delicious. I got mine with a caramel syrup and Lise got chocolate. I actually found the caramel a bit too sweet to go with the waffle. Lise’s relatively dark chocolate was the right choice.

Another iconic feature of Bruges is the lace. There is a history of Bruges being a center of lace production that goes back centuries, and my guess is that it this has to do with it being a center for wool trading back in the day. I can’t guarantee any of that though. We walked past a lace shop where a woman who looks exactly like you’d expect her to, sat with her back turned, weaving lace into doilies and decorations. It was intricate and quite mesmerizing to watch. We stopped in and Lise got a pair of pretty cool lace earrings and a card with lace on it for her friend.

After a quick siesta, we headed to one of the best spots in town, Staminet de Garre. It’s a really tough to find little bar/cafe. It’s small, but still has two floors. They serve a beer made by a local brewery exclusively for them. So you can only get it here. De Garre is definitely a Ballet Bar. Classy, quiet, sophisticated, but definitely not pretentious. We ordered two of the house beers, which are a very light triple. The served it with a little bowl of complimentary gouda, a lovely accompaniment to Belgian beers. The glass they serve this beer in is also unique and really one of the best glasses I’ve ever drank from. For some reason this bar closes at 7, so we couldn’t have stayed for a second glass had we wanted to.

 

The De Garre glass. The greatest glass. 

So we headed back to The Beer Wall, a Pop Bar. While it is one of the best places for an outdoor beer in the city, I think its appeal was starting to wane on me. Weak beer selection, bad music the only place that seemed to attract the more obnoxious brand of tourist. I ordered the iconic “La Corne” beer, which is served in a glass shaped like a bull horn, which has to be cradled in a little wooden frame. I’d always resisted it as it seemed gimimicky. I mean, I never saw anyone drinking this beer at any of the other bars in town, however, I just got too curious. Lise ordered a Golden Carolus. My beer was probably the closest thing to a light domestic that I tasted the whole time we were in Bruges. It wasn’t bad, it was just kinda weak and boring. However, it was mildly fun to take a sip out of this horn and  then finagle it back into its little wooden holder. This bar was closing at seven, so we left, not that we really wanted much more to do with this place anyway. Like I said, it’s in a great location, but beyond that, not one of Bruges’ better spots for a beer. 

 

The glasses of La Corne and the Golden Carolus. You can see the anti-theft tag on the Carolus, revealing what kind of low class tourist scum frequents The Beer Wall.

We headed back to our new favorite bar in Bruges (or at least top 3…or 4), the Brugs Beertje. As we walked in out of the cold, the bartender said “welcome back.” I may get a little more annoyed than I should about small slights and disrespects, a la Larry David, but I’m just as easily flattered by just a little extra politeness or attention. Lise got a Malheur Blonde and I got a Nostradamus by Caracole. It was a strong dark beer that went excellently with this cold, dreary weather.Not much else to report, just a nice relaxing time in a chill spot. We couldn’t stay long, as we wanted to get to one last place on our final night. We headed over to the other underground bar (not The Trappist, the one with the difficult name). Lise ordered a Poperings Hommelbier, but they brought a St. Omer. Could have been my fault, but since it was our last drink in town, I asked to be served the correct beer and the server obliged. I can’t remember what beer I got. Oops. The Hommelbier was also from that aformentioned town of Watou. It is a very highly regarded beer, though not even much older than me. It’s brewed with extra hops (hommel means hops), however, I was surprisingly not all that impressed by it. Maybe the northwest IPAs have me feeling like I need a bit of fruitiness in my hoppy beers.

 

Nostradamus by Caracole and the Malheur Blonde

Once again we stopped by the fry stand on the way home. Tonight it was fries with a kipcorn, which for some reason is kind of like a long chicken nugget, but crispiers. Kind of like a corn dog, but the dog is chicken and the coating is crispy and not made of corn.

Day 4

Party’s over. But first, one more waffle. We ended up at the same place, hoping for a Brussels style waffle, but as I already said, they don’t serve those to go. Not that the Liege style waffles are worth being disappointed over. I noticed that instead of cooking us a fresh waffle, they just threw two waffles back into the iron to reheat. Maybe this was why they sold those to go? The Brussels waffle are a bit more fragile and don’t take to reheating as well as the Liege ones and maybe they don’t want to be clogging up their doorway with take away customers waiting so long for fresh waffles. Liege ones are also a lot easier to deal with without a plate and a table. I went with chocolate and Lise got it with her true love, creme chantilly, whipped cream.

As we made the long trek to the car, Lise was walking kinda fast and aggressively. We were waiting at intersection for the crosswalk light to turn green. Then Lise just crossed anyway, not waiting for it to turn green. She hadn’t noticed that she was walking directly in front of a cop car. I stood still for ten more seconds, and waited for the light to change. By the time I made it across, Lise had turned right and was crossing the main boulevard. By the time I made it across, the light had turned back to red, but I just hustled to catch up to Lise.  In the back of my miind I was thinking, if any place place hassles for jaywalking, it’s definitely here. I wouldn’t have even thought about it in Paris, but I had noticed how pedestrians always waited for the lights here, unlike back in France. Sure enough, I heard a whoop whoop from behind me, and the cops pulled up next to us. I’m sure they knew we weren’t from there, but they started speaking to us in Flemish and we just stared. Then they switched to English and asked where we were from. He started to say that we should respect the local laws, before switching and saying that it’s pretty much the same law in France too and come to think of it, that’s how it is everywhere. “I think even in Asia you have to stop for lights,” he added at the end. I thought that part was hilarious. Anyway, they let us off with a warning.

 

Ghost bike near where we parked.

On our way out of town, we stopped at the grocery store.  We got some of our favorite beers and also some random new ones to try. We also got some local treats like aged gouda, some kind of cured sausage and a bag of pickle flavored chips that were called “Ribble Chips”. This felt very silly.

On our way home we stopped off in Lille. We parked near the Marche de Wazzemmes. This area has a similar reputation to Saint-Denis as a place with lots of immigrants and crime. Of course I don’t find Saint-Denis as very sketchy, but the area where we parked left me seriously uneasy. The people hanging around on the corner were seriously sizing us up, but then also asking us if we needed anything. The market was mostly closed by the time we got there, so we didn’t linger. We went next door to a little old school kebab shop for lunch. An elderly Turkish man was running the shop and presumably his wife was forming falafels from a giant basin of ground chickpeas and herbs. We each got the normal kebab with feta added. The bread was homemade and the thing was absolutely delicious. I’d kind of given up on kebabs because they’re usually kind of disappointing, but this was maybe the best I’d ever had. some chili flake was sprinkled on top. Turkish chili flake, when it’s good, is amazing, but usually when I buy it it’s low quality and not worth it. So I asked the guy about his chili flake, hoping he might tell me that he buys it at a nearby shop. He held up a little shaker of the stuff and said it’s his homemade blend of spices and chili. Good work my dude.

Next we walked around the neighborhood, which, to Lise’s delights, was chock full of thrift shops. We went to all of them, then drove back home.

Belgium 2025 Part 1

 Day one

All of a sudden Lise was like, do you want to go to Belgium? I was like, uh, yeah, sure. So she found a cheap hotel in Bruges. It was the same one we stayed at before. There was nothing stopping us so no real reason not to go. So in a couple of days we were heading north on the A1. For some reason we kept seeing signs warning of a vehicle going in the wrong direction. We never saw it.

