The Worst Tourists Ever

Dear Generic Asian Tourists:

It is actually NOT acceptable to use the most GIANT flash ever and take 10,000 pictures with a telephoto lens during a flamenco performance when you are 4 rows away from the stage. Please do not stamp your feet and sing along (to an instrumental rendition of Carmen, nonetheless) when the performers are on stage and most of all, please be quiet and respectful of the performers and THE OTHER AUDIENCE MEMBERS!

Thanks for not giving a crap about anyone else in the entire building, crowding my friends' personal spaces to take a picture when they were just trying enjoy the dance, and basically ruining my already sub-par flamenco experience. Boo to you.

Sincerely,

The Only Six Americans In The Entire Building (ugh!)

-Amy

Almost Home

Well, here we are at Dublin International, about 7 hours from New York.

This trip has been fantastic, as all my Eurotrips have been. And this time I got to spend it with my lovely lass Amy.

But as always there were things that were not so good. In no particular order, here we're the 3 suckiest things that happened in the past week:
1. My shoes (see dedicated post)
2. Asian tourists in Flamenco show
3. Hotel Vilamari in Barcelona. These people should be looking forward to a hell of a review on Hotels.com.

I'll post a recap later if I feel so inclined. See you across the pond.

-ming

Seville

The temperature during the day while we were in Seville was consistently above 90 degrees. It was supposedly a dry heat but completely uncomfortable regardless. As a result, we looked for a shaded route everywhere we went.

The city itself is very aesthetic. The combination of Moorish and Roman architecture gave the place a very ancient feel.

Our first stop was the Bull-fighting museum. We got to walk into the stands and look into the ring, where a bull fight is currently scheduled for Sunday.

After this we visited the Torre del Oro, the Gold Tower. Apparently Seville used to be an extremely busy port, and centered the trade between Asia and the rest of the Mediterranean. The Gold Tower was a very important piece of the docks, though I could really figure out why.

A few cervezas later we walked into a theater where we had reserved some tickets for a flamenco show. Everything appeared normal until we walked to our tables to see that joining us were at least 3 bus loads of Asian tourists.

The show itself was somewhat entertaining. The dancers were competent and the guitarists were very skilled from what we saw. But it was difficult to concentrate with the amount of flashes going off during the performance, the idle conversations that were taking place DURING the performances, and the drunken Japanese man poorly singing along with Carmen. I felt embarrassed for these people.

After the show we watched Spain obliterate Ireland in their Eurocup game 4-0. We dined on some tasty tapas while trying to ward off the dozens of mosquitos swarming around us. I took great pleasure in ordering my meal in Spanish.

The next day we visited the Seville Cathedral. While standing in line Amy and I were accosted by some fortune tellers who gave her a random branch that we could not identify.

It took 33 ramps and 17 steps to reach the top of the Cathedral bell tower. I rushed up the last few steps in anticipation of a breeze that never came. The view, however, was spectacular as you can see below.

A short jaunt through the Alcazar Real was up next. We saw some peacocks in the gardens, who surprised us with how loud and obnoxious they can be.

The afternoon of the second day was spent sitting in the high speed train. The 5 and a half hour ride meant we had little time to do anything once we had reached Barcelona again.

-ming

Do Not Buy These Shoes

You guys. These shoes. Oh my god are they terrible. Más Terible.

I hope the Indonesian child who sewed it together is ashamed of himself. I had only worn them for 2 days on this trip and already they were coming apart. It's great that they make me look like a successful yupster but the trade off is not worth the half dozen blisters.

-ming

Madrid Cooking Class

My new thing for every vacation following this one is going to be to take a cooking class...regardless of cost. Wednesday was a wonderful experience in both Spanish culture/hospitality and Spanish cuisine. Our chef, Gabriela, took us in and shared with us some of the most delicious Spanish dishes made with the freshest ingredients you can buy. She even said she bought the seafood the day before and the fresh cherries from her own orchard.

