To wrap up my trip to Spain I figured I'd talk a little about the food and our drink experiences and whatever else comes to mind along the way.
For starters I'll say that the food we ate was really top notch. Our meals weren't fancy or anything but everything we tried in Barcelona looked really appetizing and more importantly it tasted really good. I haven't been to many places in Spain but overall I left the country with the belief that the food there is really quite exceptional. It could be an over generalization I suppose, but first impressions go a long way, as the saying goes.
Most of our meals consisted of tapas that we shared as a group. It was a really great way to experience a wide variety of different dishes and flavors.
I don't remember everything that we ordered (even looking at the photos) but I remember everything being delicious.
One thing that I really wanted to try in the country was paella since it's a traditional dish that the coutry is famous for. It was served all over the city so it wasn't at all hard to find. We ended up going to a decent restaurant right by our Airbnb and the paella there didn't disappoint at all.
It was delicious and everything that I hoped it would be. The dish served two people so we ended up getting two different versions of it a trying both.
The wine was really good as well from what I remember. This photo must have been taken by one of the other guys because I wasn't keen on the beer in Spain and mostly stopped drinking it after the first night.
We tried two different beers and I disliked them both, but then, I'm a bit of a beer snob so don't rely on my opinion.
I think the beers were Moritz and Estrella.
I really disliked Estrella, which was a shame because I think that it's local to Barcelona. Moritz was slightly better but I still didn't care for it.
Here's a photo of us at the bar one night. I drew sunglasses on the others to make them look cool in case they don't want to be featured in my blog.
One of the bars served these flaming drinks. They looked really cool despite being a major fire hazard. Something that I learned during my time in Europe is that most of the countries we visited didn't take fire safety very seriously. With my background being in fire protection the unsafe conditions always stood out like a sore thumb. No fire sprinkler systems is to be expected given all of the old buildings, but I also rarely saw smoke detectors or fire alarm systems, bars were often filled way past capacity and many of them (as well as shops and restaurants) had doors that open inwards. So over crowded bars with flaming drinks and/or red hot hookah coals moving aimlessly through crowds... such places are quite literally death traps. I basically had to shut my eyes to it and ignore it. Drinking more helps as well.
One of the mornings we had empanadas and coffee for breakfast from a little hole in the wall cafe. I think this was my first time ever having them. They were quite good and definitely something different than I would normally eat for breakfast.
Well thats it for my trip to Spain. Until next time, thanks for stopping by.
Note: a lot of these photos were taken by my friends and fellow expats. Special thanks to them for sharing them with me and allowing me to post them.