I asked Lise if she remembered where to park. The last time, Lise had researched before about where we could leave the car outside of town for a few days. She had forgotten to do that this time, but said we’d figured it out. We drove around a suburban neighborhood for a while, trying to find spots that weren’t limited to four hours. We thought we had found one, but when we looked online later, we found out that the street we were parked on did indeed have a four-hour limit.

On the way into town we crossed through the Smedenpoort, or Donkey’s Gate, an entrance to Bruges that was first built in 1297. It crosses the moat-like canal that nearly completely circles the central part of the city. There is a skull mounted on it that has an interesting backstory. in the late 1600’s the French were invading Bruges, but could not manage to penetrate the well-fortified city. A Belgian traitor offered help to the French in providing intel on how to enter the city. This traitor was found out, executed and had his skull dipped in bronze and hung on the gate as a warning. Somehow the skull went missing during the French Revolution, but was later recovered. Today the skull is a replica.

After checking into our hotel room we went straight to a place I wanted to visit after doing a bit more research on Bruges than last time. It’s a place called the Lucifernum. It’s the home of an eccentric man and his Peruvian wife. It features all sorts of weird and morbid decor and opens during very specific hours on certain days as a kind of bar/museum. The sign outside instructed us to ring the bell. An elderly man in a red robe arrived and with few words summoned us inside. Every inch of the home was filled with obscure nicknacks and decor from the Addams Family. Purple and red lights gave a haunted atmosphere to the space. He led us through a hall and started to explain a bit of how this place works, while instructing us that we must take pictures. Lise didn’t like that at all. We don’t take many pictures and we definitely don’t like being told to do so. It feels manipulative. We arrived at the door of the bar and he explained that we were obligated to have a cocktail for 15 euros as part of the entrance to the home. We didn’t realize that was the deal and he watched us hesitate awkwardly. Trying to ditch my overwhelming anxiety about money, I said, yeah, sure, it’s ok. Lise looked at me and said “are you sure?”. I really didn’t want to pay fifteen for a mojito, even if it included the viewing and photographing of his moody and arguably racist bric-a-brac. Without saying anything, the man was suddenly escorting us back to the front door. I was confused. Had Lise finally said she didn’t want to continue the tour and I hadn’t heard? No, the guy just sensed we weren’t into it and figured it would be better if we didn’t join his party. He was right and we were glad to be out of there. Anyway, we weren’t in Bruges to drink tropical cocktails, we were here for beer. Good beer. Great beer. The best beer.

So we moved onward to The Beer Wall. It’s a touristy bar. It’s maybe the most touristy bar in the city. It’s a place I should avoid. Their beer selection isn’t even that good. However, the location of its outdoor seating right on the canal can’t be beat. A lot of the better bars stock dozens, maybe hundreds of different beers, almost entirely in bottles. This place, though, has just sixteen beers on tap. However, it also functions as a bit of a beer museum with a wall of hundreds of different beers with their accompanying glasses on display as well as a little display of beer memorabilia behind glass by the bathrooms. I ordered the “Fourchette”, said to be a mix of triple and blanche (white/wheat). It was a unique concept and I actually really liked it. Triples can be a little strong, a little intense, but only on a hot summer day would I go for a white beer. This was a nice balance and it kind of makes me want to do my own beer mixing. Lise got a Bourgogne des Flandres. It came from a brewery just next door and she ordered it because we had gone to that brewery last time she had really liked their beer. Unfortunately what she had gotten last time was their Blonde beer, the Blonden OS, and this was a Red/Brown Beer. It was still good. It was another blended beer. It mixed a classic brown ale with a naturally fermented lambic beer. Lambics are quite interesting, but I’m not so into the intense acidity they often have. This blend really hit a nice spot of lightly acidic beer with a rich body and deep flavor. Lise also liked it, but she still would have preferred the blonde.

Bourgogne des Flandres on the left, Fourchette on the right.

 

For the next round, Lise went with the Fourchette and I tried the IPA from the local Blinden Ezel (Blind Donkey) Brewery. Now, I really love my IPA’s from the PNW, but I’ve slowly come to accept that the IPA’s brewed in France, England, Belgium or Spain are just not going to give me that same vibe. No shade, I mean, IPA’s have a weird history and have proliferated around the world so much in the last two decades that I feel like it’s hard to tell what exactly makes an IPA an IPA. The Blind Donkey was still good, but not really what I was hoping for.

Fourchette on the left and the Blinden Ezel IPA on the right

 

A cool water bottle on display at The Beer Wall

We took a short walk to a bar that we hadn’t been to before called ’t Poatersgat. This was one of those semi-hidden spots in a medieval underground with big stone arches. The table had a small binder with the beer menu inside. They had dozens of beers with descriptions next to each one. This made choosing, both easy and difficult. I got a Fils a Papa, a triple aged in rum barrels, which was pretty good. Lise got something called a Wakko from the Brouwerij Tzaweizen (Tzaweizen Brewery). It was a delicious blonde with insane artwork on it. We came across other beers from this brewery at a grocery store and they have a variety of unique and silly art on their labels. It’s some welcome modern personality from a very ancient and sometimes serious beer culture. While we savored our beers a couple was playing darts next to us. It seemed like maybe it was their first time playing darts as most of them ended up on the floor and more than once I saw the woman on the ground, retrieving the darts from under a piece of furniture.

Lise's Wakko on the left and my Fils a Papa from De Leite on the right

On the way home we stopped by the fry stand in the square next to our hotel. We got a couple of baskets of fries and some Bitterballen, a Flemish specialty similar to a croquette, but instead of a gooey bechamel inside, the balls are made of basically a thick, molten beefy stew. We took them back to our room and watc gentlehed some insane German gladiators type of show. Basically, the show pitted two teams of people in peak physical condition against each other in the most underwhelming obstacle course imaginable. These ripped guys and gals were would run through this course without breaking a sweat only to have it conclude with them basically doing a series of the milk bottle knock over carnival game, which left the obstacle course part irrelevant because the final step took way longer. I really think with just being exposed to American television for a couple of decades, I could be a major TV producer in Germany.

Day Two

In the morning I led us on the walking tour from an old Lonely Planet. It was short, not specifically interesting, but it was a nice thing to do and gave us a bit of direction. It’s hard to have a stroll in central Bruges that isn’t stunning. We needed to go back to the car, since we were not in a forever spot. On our way there, it started snowing. We considered staying in Bruges for the snow, but decided it would be better to just get this car trip over with. The plan was a mini road trip to the coast, which is only like 20 miles from Bruges. On the way we stopped in the small town of Damme. It’s in guidebooks and tourists go there, but we didn’t really see the draw. It was a much more important spot like 500 years ago when Damme was a port town connecting Bruges to the sea via canals. The canals (or rivers?) eventually silted up and left Bruges unreachable by the seafaring vessels, leaving this Damme town completely irrelevant. There’s a couple of interesting buildings and even some very fancy restaurants, but we lingered for a matter of minutes, bought some nice rye bread and got back in the car. It was cold, windy and gray and we had little desire to brave more of this weather for the town of Damme than we had to. We made sandwiches in the car with a condiment I’d just bought called “Belgian pickles”. It was basically a copy of English Piccalilli, which is actually an English attempt to recreate Indian pickles. Weird. Anyway, it was pretty good on the cheese sandwich. Onward to the coast, we passed through ugly boulevards lined with car dealerships and big gaudy restaurants. The seaside town, near the main port wasn’t much to look at and we didn’t even bother to walk on the wind ravaged beach. We drove through the port area where we were dwarfed by the massive infrastructure surrounding us and headed back to Bruges.

