One of my favorite hobbies is to cook, though based on all of my post to date you'd assume it was eating and drinking good wine (close seconds!). I love learning new dishes and then trying them out at home (usually not nearly as good as in the host country due to freshness of food here vs. in the US, but I try) on my unsuspecting parents and brother in law. They're usually good sports so you all better get ready because I've got some good spanish food coming your way!
Above: the cooking school I attended for an afternoon. Espai Boisa which our instructor tells us means "a place to eat good and healthy". Since I don't speak Catalan, I'll take her word for it.
Above: Guess who?! Yes, it's me! And I'm getting ready to make my own little spanish tortilla.
Above: The flip utilizing a plate. Our instructor Alejandra was one smart lady not having us "flip" our tortillas.
Above: me and my spanish tortilla. If I do say, it was pretty good.
Above: Our paella.... I've had some pretty bad paella here and I have to say I would have given up completely if it wasn't for this one. It was so good, it's just like what I was used to when I lived here years ago. Thanks Alejandra!
Above: The rest of the crew. I know this has a deja vu feel to it, but no, this gentleman was married to the dark haired woman to his right. He was not a catholic priest.
Post cooking we decided to walk around the streets because we figured out our class was on some catholic holiday (August 15th - something pertaining to the Virgin Mary. No one knew really) and thus EVERYTHING was closed. While a Wednesday, the emptiness definitely had a feel of a Sunday.
What we discovered is that various streets had been decorated and that there was a parade. Below are pictures from our outing. One thing interesting to note - the decorations are plastic bottles, soda cans, and other items that they normally would recycle here. Pretty cool.
Below: these are old soda cans, opened up to look like flowers.
Below: Not sure who these figures are supposed to be but here is the parade. We were intrigued by the amount of devils and fire in a parade to celebrate the Virgin Mary.
Below: Again, unsure of the relevance of this dragon in a parade for the Virgin Mary; however they put giant sparklers in this thing's mouth and light it up. I did read somewhere that the tradition of the dragon relates back to the Roman occupation (pre 1000 ad) and as legend has it, warriors would tell tales of slaying dragons in far off land and then return with the corps. In actually they likely had found and paraded around whale bones but dragons is a better story, in probably anybody's book.
While sparklers are usually fun to watch and even have on the 4th of July, you can see below that these weren't your average sparklers and why all of us went running for cover.
Below: I'm sure the absence of rain doesn't help matters but yes, the dragon's sparklers set this palm tree on fire.
Happy to report they had a fire extinguisher and put the fire out. Unfortunately, we all inhaled whatever the hell is in a fire extinguisher. It's not pleasant.
Elsewhere in Barcelona.....
I decided to go see some flamenco dancing (when in Spain, right?) at Palacio del Flamenco, a recently refurbished theatre. It also had some high ranking feedback on Tripadvisor so why not try it. Enjoy the pictures but note I agree with many of the comments; this place is a tourist trap! I don't regret going but I have seen better and more authentic dancing at Las Tapas (tapas restaurant) in old town Alexandria, VA. Please, please if you ever go do not get the combination dinner and show ticket. I didn't and can tell you from the ambiance you'll be very disappointed you paid for the food.
Vale! Olé!
Below: SIZE does matter! As you can see the largest bottle on the shelves is barely bigger than the size of my hand. This just illustrates how out of control our portion size are in the US
All of course is smaller except for olive oil; a jug? REALLY? I mean it is good so I can't judge (I polished off a 1 liter bottle in my 6 weeks here so.....)
Below: the outside of Esglesia de Sant Pau del Camp between Parallel and Las Ramblas. It's said to be one of the oldest roman structures in Barcelona; constructed sometime in the twelfth century.
No comments:
Post a Comment