Spain is a great place to eat. Of course we managed to find ice cream on a daily basis.
Even at Park Guell. In many places the beer was cheaper than soda.
A very common appetizer consisted of patatas bravas - fried potato dumplings with a slightly spicy sauce for dipping.
The first night in Barcelona, we went to a restaurant very close to our apartment and had a great meal, including this nice ice cream with a mint syrup.
After we left Barcelona we drove down to swim in the Sea, and afterwards had a nice snack in the open air.
We stayed a couple of nights at Paradores in Spain - these are old castles that the government has somewhat recently converted into high-end hotels. The food at them is very good. This dinner was at Parador Tortosa.
We ate at a lot of tapas places, where you order several little dishes, or pick them from refrigerated display cases at the bar. Eero ordered this kind of tuna salad on bread in more than once place.
Cielo and Eero discovered a great Spanish drink while we were traveling, which was called "Fanta". They were allowed to have some at most once a day. In Spain we discovered you can get it in either limon (lemon) or naranja (the usual orange) variety. Here is Cielo savoring it. This is in the town of Calatayud, at a tapas place called Cervezeria Bavaria (there was a Ceverzeria Berlin right across the street, for some reason).
This tapa was pretty good - it's a hard-boiled egg with tuna and cheese, breaded and deep fried.
Here's an example of one of the tapas bars. You pick out the food you want and they either serve it to you directly (if it doesn't need cooking), or they take it in the back and cook it up (as with this bacon in the foreground, or the shrimp).
Calatayud had a big walkway between the streets that functioned as the main promenade. If you took a table out there, a server from the restaurant that managed those tables would come out and take your order. It was a little more hit and miss, since you couldn't just point at what you wanted, though.
In Alhama de Aragon, where we had gone in search of a mineral hot springs spa named Balnearios Termas Pallares, we finally found them (this was the same town as the backing-up-100-meters-of-narrow-alleys story), but the restaurants at the place were all closed. Not knowing that, we wandered into the completely empty (of customers and staff, except for the waitress folding napkins) fine dining room (also not knowing that), and were seated at a table.
After blanching at the prices (it was definitely a spa chef's prix-fixe kind of setup), we asked if there wasn't another, more casual dining location in the hotel, and the same waitress walked us down to the elevator and escorted us to a bar/cafe, which was also deserted. She proceeded to open it up, take our orders, and deliver some fantastic food. Even the bar nuts were great.
You can see how empty it was. Just another case of great Spanish hospitality.
On another day, we were on our way to Monasterio de Piedra and stopped at this little roadside restaurant. It was a great deal for adults - a giant bowl of soup, an entree, and a quarter bottle of wine (they bring the whole bottle and trust you to measure it out) for ten euros. Here's Vernon enjoying his gazpacho.
This is migas, the entree Vernon ordered. It's fried bread crubms, grapes and sausage.
Alison had migas later in a fancier venue, the Parador Siguenza. Here the various add-ons are in their own little compartments. We both decided the roadside place's version was better.
However, also at Parador Siguenza, Vernon had this roasted goat with scalloped potatoes. The goat was very good, but the potatoes (cooked with the goat fat) were unbelievable!
In Madrid, we went to a metal market. The kids located a frozen yogurt shop, where you get to pick the add-ons to be dolloped on top. Surprisingly (especially to the kids), the yogurt is "plain yogurt" flavor, not vanilla. So you really want to pick toppings that add some sweetness.
Also at the metal market, Alison and Vernon found a sangria bar. The sangria was made with port wine instead of regular red wine, and was very tasty.
In Madrid we ate at many little tapas places. The ones in Madrid were fancier than those in the small city of Calatayud, including this place, which served fermented cider (to adults) and fanta (to kids) in these cool glasses. Once again you can see the refrigerated tapas enclosure.
This particular place had no seats - you just get your food and find a counter to put it on.
Some tapas places are sit-down restaurants instead of being casual point-and-get places, including this one in Barcelona. Alison took this picture and got both Eero and, in the mirror, the busy kitchen.
Cielo has since said many times that her favorite food on the trip (sometimes she says her favorite food of all time) was the thick melted chocolate in which you dip fried churros. It's commonly used as a brunch food, or after a long night out. Here are Eero and Cielo chowing down. One thing we learned - if you order the churros separately at the establishment in which you find yourself, order a lot.
Ham and cheese sandwiches are the most common quick food in Spain (they are sometimes called "bikinis" for some reason).
This sandwich is not a "bikini" because it also has a fried egg. The kids thought this was a great idea - having it peek out through the top.
The most common tapa you see people eating, at least in fancier places, is Iberian ham. It can be startling to see in grocery stores and markets, because it's very expensive in the first place, and in the second place the price is listed in kilograms.
In fact, one place we ate at in Madrid called itself the Museo de Jamon, or the Museum of Ham. Here's Vernon trying the specialty.
For the last dinner we had in Spain, we suddenly realized we had not tried paella. The clerk at our hotel recommended a restaurant that was a real homey place - the manager was also the matriarch of the place, and waited tables. We decided to go for the classic seafood paella.