It was still kinda snowing, maybe a 50/50 rain snow mix, but I tried to pretend we were in a medieval winter wonderland. I thought maybe we could get cozy and pop into a cafe for a hot chocolate or even a beer. We passed a place on the outskirts of town that we should have stopped at, but instead we ended up in the center at a bar we’d been to on our first trip here called “Bar des Amis”. We sat down at a nice little cozy window seat so we could watch the snow fall and the passersby pass by. As I looked for the menu, I saw a QR code on the table. I went and asked the bartender if we could have a menu. He told me to use the QR code. Well, I don’t have a smart phone and don’t want to live in a world where I have to have one, so we left. Just more of my nose-cutting and face-spiting. Whatever. We ended up just going back to the room so Lise could take a nap. I  was happy to just sit and chill too.

After our siesta, we headed over to ’t Brugs Beertje (that’s The Bruges Bear, not The Bruges Beer) a very famous bar that I had kind of low expectations for. It topped every list of the best bars in the city so I figured it would be brimming with obnoxious tourists. I was completely wrong. The atmosphere was gentle and reserved. It felt rustic and mildly sophisticated with zero pretension. Most notably, it was quiet, except for the whisper of classical music. This was where I first noticed the Belgian Bar Ballet/Pop dichotomy. Every bar had one of two soundtracks. It was either classical/ballet music (I don’t know if those genres are completely distinct or if they overlap, but I heard things from Swan Lake, Nutcracker as well as Vivaldi and his ilk), or international pop hits from the past forty years. Songs that everybody in the world knows. Your U2 hits, 99 Luftballoons, Celine Dion, Hey Ya, you get the idea. So ’T Brugs Beertje was decidedly a Ballet Bar. Probably half the customers were indeed tourists from either the UK or America, but the rest were just your typical locals. The server, a soft spoken guy with tattooed arms and a ponytail, disappeared underground as he searched for the beers we had selected from their binder full of beers. I got the Liefman’s Goudenband, a really unique aged brown beer that was high on acidity and had some nice fruitiness to it. Definitely right up my alley on a cold snowy (slushy) evening. It’s also not the most obscure beer, so I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for it in the future. We were probably the youngest people in the bar. Two British women, clearly in town for the beer,  sat at a nearby table discussing the subtle notes of prune or red chili they were detecting from the beers they were sampling. An elderly man with a cane and clothes that were probably quite smart at some point, but were now faded and slightly rumpled, walked in and sat down at what looked like his usual spot. He sat there and proceeded to silently drink at least three beers poured from flip-top bottles. The beer was served in a peculiar glass that had long stem and a rim that wasn’t parallel to the table, but was at a 30 degree angle. I later looked it up and it was a Paix-Dieu, a strong Belgian triple clocking in at 10%. A guy sitting at the next table asked him if he was from around here and the guy just muttered that yeah, he’s from here and lives just down the street.  We ordered a second beer. I got a Basilius, a brew from Bruges named in honor of one of the local churches. Lise got something called a Judith, a “Specialty Grain” beer, from the ’T Brugs Bierinstituut.  The specialty grain seems to be rye…? We weren’t too impressed by this beer and we wondered what The Bruges Beer Institute was, and hypothesized they were letting the Beer students make the beer. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but just not as good or interesting as many of those that we had.

 

The Judith and the Basilius

We made our way through the quiet streets of Bruges to a place we had been to the last time. One of the best bars I’ve ever been to. Another underground bar in a 13th century cellar. This neighborhood was apparently a big spot for coopers, barrel makers, and this cellar was a storage space for their barrels. It was discovered back in 1973 while the house that sat on top of it was demolished. Now they serve over a hundred fifty beers while a DJ spins corny pop tunes under the stone arches and faint light of a dim chandelier. It was a bit less atmospheric than I remembered it, maybe because the last time we had been here it was almost empty. This time there were enough people to give the place the vibe of a bar, but not so many that it got obnoxious or crowded. I got a Trappist Tripel from La Trappe Brewery. I’m not sure why, in hindsight. I’m pretty sure I can get that at my local grocery store. Lise got a Kappitel Blonde, from a well known brewery in Watou, Belgium. We had actually stopped at Watou to buy some groceries during a road trip years ago. I had had no idea that the place has at least a few really important breweries at the time. To me it looked like just a depressing little one street border town with absolutely nothing going. The beers were good, but not really any surprises here. For my second beer I ordered something a bit lighter, the Saison Dupont. This trendsetting beer originating in the mid 19th century is meant for drinking in warm weather and provided a template for summer beers henceforth. Unfortunately I was served the organic version, which apparently is a bit different from the original, so I didn’t get the real deal. Lise got the Grand Cru, a nice strong beer from the St. Feuillen Brewery. At this point I was a bit beyond the point of noticing the subtleties in the beers so my commentary shall cease here. 

 

La Trappe and The Kappitel Blonde

 

International Beer Memorabilia

St. Feuillen Grand Cru and the Organic Saison Dupont

We headed back home with an obligatory stop at the fry stand. We shared an order of fries while Lise got bitterballen and I got a Bicky Burger, something I’d been kinda waiting for for a long time. I’d had this uniquely Flemish fast food once a few years ago, and was shocked by how much I liked it. It’s a burger with a patty that contains multiple meats including horse (traditionally), and is deep fried instead of cooked on a griddle. The condiments include crispy fried onions and mustard. This time it wasn’t as good as I remembered. Either one of the condiments was missing or it’s just one of those things where I’d built it up in my head over the years.

Spain 2024 Part 5

 Day 14

I had forgotten to get the bread for sandwiches the day before, so I ran out first thing to the bakery in the nearby market. A sign on the door said they were closed for personal reasons. I kind of wandered around frantically for a few more minutes, completely unsure where I would find bread. Then I happened to pass by a little Argentinian shop that sold some baked goods. Luckily they had some freshly baked rolls.

I quickly made sandwiches, finished packing and he headed to the station. We waited at a nearby bus stop for a long time. It was supposed to come every few minutes, but it was nowhere to be seen. Finally, a bus arrived that would take us about halfway to the station, so we hopped on. Of course, right when we did, we saw the correct bus coming down the street behind us. Oh well. We took the bus to the end of its route and hustled onward toward the station. We had just enough time for me to make a last minute stop at the grocery store at the station to get some mandarins. They also had the “Jamon de Trevelez”, a specific type of ham from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, that I had been looking for.

The ride was nice and comfortable, though we had to switch trains in Madrid. We got into Barcelona in the early evening. I had hoped to go to one of the two “Xampanyerias” or Cava bars in the center of town. I had been to one on my first time in Barcelona and have been dreaming of going back ever since. Last time Lise and I were in Barcelona, we had tried to go to it, but went to a different, but similar one I hadn’t known about. Both were great old places that serve cheap Cava and good food. Unfortunately, the one that I really wanted to go to was closed on Mondays. I had thought I would settle for the one that is open, but it’s a bit more expensive and the food a little fancier, but in the end, we just didn’t have the time or energy to take the buses and/or subway all the way into town for it. Instead we explored our hostel’s neighborhood, which wasn’t super interesting, but we had fun going shopping in the cheap “everything stores”. Lise was looking for stuff among the halloween decorations. She was looking for a ghost statue, but never found the right one. She did find some weird gel window decorations of bats and a ghost garland.