As far as the dishes go, we made 4 of them: salmoréjo (a cold gazpacho-type soup made with pulverized bread & veggies); Ibérico pork with Pedro Ximenéz sauce; fideua-pronounced "fileguac"-(paella but with noodles in place of rice); and he last dish was an almond cake with mint sorbet. Spaniards take their lunches the most seriously. Usually, they take hours to enjoy their lunch but only eat something light and fast for breakfast and dinner.

Gabriela even taught us how to peel and prepare artichokes. I will include a good picture of Ming in her amazing kitchen doing just that. I made the cake, he did artichokes, Fred helped peel the shrimp and Ruben seared the pork. We each did our parts and the end result was a sweet, savory pork, a creamy, but light, tomato soup with bits of Iberian ham and egg, salty macaroni-filled seafood fideua, and a sticky lemon almond cake with sweet mint sorbet!

It's midnight in Sevilla and I'm hungry just thinking about it again....

Fun fact: Spaniards eat their dinner around 9pm! It's light out here until around 10 so I completely lose track of all sense of time. Siestas totally make sense since it's blazing hot in the afternoon and doing anything but napping in the A/C is crazy.

Til next eats!
-Amy

Madrid

The train ride to Madrid was mostly uneventful, with the sole exception of my backpack ejecting itself from the luggage rack and landing squarely on my cabeza. No harm done though, I was able to recite all 21 alphabets perfectly.

After we checked into our hotels, we met Ruben's mom and sister for dinner in a restaurant named Kukuruxu or kumuruxu or something to that effect. Amy and I ordered a monkfish and seafood stew while everyone else elected to split a large order of shellfish. Our soup was amazing, but it looked like the shellfish dish was more work than it was food.

We awoke Wednesday morning with only one thing in mind- our cooking class! I'll let Amy write an entry about that, she can explain it much better than I.

After the class Amy and I had some housework to do- our mound of dirty laundry had grown considerably and the supply of fresh clothes dwindled, so we decided to tour the inside of a Spanish laundromat.

In the afternoon we took. stroll in the Museo del Prado and looked at some Goya paintings. Then we walked into the nearby park for some people watching before some more tapas for dinner.

-ming

Valencia

I wrote a much longer post about Valencia but somehow my phone deleted it. Since this post is several days late already I hope you'll pardon the abridged version.

We arrived in Valencia around 3, and headed to the hotel. After checking in, we found a restaurant right next door. The place had a lot of customers, a good decor, an best of all, no pictures of the food on the menu.

When the food arrived we realized that we had chosen the right place. It was the best food we had eaten up until that point on this trip. We ordered some paella with rabbit and chicken, some meat with green beans (we are fairly sure that it was beef), and two other dishes that I can't recall at this point. But worry not, we took pictures of everything.

A little while later a man who had been having a business lunch at the table next to us came over and began speaking to us in Catalan. Apparently he was the owner of the restaurant and the man he was meeting with was a producer of olive oil. He gave us a sample and it was so good that we bought two bottles from him right then.

After lunch we decided to go to the beach to ward off some of the heat. What appeared to be a short jaunt turned out to be an hour-long trek through the poop smelling-est section of the city. We did stop at the biggest opera house in the world though (after the one in Sydney).

Eventually we arrived at the beach. Amy and I had forgotten our bathing suits, but we just ran into the water anyway. Now I can say that I've been submerged in the Mediterranean Sea!

The rest of the day involved dragging out soaking asses back to the hotel, some more tapas for dinner and some much needed sleep.

The next morning we explored the town some more, stopping at the Cathedral of Valencia, where the Holy Grail is kept!! It looks like Indy was looking in the wrong place as this church had kept the cup in its possession for 2000 years.

We scaled the walls of one of the old city gates, and got an eyeful of the town from the top.

Then it was off to the train station to catch our ride to Madrid.

-ming