Today I can barely wait until we can go eat tapas. Yesterday Hedda and I stumbled across my best tapas experience, yet. Those tasty little bites called tapas or pinchos are served all day, even though traditionally they are supposed to be enjoyed between 7-9PM. The dishes are pre-made and sit along the bar and are meant to be a snack before dinner.

So far among my favorite tapas is the cured ham, especially if it is Iberico ham. I have also enjoyed the meatballs with a zesty tomato sauce, and salted cod with onions, green and red peppers in vinegar & olive oil. Of course the fried potatoes are also good, especially when served with garlic mayonaise.

Just so long as they promise to be tasty, I will go to another tapas bar tonight.

So, we have our first visitor…Hedda, who has tracked us down again. Back in December, she and her husband Michael showed up in Krabi, Thailand and followed us to Bangkok to take a cooking class. Now, she’s here in Barcelona. We’ve shared tapas with her, many bottles of wine and cheese, gone to La Sagrada Familia, Fundacio Joan Miro, and there’s even more to do in the next few days with her. She’s our first visitor and we’re excited to have her here to share in our travels. I wonder where we’ll meet up with next!
And, the question also remains which one of you will we see next??

Finally catching up on posting on the blog. Rather than have then out of order, I back-dated them. Be sure to scroll down to see what you missed!

The month of July has been filled with amazing foods, not only because we are in Spain experiencing different foods but that we have had the chance of a lifetime– twice this month. Earlier this month Mike and I went to Per Se restaurant in NYC. We indulged in an amazing 9 course tasting menu by Chef Thomas Keller. We had a 10pm reservation, and didn’t finish eating until after 1am. We also had the opportunity to go to Sant Celoni to Santi Santamaria’s (pictured above on the right) restaurant El Raco Can de Fabes, to try the 12 course tasting menu. Both of these restaurants are rated as one of the top restaurants in the world.

If you’ve ever ordered a tasting menu, you know that you will be completely stuffed by the time all of the courses are served. The trick to a tasting menu is to pace yourself, only finishing the plates that are completely amazing, and tasting a few bites of those courses that are good, but do not blow you away. Otherwise, by the last course you will feel uncomfortably full. Unfortunately willpower and eating for me do not go hand in hand…it doesn’t have to be amazing for me to finish my plate. So what happens when I order a 9 course tasting menu or 12 course tasting menu, for that matter??

My top picks from Per Se; Berkshire pork belly, beets and leeks butter poached lobster, peach melba foie gras, and the brownie desert. My top picks from Can Fabes; langostino grilled in herbs, fresh cheese with anchovies, the cheese selection was delicious, and the melon and strawberry sorbet.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself at both of these restaurants, and feel very fortunate I was able to try the best that the culinary world has to offer. If given another chance to go back, I’ll take it. In the future though, I might have to order a la carte, rather than the tasting menu so I can walk out of the restaurant, and not be rolled out!

Stopping for the day in this sleepy little town who’s claim to fame is “el raco can de fabes” which we’re hoping is Spanish for “next best thing to ‘el bulli’, the #1 restaurant in the world located right here in Spain and which is only open a few months of the year and impossible to get into. ” We’re ready for some good eats tonight. I’m suspecting we will become familiar with many parts of the pig that we never knew existed before.

Finally doing our first bit of real siteseeing today. We’re waiting in line to see gaudi’s la pedrera.

So we spent the day at the FIB festival. Christine wisely navigated us to the front of the stage on the far side, a place no one else seemed to consider since we were able to spend the whole evening right up at the very front, separated only by the railing in front of the stage. The evening lineup was supposed to be a 1,2,3,4 punch of The Klaxons, Wilco, Dinosaur Jr. and Devo. Unfortunately the Kaxons were rescheduled and replaced by these guys:

Now how many people can say they’ve seen 3 grown men in full body skeleton scuba suits playing disco? Well apparently everyone in Europe besides us, because they all knew every word of every song in “Who Made Who’s” curiously entertaining set. Turns out these guys are from Denmark and are quite popular.

An interesting side note. A few days earlier I was archiving my old emails before we left the U.S. and ran across the very 1st email I ever wrote to Christine. She was in Denmark for work and we were planning a group trip to Coachella and I told her a story about meeting some Danes when I was in Australia and finding them very, very odd. It was my only Danish anecdote at the time. Now I have 2.

Wilco and Dinosaur Jr. played awesome sets and I spent the time between sets trying to convince the young Norwegian next to me that he had to have heard of Devo before if only via the cover of “Whip it” in that Swiffer commercial. He seemed amused by my explanation of the band’s importance to New Wave and even more so to Christine trying to figure out what grade she did a dance routine to “Whip It” in. (Answer: 4th…Youtube video to be posted later.)

Devo were actually great. The crowd was way more into them than Wilco or Dinosaur Jr. We just couldn’t get over their appearance. Ok, I know these guys are 60-ish, but so are these other guys. You tell me who looks in better shape:

Obviously the Devo diet was quite different than Mick and Keef’s over the years.

A short drive from Valencia, Benicassim is the home of the annual FIB music festival. We’re here to see Wilco and Dinosaur Jr. Devo is also playing and Mike can’t wait for them to go on. The concert is much like Coachella in the US with music lovers camping out; bands and dj’s playing throughout the night. The only difference is that the weather here is beautiful, not 105 degrees like at Coachella.

Waiting in the train station in costa rica… I mean Madrid

Spain is the country of ham. It’s everywhere and in everything. The streets are paved with ham.

Last night we stumbled upon this restaurant called “Botin” which is listed in the Guiness Book of world records as the oldest restaurant in the world. Established in 1725, not quite Columbus’ time, but still pretty old. The specialty of the house is the roast suckling young pig, which of course we had.

Below you’ll find Chrisitne’s video introduction.

It’s 90 degrees by mid-morning, but we have to go fishing when its low-tide. Today that means 11:43am. My family and I haven’t been fishing in many years together, and I was looking forward to it. Last night my dad set a crab trap on the pier behind their place, and by 11pm we couldn’t wait any longer to check on our catch… nothing. By the time morning rolled around, the bait was gone and the crab trap was empty.

This morning we drove out to a bridge close to St Pete Beach, and got our fishing nets ready. We were going crabbing! My parents got right into the water and started hunting crabs. You see, it’s better to go when it’s low tide so the water is more shallow and there is better visibility. Basically, you walk very slowly through nasty, murky water until you see something. Using the fishing net (think butterfly catcher) you scoop from the bottom up into the crab, and voile! the crab falls right into the net.

It took all of 5 minutes before I got into the nasty water, thankfully I got new sandals that have very thick soles, so I didn’t have to really touch anything on the bottom. The crabs blend into the grassy, cloudy-bottom water, but when I spotted one, I was thrilled! But in a way, the crab looked like it had been watching me all along. When the grass moved with the tide, and the crab became visible, I felt like it had its eyes on me. Turns out it was mating with another crab, and who knows what was really on its mind… We each caught a few crabs, and my parents got a bunch of sea urchins and conch. Mike was wondering why the sea urchins were moving. Have you ever seen one? They are prickly-looking balls, but the prickly things are the tentacles. Crazy what types of creatures live in the sea. These are all things we eat…well, maybe just some of us eat them…

{photo above is a 8 foot grouper we saw at the Georgia Aquarium earlier this week}

… on I95, driving to St. Petersburg FL. We’re dropping christine’s car off at her parent’s condo and figured we’d catch a few games of shuffleboard and see how we blend in with our fellow retirees while we’re at it. -posted from the road on my non-iphone.