We stopped off at a typical looking bar for a beer. We were in a neighborhood with a lot of immigrants and this bar was definitely a hang out for that crowd. Most of the people seemed to come from Latin America. The bartender, also an immigrant, though I couldn’t tell from where, maybe South Asia, was super friendly and gave the place a fun atmosphere. As we sipped our beers under the glow of TVs showing soccer highlight reels, the bartender brought us a small basket of fried squid. The free tapa wasn’t dead in Barcelona! It was pretty salty. Salty, but free. After that we continued onward toward the neighborhood’s market. I assumed it would be more lively around there. I mean, it was a Monday night, so I could only expect so much. The market was closed, but we did pop into the grocery store inside of it to get some things for the following days’ sandwiches. The streets were pretty quiet and calm, but there were a couple of places open. One restaurant was a kind of hipster looking place with a more fashionable, younger looking crowd. The other was a rougher bar full of local yokels. The couple of outdoor tables at the former were taken and it was kind of expensive, so we headed over to the trashy bar and sat at one of their plastic tables on the sidewalk.

I went inside to order a couple of beers and ask for a menu. In the back of the bar some guy was running an e-scooter repair shop next to the bathroom. Periodically guys would come in to get their scooters fixed. I ordered a plate of croquettes and something I hadn’t heard of called a “Bomba de Carne” or meat bomb. The table next to us was packed with a diverse group of ruffians from the neighborhood. People seemed to kind of come and go from their group. They were loud and it looked like a lot of them probably spend a bit too much time at this establishment. They were black, white, Arab, maybe Roma, young, old, well-read and illiterate. An extremely large woman with summer teeth showed up with a big bag of cheap chips and opened it up sideways to serve the whole table. The chips were gone in minutes. Our croquettes arrived and I didn’t even mind that they were clearly store bought from the freezer. They were cheap anyway. Later, the bomb arrived. It was a tennis ball-sized fried sphere, filled with mashed potatoes and spicy meat. The top of it was slathered with an insane amount of mayonnaise. This appeared to be homemade and it was surprisingly delicious and shockingly spicy. Yeah, it was kinda gross and sloppy but I really enjoyed it. Meanwhile, a couple of young, blonde Mormon missionaries had walked up to the table next to us and they were chatting. Compared to the folks at this table, these boys looked like they had just been unwrapped and taken out of their package. They were so fresh, clean and innocent. They seemed to be familiar and even friendly with the people at the table, but not exactly comrades. I overheard that at least one of them was Canadian. Their Spanish was pretty good. I mean, their accent needed some work, but they could communicate conversationally better than me. At some point, the woman with the summer teeth turned to look at them and exclaimed “whoa, they’re handsome!” The boys seemed unfazed when people kind of mocked their religion. I don’t really have much sympathy for the Mormon religion or the fact that they do this evangelizing all over the world, but I do have a soft spot for the Mormon people. I liked the way these two boys behaved with these people, getting to know them, being vulnerable, all while knowing there was almost zero possibility of a conversion among them.

The next morning, we did some last minute shopping at everything stores for ghosts and bought some bread and things for making sandwiches. We went back to the hostel, packed up and made sandwiches for the road. Then we walked  back to the station and stopped off at a little cafe that we’d been to a couple of times before on a previous trip. We just ordered a couple of hot sandwiches. While we waited, I went across the street to the grocery store to pick up one last piece of cheese and a bottle of Pedro Ximenez Sherry. This syrupy sweet sherry was not a drink that I particularly like, though it can be an interesting component in cocktails. I bought it more for its culinary uses, like putting on ice cream or for using as a glaze on meat. We ate our sandwiches and went to catch our train back home. The portion of the train ride between Barcelona and the border blessed us with really incredible views of the Pyrenees and the surrounding foothills. There were some really unique rock formations that I hadn’t seen before and it really made me want to explore the area more via a slower means of transport. The French side of the train ride didn’t have many interesting sights, except for all the flamingos in the coastal lagoons
around Sete. And that was the trip.

Spain 2024 Part 4

 Day 11

We arrived at the Granada train station well in advance of our departure to Malaga, so we found a bench in the sun next to the nearby light rail and put our bags down. The walk had been long and I was tired. Then, a couple in their sixties walked up to us and started gesturing. I was confused at first but as they guy mumbled, he said “move” in English. At first I thought they were Spanish people that saw our backpacks and assumed we were foreigners who didn’t know any Spanish, so might as well just wave us away. Then I noticed their pinkish hue and realized they were probably members of the very large British retiree community of southern Spain. I couldn’t believe the behavior of a foreigner just walking up to people and trying to get them to give up their spots by just waving and muttering. It was true that we were taking up the whole bench with our bags (something I don’t like when other people do), but there were more empty benches nearby. Lise and I just got up and left.

When we got to our seats on the train, we found that there was a man in his 50’s or 60’s sitting in Lise’s seat. She showed him her ticket and he got up, but kind of acted like, well who really cares, just sit wherever you want, it’s fine. Then I noticed that he had been sitting in front of his two mates. The three of them, Irish I believe, were kind of loud and obnoxious. One of the guys behind us kept loudly playing music and youtube clips on his phone, without headphones. It was getting obnoxious and when he put on some bag-pipe-laden nonsense, Lise turned to him and asked him to put on headphones (I mean, those are the rules of the train afterall). He said ok, then turned to his friend and loudly said “I guess she doesn’t like Irish music”. That made me so mad. Like he was just going to remove any responsibility and blame the disagreement on Lise’s intolerance of his culture’s music. Luckily they weren’t too obnoxious during the rest of the trip.

We got into Malaga after a pretty quick hour and a half train ride. Then we easily got a bus, with the help of a friendly bus driver, to our neighborhood. I immediately liked this fairly large, coastal city. It had a lot of character and a vibrant atmosphere. Sure the center was a bit glitzy, the cruise ships unloaded loads of losers on the daily and some neighborhoods seemed pretty rundown and sketchy. However, it still had a lot of the rustic Spanish vibes that I’m always looking for. Just between the bus stop and our airbnb, I saw two or three restaurants that I definitely needed to try.

Our neighborhood seemed like it was in the middle of a being hit with a gentrification bomb and we weren’t helping. Half the streets were torn up and getting a face lift. Facades of run down buildings were quickly being painted over with colorful murals. Lots of front doors of buildings had big padlocks indicating that they were infested with units converted to airbnbs. Our place actually looked like it had once been a hostel, but was now exclusively used for airbnb. Our room was nice and the roof had a very cool common space with nice views.

We headed back out and popped into one of the spots that I had seen a few minutes earlier. It was this really old school bar, full of locals enjoying each other’s company over afternoon drinks and tapas. I was shocked to find that when I asked for a menu, they server pointed to the qr code. Ok, well, I previously vowed to never stay at a place that only has a qr code menu and we’d left at least one place in Granada for that reason, but I wanted to stay here too badly. So we ordered something off the specials board. We got albondigas en salsa de almendras (meatballs in almond sauce) and a couple of vermouths. The meatballs were pretty awesome, and we scooped up all the extra sauce with bread. There was a lot of other stuff on other tables that I wanted to try, but without a menu, there was nothing we could do. Plus, we really just came in for a snack. We went back to our building to relax and have a siesta on the rooftop, trying to get as much sun as we could while we were here.

When we headed back out we did some shopping. Not normal people shopping, but we went to a couple of “everything stores”. These are a genre of stores, often Chinese run, which sell all kinds of cheap household products, tools, kitchenware, and lots and lots more. We have them in France, but in our experience they are way more interesting in Spain. Lise mostly wanted to find a specific nail polish that she had once found in Valencia. We also went to a pop up thrift store/fundraiser for a religious organization. They had some weird stuff for sale that was interesting to look at, but nothing really worth buying.

That evening we tried to go to one of the other restaurants that I had wanted to try in our neighborhood. I was attracted to it as their menu looked kind of classic, with some original twists as well as an emphasis on sherry. Southern Spain is the sherry region and I have very little experience with it. I think it’s probably way more common in England than in France. I can never find it. And down here there’s such a huge variety and I wanted to get to know them a bit. Unfortunately, when we showed up, the place was all booked up for the evening. We walked down the street, wondering what our next move would be, when we passed a fairly empty bar with a band playing. Well, why not go check this place out? The band was semi-casually playing jazzy tunes when we walked in. We sat at the bar and ordered a couple of beers. The bartender, a young-seeming, but probably middle-aged hipster explained that there was a band, so the cover was $6 each. We’re usually too cheap to pay for thing, but it wasn’t too expensive and we were already sitting down, so we leaned into the spontaneity. People, who mostly seemed like regulars, slowly filled the space and the band got started. They played fun, bouncing music, most of which seemed like covers of old American jazz tunes. The bartender, efficiently supplied everyone with drinks and food all while contributing to the percussion session with pairs of tongs or spoons or whatever he had in his hand at the moment. I never learned if he was the owner, a manager or just an employee, but he really seemed to be enjoying himself in a way that showed that he had a deep connection to this place. He was almost as enjoyable to watch as the band. It really looked like this neighborhood was about to get super hipster.

Day 12

In the morning we enjoyed our coffee on the rooftop before heading to the center to check out the market. We got there fairly early and it wasn’t too crowded. Within five minutes though, it was like a cruise ship unloaded in front of the market and it was suddenly inundated, mostly with foreigners, so we quickly got out of there. I didn’t feel like I had missed much as it was kind of pricey, though I had wanted to find some dried wormwood in hopes of making homemade vermouth when I got back home. We stopped at a simple cafe next to the market. Lise wanted another coffee and we got some pretty good ham and manchego sandwiches. The server accidentally gave us two coffees, so I got a second coffee too! Bonus. Then we went on a stroll through the center, where we passed several wedding parties. Then it was off to the beach, which was maybe a twenty minute walk from the center.

I’ve been to a lot of beaches in my life and most of them, frankly, are disappointing. Maybe it’s incessantly windy, or there’s no waves, or it’s filthy or the water is full of algae or maybe it’s too crowded. There’s always something. I wasn’t expecting much out of this beach, but it turned out to be shockingly good. It was pretty clean, not too crowded, the water/air temperature was just warm enough to swim in, but barely. There were guys walking up and down the street selling drinks and beach blankets and women selling massages, but they weren’t annoying or pushy. It was a great beach! We stayed for a couple of hours before walking back through the port area. There four cruise ships in port, spewing holiday makers into the mall-like shopping area that faced the sea. Then we passed through the botanical gardens before reaching our neighborhood. We stopped at a grocery store for apero things and went back to our rooftop. For our whole time there we would have the rooftop to ourselves. We were very lucky. We set out our little apero stuff, which consisted of olives, Iberico ham, cherry tomatoes and a can of mussels. Then, right at 8 o’clock, we headed out to that nearby restaurant that we had tried to go to the night before. I had seen online that they had “chicharones de Cadiz” a local dish of pork belly that I had made at home before, but still hadn’t tried it in its natural habitat.  

I’m just gonna say it. This highly anticipated meal was disappointing. First, we ordered two different sherries. Lise got the oloroso and I got the fino, the driest of the sherries. It was…really really dry. I had previously tried the Pedro Ximenez sherry and that one is like syrupy and so sweet, but kind of too intensely so. But the opposite of the spectrum fino, wasn’t really my thing either. We ordered a plate of blue sheep cheese from the “Peaks of Europe” in northwestern Spain. That would probably be the highlight of the meal. There weren’t a ton of vegetable options on the menu, but we got some marinated tomatoes. For $7 we were served a pretty sad plate of seven slices of tomato with some garlic and olive oil. It was out of season (maybe my fault, but maybe I thought late October might still be ok in southern Spain) and tasted of water. Actually, sorry, if it’s out of season, you shouldn’t have it on the menu. Maybe it’s a Spain thing. It’s such a tomato-obsessed country, but does that mean eating them all year even if they’re tasteless? Anyway, we also ordered the solomillo en manteca, or pork loin in lard. This was a local specialty that I had heard about. It’s basically what it says it is, pork loin that has been cooked in lard, usually spiced and colored with smoked paprika. When I had seen this been sold in the market, the chunks of pork were bathing in a bright orange liquid. When it arrived at the table, I was surprised to find that it was cold and the lard was in solid chunks. The plating was also mystifying. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to be kind of old school or rustic, or if they just didn’t care at all about presentation. Big chunks of pork were haphazardly lounging among a big pile of lard that just seemed to be smeared onto the plate. I also realized that this was less of a dish to be eaten on its own, and more of a charcuterie product in the same category as rillette. It was also pretty bland, under seasoned and could play about two notes: Heavy and fatty. I don’t really want to criticize if this is how it’s supposed to be and if that’s the case, it’s not my thing. Finally, we got the dish that Lise had ordered, the flamenquin. She had loved the flamenquin bocadillo in our favorite sandwich spot in Granada. That version was simple and petit, something small enough to put on a roll. The restaurant version of the flamenquin was an unwieldy monster of rich, fatty layers all rolled up. As a reminder, it’s a slice ham, wrapped in pork loin, stuffed with cheese (usually), breaded and fried. This one was enormous, nothing close to elegant and pretty delicious. It also, felt unbalanced, though. There was almost no acidic element to cut through the richness that piled onto your palate with every bite. The little dish of tomatoes was no match for a pile of pork in lard and a tube of fried pork
stuffed with cheese. It was nice to have kind of a special dinner, you know, a normal restaurant experience, which we don’t do all that often. It was just too bad that I had gotten my hopes up. I was also disappointed that they didn’t have the couple of the things on the menu that I had seen when I looked online that I had been excited about. Anyway, what can I really complain about? I got to travel to Spain and have a pretty awesome time, but the nice restaurant was less good than I’d hoped? Whatever.

Day 13

I had wanted go to one of the Malaga’s other markets, since the main market had been something of a let down. Unfortunately, they were all closed as it was Sunday. In France, Sunday is one of the most common market days, but I guess Spain is just too Catholic. So instead we decided to head up to the Alcazaba, the Moorish era fortress that sits right there in the middle of the city. We figured it would be good to go early on a Sunday morning to beat the crowds. We were at the ticket kiosk when we two things happened simultaneously. First, we saw that starting at 2PM, entrance would be free. Second, a huge group of people came in right behind us. Well, we weren’t beating the crowds, so we might as well come back later for free. And it was still sunny, so we headed back to the beach. It was another nice few hours at the beach. For lunch we went to one of the seafood restaurants that sat directly on the beach. They had massive barbecue pits set up where they were grilling all sorts of seafood, including long skewers of sardines, an iconic culinary tradition in Malaga. We had to wait in line for a table for a while. When we got to our seat, we saw that the sardines were the only reasonably price thing on the menu, but that was fine as that was what we were there for. The sardines were nice, nothing fancy, just some grilled fish with salt and lemon. Lise especially enjoyed it. The service was quick here as this restaurants mission was volume. They had us in and out of there in probably 35 minutes. We didn’t mind, though, as we had plenty of things to do.


At the strike of 2PM, we entered the Alcazaba for free. It was definitely more crowded than it had been earlier, but it wasn’t that bad. The Alcazaba sat right next to a 2000 year old Roman theater that was re-discovered in the middle of the 20th century. Malaga has a ton of history. It is believed to be founded by the Phoenicians in 770 BC and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in western Europe. Considering that, the Alcazaba, constructed and re-constructed from the 11th to the 14th century, seems like relatively recent history. The fort was a network of passageways, towers, gates, gardens and stairways. It was really fun to just aimlessly explore. When we’d seen pretty much all of it, we took the very long walled corridor up to the top of Mount Gibralfaro and the Gibralfaro Castle. This hilltop has served as a fortified lookout point for various occupiers of the city, including the Phoenicians and the Moors. It was even partially destroyed by the French during the Peninsular War in the early 17th century. We walked along the top of the wall that surrounded it, taking in the excellent views of the city and the mediterranean. Underneath one of the walkways there was what seemed to be some prison cells, which also had great views. There wasn’t a lot to
see inside the walls, as a lot of what had once been a castle had been destroyed. The central building did contain a museum which was moderately interesting. The walk back down the hill to town was tough on my knee, but eventually the pain went away.

We walked through the center and stopped at a little liquor store called “Supercaro”, which had a goofy green logo and a silly name (Super Expensive). They had an incredible selection of obscure liquors, liqueurs amaros and apertivos from Spain and all over the world.  The prices were pretty nice too. I had to choose very carefully what bottles I would bring home. I could have bought have the store as they had so many things I’d only heard of, but never seen or bottles that would normally have been too expensive to buy. I ended up with a local bottle of vermouth, a Basque anise and sloe flavored liqueur called Patxaran and Cynar (Lise’s choice), an Italian artichoke-infused amaro.

Our sardine lunch hadn’t exactly stuck to our ribs, so we headed to a little tavern I had noticed the day before tucked away in an alley. We sat on stools around a big wine barrel table and ordered vermouth, a moscatel and some fried eggplants. We hadn’t tried moscatel, a fortified wine, but it was a bit too sweet for us. The eggplants were a specialty from Andalucia and they come drizzled with some very dark cane syrup. It was really delicious and unique. We also ordered some other specialties from around here that I’d been hoping to try. The bocadillo de Pringa, a sandwich of pulled pork seasoned in warm spices was awesome. The gambas al pil pil, or shrimps cooked in olive oil with garlic and paprika seemed directly related to the Mexican dish of Camarones a la Diabla. Obviously it was good, though I probably prefer the Mexican version. Lise also wanted to get a smoked salmon and roquefort bocadillo. I thought it seemed like an insane sandwich, but she loved it. I mean, it was good, but seafood+cheese combos are already controversial, so taking two of the strongest tasting items from their respective categories seemed culinary radical, if not downright illegal.

 

Lise having a Pringa

We spent the rest of the evening strolling in the center, looking at some old churches and what not. We headed back to our neighborhood, hoping to stop off at one of the local bars for a final drink and/or snack in Malaga, but being Sunday, everything was closed. So instead, we bought a couple beers from a shop and had a final moment enjoying our rooftop views of the Alcazaba and the Gibralfaro Castle. Then we packed up and got ready for our journey back north the next day.

Spain 2024 Part 3

 Day 7

 

Teepee Camping

 

Well, on Monday morning the party was over. Everyone was understandably kind of lazy. It was my last full day, though, so I at least wanted to go and do something, whatever it was. While we had a brunch of leftovers, I got a text from Lise, asking a question about sandwiches. I thought she was asking something referring to her train trip the following day, but it quickly became clear that she was actually on the train. I started to calculating in my head. I thought that we were meeting up in Barcelona the next day, but apparently I had made a mistake. I didn’t let on though. She asked, “did you forget I was coming today?” “No, no, I was just kidding, can’t wait to see you!”

So suddenly, I had to quickly pack up my stuff and move! I had about two hours before I had to catch the bus in Besalu. It wasn’t soon enough to panic, but it did make for quicker goodbyes than I expected. I said goodbye to Antimo. He was staying back as his pregnant wife was having some medical issues and he was stressfully waiting for phone calls and test results. Meanwhile, Jonathan grabbed a few beers and made us shotgun one together before leaving. It was probably the first time I’d done that since we’d done it once in Nepal. It was actually easier and more enjoyable than I had remembered.

 

Leaving Besalu by Bus

Blai and Jonathan gave me a very nice send off in Besalu and I was headed back to Barcelona by bus. I would have just enough time to check into the hostel, get a shower, stop at a market for some food, and get to the train station to pick up Lise. The hostel was maybe a 40 minute walk from where the bus dropped me off. Halfway there, I stopped into a grocery store, but on my way out, I turned the wrong way and walked almost all the way back to where I’d started. This set me back a lot of time, effectively robbing me of the chance to get a shower. I’d really wanted to show up looking nice for Lise, and not smelling like a week of campfire, but that just wasn’t gonna happen. She texted me, asking if we could have a beer when she got in. I bought a few at a store, unsure if we’d be able to find a place near the hostel to have a drink.

 

Arriving in Barcelona

So when she got in, we just went to a park near the station and caught up over a beer for a bit. Then we headed back to the hostel to catch a bit of sleep before our early morning train ride.

Day 8

After a very early rise (5AM?) and a pretty nice train ride from the top to the bottom of Spain, we arrived in Granada in the early afternoon. It was warmer and sunnier than where we had come from, and that is part of what we were traveling south for. It was a pretty long walk through the hilly town to get to our airbnb. The room was basic, but the location was incredible. We were high up on a hill, near the Gitano (Roma (Gypsy)) neighborhood of Sacromonte and we could see the Alhambra as soon we stepped out of our door. The neighborhood was filled with narrow, winding streets that snaked around the hilly vistas.


We dropped our things and just started walking. We didn’t make a plan, just decided to go down whichever street looked interesting. We quickly found ourselves in the aforementioned Gitano neighborhood of Sacromonte. We didn’t really know much about this, but we did remember seeing Anthony Bourdain attend a Gitano flamenco concert in a cave once. Well, we quickly started noticing advertisements for flamenco shows. At some point, as we were taking in the views, a woman with long, black hair, wearing a long, red dress with black polka dots, sauntered past us. We were like, did she just walk out of a different time? Maybe stepped off a movie set? Or she was an apparition based on our collective stereotypes of the exotic southern Spain. She was the archetype of a Spanish Gitana flamenco dancer. In fact she was probably one of the local performers and maybe she just moseys around as a kind of walking advertisement for the flamenco shows. Anyway, the neighborhood was calm, rustic and beautiful. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was one of the most important neighborhoods for the Gitanos. It is believed that the origin of the neighborhood as a troglodyte community (meaning living in caves) is that it became a safe refuge for Jews and Muslims after the Spanish crown retook Granada from the Moors. The Jews and Muslims lived among the itinerant Gitanos outside the walled city. This is also the neighborhood where, they say, Flamenco originated. At least that’s what they tell tourists. I think it’s kind of a foolish thing to try to define the starting point of a style of music that so clearly has influence from basically all over Europe and Asia. Flamenco music and dance is like a snowball that rolled and rolled just gathering up bits and pieces of everything along the way. But what we know as Flamenco today can definitely be pinned down to Andalusia, this southernmost region of Spain.

After our walk, we took a little siesta, then decided to head to town for the evening. We walked to the main road that followed the Darro River towards the center.The cobbletone promenade took us past ancient buildings, views of the Alhambra above us and a series bridges that cross the Darro from our Albaicin neighborhood to the neighborhoods at the base of the Alhambra. As we got closer to the center, it got more and more touristy. We entered a series of narrow streets lined on both sides with shops all selling the same kind of mass-produced handicraft that was supposed to make you feel like you were in a north African souk, if you’d never been to north Africa. They sold the kind of vaguely exotic colorful and baggy clothing that they probably sell to tourists from Marrakesh to Istanbul to Varanasi. There were also plenty of Moroccan restaurants and tea shops where the staff might as well have been wearing Aladdin costumes. I mean, I can’t really hate the hustle. The north African immigrants really did a good job of exploiting the history of their former empire in Spain. I wondered, though, did the other tourists think that like, this neighborhood with its mint tea and incense was a remnant of Moorish rule that just seemed to stick around intact for over five hundred years? We continued toward the center, which was also full of narrow streets and alleys. Yes, Granada was touristy, but it managed to avoid feeling like it wasn’t also a real town at the same time. The old town of Panama City, for example, was developed so much with tourism in mind, and is so cut off from the rest of the city, that it just feels more like a Disneyland version of a Caribbean colony than a normal, modern city.

Eventually we found ourselves sitting at a bar on the edge of Trinidad Plaza. We ordered small beers and they came with our first free tapa: a little tiny thumb-length hot dog with some chips in the shape of shoestring fries. It was super cute. There is a lot of lore around the history of tapas in Spain, but one think for sure is that the concept of a free snack being served with a drink originated in the south. These days, while tapas are served all over Spain, the tradition of free tapas has basically disappeared outside of this region, and only in Granada is it still common. Part of the game is the understanding that the tapas will get bigger or better with each drink you order, encouraging people to stick around instead of bar hopping. After our cute little hot dog, our second tapa was a plate of shrimp, a big step up. I’m such a sucker for a free treat. Getting a little bonus snack was just the most fun thing I could imagine.

 

 

Cute tapa!

We walked about more around the center, looking into shop windows and peering into parks. We stopped for a vermouth at a place called Dancing Coffee Shop. It was a weird name and the place didn’t look great, but it had an open table outside and that had become hard to find at this hour. While we sipped our vermouth we were served a tapa. It was some kind of tiny pizza that probably made a journey from the freezer to the toaster oven before making it to our table. It was bad, and after the shrimp tapa, I was kind of disappointed, but I was still happy for the free treat.  

We walked back home that evening on a side street parallel to the main road that we had used to get to the center. This was actually way better as there was almost no foot traffic, and occasional old street lamps gently illuminated the ancient walls and buildings on either side of us, giving that atmosphere that allowed you to imagine that you had traveled hundreds of years back in time. Except for, you know, the lamps were electric and every once in a while a car would trundle down the cobbles, barely squeezing through the tight spaces.

 

Just a detail from the walk home

That night I had trouble sleeping. We lived in a quiet neighborhood, without nearby bars or restaurants, but there was so much noise coming from buses picking up and dropping off the tourists going to Flamenco shows in the nearby caves. There were also a surprising number of pedestrians loudly passing by at all hours of the night. It was weird because it was a Tuesday and I didn’t notice this the next two nights. Or I slept through it.


Day 9

Today was Alhambra day. Unfortunately for us, tickets to enter must be obtained well in advance and by the time we had planned our trip, there were none available. That is, unless you go through some expensive tour company, which we weren’t going to do. On the plus side, though, a lot of the area that the Alhambra sits on is open to the general public. So we got up a bit earlier than normal and went to see what we could see. It was a short walk from our door to the Cuesta de los Chinos, which I learned did not mean the ridge of the Chinese, but here, for some reason “chino” means small stones. So we followed this stone path up to the main area of the Alhambra. It didn’t seem too touristy until we got to the top of the path and started to see the hordes, the tour buses, the overpriced bottled water. I hadn’t even realized you could take buses right up to the entrance. Some fortifications. It was a bit confusing trying to figure out which parts we could see and which we couldn’t. On paper, the list of things we could see for free was long, and the sites you had to have tickets to enter was only like three things. It turns out, though, that, obviously, the free stuff really wasn’t the best stuff. We looked for a map at the information desk, but the woman there told us that there were no papers maps and that we would have to use the qr code to download the map. So instead, we just took a picture of the paper map at the info desk. I know it’s probably good to save paper, but I’m gonna die on this hill of rejecting the obligation to have a smartphone + data plan at all times in order to exist in the world. I might actually die on the hill, when the ER doctors ask me to scan a qr code so they can see if I’m insured before they bother to remove the car parts embedded in my abdomen. Anyway, it was good we arrived when we did. It wasn’t too crowded, but an hour later, the place was inundated.

 

Palace of Carlos V

So, we checked out the Palace of Carlos V, an out of character addition commissioned by King Carlos in the 16th century, not long after the Moorish rulers had been kicked out of Andalucia. The palace was left unfinished for hundreds of years, only to be completed in 1927. Today it contained two museums, which were free for EU citizens, so, bonus for me!

"Hey! You guys. Have you seen this lamb?"

 

 

"Dudes, it's getting kind heavy. Ain't got no arms"

 

We were able to wander the few streets and some outdoor gardens in the Alhambra complex, and even entered a pretty cool bath house. But the main palaces of the sultans of Andalucia remained off limits. In one of the three free museums, I noticed some guy touching one of the objects and was pretty shocked. Minutes later, I saw guard scolding a German woman for touching another object. I was pretty shocked by the boldness of these monument manipulators, these relic rubbers, these curio caressers. Then, on our way back down the Cuesta de los Chinos, we veered off the path to look over a ledge the dropped about 10 feet, where a pathway led to a large gate. All of a sudden I heard someone yelling. I ignored it at first, but I heard it get louder. I turned around and saw a security guard on a motorcycle coming toward me, yelling at me to not cross the barrier. I was confused. He approached me and scolded me for crossing the chain. I turned around and saw that there was a chain on the ground. It was supposed to be keeping people away from the ledge, but instead of being at knee height, it was broken and just sat there on the ground. He asked if I spoke Spanish and I said yeah and that I hadn’t seen it. He warned me that there’s kids around and they could follow me and fall off. Ok, right. Thanks sir. Bye. (maybe get your barrier fixed though).

We went back to the room for a midday siesta before heading back out. We explored another part of our neighborhood which was a bit higher up and had several lookout points. This part of the neighborhood was really beautiful. All winding narrow streets where ancient walled homes concealed lush gardens. The views of the Alhambra and the hills surrounding it were incredible, but of course, at the large lookout point, it was loaded with tourists. We stuck around for a bit, though, just to get some sun. Then we headed back down the hill towards the center. We engaged in a bit of sight-seeing, checking out a Moorish-era granary, then the Cathedral. We had been there the night before, but it had closed minutes earlier. There was also a chapel next door that held the remains of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Unfortunately, when we got there, we found out that it was like $6 to get in. It was pretty surprising to have to pay to get into a church. I understood for seeing the tombs of royalty, but even just to enter the Cathedral required a ticket (which we would have to purchase on a smartphone). We passed.

After getting some fruit and snacks at a grocery store, we walked through some parks, including a cute little botanical garden that had all sorts of cool plants to look at. For an early dinner, late snack, we stopped in at this little bocadilleria, or sandwich shop, called Aliatar. It was the kind of simple place that I love. Just a few stools at a bar, one employee, decades old decor with cheap and basic food. The list of cold and hot sandwiches was long, so we sipped a beer while we decided. Lise got a mussels sandwich and a “Flamenquin”. A flamenquin is kind of like cousin to the cordon bleu. It is a pork loin wrapped in ham, filled with cheese, rolled up and battered and fried. And this place just puts that on bread with a big glug of their homemade mayo. We lingered as we ordered vermouth, but most people, many regulars, really just popped in, ate a quick bite and left. We probably should have just camped out there for the rest of our time in Granada, but unfortunately we had more exploration to do. We walked over to an old school bodega (tends to mean a wine shop or casual wine bar) that I’d read about. It was supposed to be the kind of aging locals, but as we got close it looked absolutely loaded with hungry tourists. It wasn’t at all what we were looking for so we pressed on. The next place we tried had no more room. Eventually we found a little outdoor table outside of a typical looking bar/restaurant. We ordered beers and got a little tapa. This is where we had our first “leftover” tapa. Basically some tapas are just small portions of dishes that the restaurant needs to get rid of. This time it was a mix of sausage and potatoes. It was ok. A bit heavy. But free. After that, we meandered back toward our neighborhood, stopping at a restaurant in a plaza for a final beer. The place was a little fancier and more touristy than we usually go for, but it was sitting right below the magnificently illuminated Alhambra, so the view was worth it. We also got a slightly fancier tapa, a little toast with lox on it. It was a decent way to end the evening.

Day 10

In the morning, we intended to walk up to the lookout points in the nearby neighborhood of Sacromonte. It was on the edge of town, so while it was populated, it didn’t feel oppressively dense. The dry hills reminiscent of southern California were just a stone’s throw away. We tried to follow the roads to the lookouts using Google Maps, but we kept getting blocked by private gates. I was confused as several of these lookout points appeared accessible on the map, but we couldn’t reach any of them. One of them was actually on the grounds of a museum, so we would have had to pay to get to it. We gave up and went to a nearby museum about Gitana women and the history Flamenco in this neighborhood. It was a small museum inside some caves and it had a kind of homemade feel to it, like it was a community or school project. It was charming, though, and we learnt some things.

 

From inside one of the "caves" near the museum.

 

In a country full of spectacular doors, I don't remember why I took a photo of this mediocre door.

 

After kind of failing on getting good views, we went down to visit a “carmen” next to our home. A carmen is a type of walled house that contains lush gardens. The word carmen comes from the Arabic word for garden. This carmen was owned by the University of Granada and was partially open to the public for visits. The garden were nice. There were some fountains and nice views. Next we headed back up to the lookout that we had been to the day before. Lise really wanted to get some sun, so that seemed like a reliable spot to accomplish it. There was a little square with a good handful of tourists, a few trinket sellers and a couple of guys with guitars doing covers of Gypsy King songs. We laid down on the concrete ledge that borders the square and just let the sun warm us up. With every minute that passed, more and  more tourists arrived. It grew louder and more chaotic. Two of the men selling jewelry and souvenirs suddenly packed up and ran away. Two police officers on motorcycles arrived a couple of minutes later. When the crowds of tourists completely inundated the square, we decided to walk down the hill toward the town. In this walk through the tightly woven network of narrow streets we started to notice signs in people’s windows protesting mass tourism. Part of the problem was airbnb, which we were guilty of using. It’s extremely rare to stay in a place that is just someone’s second home or a spare apartment. It’s always a property that someone bought with the intent of renting it out, usually along with several other units in the neighborhood. Or a single large apartment has been converted into several small studios. This creates a lot of pressure on the housing market of local people and drives up prices. I do feel guilty for being a part of this problem, but at the same time, the cities should be doing more to regulate this market. Unfortunately, everyone with the money and influence on local politics are the people profiting off the city’s tourism and they have no interest in anything that will reduce the accessibility to tourists.

When we got towards the bottom of the hill, closer to the center, we made an effort to stay on side streets. It can be very easy to just unintentionally follow the paths that everyone else does and end up walking AGAIN along the street packed with tourists and souvenir shops. I’m not always sure what causes that, but sometimes it’s just the way a neighborhood is designed. This time we managed to stay one some really narrow side streets and walked for a long time without seeing almost anyone. It was one of the nicest walks we had and there were so many little hidden details and surprises along the way.

When we got to town we stopped at a tiny ham and cured meat shop. It was really just a counter you could walk up to on the edge of a square. I had been wanting to try a “Jamon de Trevelez”, made in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, but they didn’t have any. Instead I got some Cured Bellota sausage and we ordered a plate of Iberico ham and cheese that came with a couple small beers. We stood at the tiny table next to the shop as we savored our ham.  

 

Ham snack

 

With the evening snacking underway, we went back to the tavern that we had been to the evening before for a vermouth and another one of their leftovers tapas. This time it was migas (which in Spain is a couscous-like dish of fried breadcrumbs) with some sausage and fried green pepper. At the next table a couple of middle-aged white Spanish people were sitting with a half-black French guy in his early 20’s. They were interesting to watch. The young guy, who spoke Spanish pretty well, was telling them the story of fight that he got in, or assault that he was a victim of, and that was how he’d chipped his front tooth. I could not figure out what their relationship was. They seemed like they were from such different worlds, so I wondered what led them to having drinks together at a small cafe in Granada. At some point the two older folks put something like a raisin over their front tooth and they took a group photo with all of them looking like they had also chipped their front teeth. Our second vermouth came with some leftover salmon tartare on toast.

Next, we returned to a place we had tried to go to the night before and managed to get an outdoor table in a little alleyway. They had a house vermouth and “Granada ham” tapa special, so we got that. I hadn’t heard of “granada ham” and I was curious. In hindsight, I think we got played. We were each served a little roll with a slice of cooked (not cured) ham with a few chips on the side. It looked like we ordered off the kids menu. There’s no such thing as “Granada ham” in the same way there is “prosciutto di Parma” or “Jambon de Bayonne”. What’s more, a group of Spanish guys (with one Italian guy), came and sat at the table next to us. The tapas they were served looked a lot more like what I was expecting. It was cured ham on toast. I listened as they explained to the Italian guy, who spoke Spanish, how tapas work. The window of the restaurant was full of those stickers showing that it was recommended by this and that. A lot of them were from a French guide book and sure enough, most of the customers we saw coming in and out of this place were French. We ordered a few more small dishes, like stuffed mushrooms and croquettes. The food here was pretty good, but I was still miffed about the “Granada ham” thing.

On the way home, we took a wrong turn and it took foreeeever to get back. When we did we prepared our bags for the following morning’s departure.