…the now insignificant village of Palos de la Frontera. It was form this port that Columbus sailed on Aug. 3rd, 1492, on his voyage of discovery with this three small vessels, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niña. - Baedecker;s Spain and Portugal, 1901
Read moreThrough the Ham Towns...
It was a hot, cloudy sky that covered the world south of Badajoz as we peeled southwards. These were roads less travelled, far flung dusty stretches of tarmac than ran parallel to Portugal. Simple countryside that recalled the Serengeti and which produced manifold conquistadores. Did they simply want to get out?
Read moreThe Road to Badajoz...
There were always corners of Spain, far-flung places with historical and political significance, that you never seemed to quite get to. Badajoz was one of those places. A provincial capital of 150,000 people, a legendary border town near Portugal where battles and skirmishes raged between French, Spaniards, Portuguese and the British, and a city that I was always told wasn’t worth visiting. So more my desire to go then. With me it was never a direct route. In this country gems were always scattered along any route.
Read moreAlgarve and Lisbon: a foodie adventure!
In my century-old Baedecker’s Spain and Portugal guide 496 pages are given to Spain and 82 are dedicated to neighbouring Portugal. This may seem a touch unfair, but given that the population of Spain in 1900 was around 18.5 million and Portugal 5.5 million, and given that Spain is 5.5 times bigger than Portugal, one could argue on the fairness of this distribution. The simple fact is that, despite its brilliance and culinary delights, Portugal is smaller and has less to see.
Read moreMunching around Mallorca!!
Mallorca recalled to me a paradise island perhaps ruined by tourism. My thoughts turned to places like Magaluf; a Benidorm-like hive of young Brits obliterated on cheap alcohol, scabby beaches with crystal clear waters and high rise apartments and hotels. An island then where the national drink was surely cold jugs of fake sangria and where everybody ate defrosted paella and had churros for dessert. The capital, Palma, came as quite a surprise.
Read moreSherry days in Jerez.
The word ‘sherry’ conjures up in the mind a menagerie of wrongs. It is usually thought of as a sickly sweet dessert wine that grandma drinks at Christmas; pouring a little dram out of the bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream that has been sitting there for years, the alcohol all evaporated off and with sugar crystals sticking the cap on. This is not the sherry that confronts the visitor in Spain.
Read more{Rotten Sharks}
I dimly remember, quite some years back during an online video binge where I watched clips of young Americans trying out foreign sweets and objectively stupid people try ‘the world’s hottest peppers’, stumbling upon a video of ‘disgusting foods’ or some such theme. One part had two grown men eating hákarl, after sniffing it with scrunched noses and various ‘Oh, God!’ exclamations. They retched and aimed to spit it out. If you go to YouTube and type in ‘eating hákarl’ or ‘eating rotten shark’ there are pages and pages of clips, mostly homemade, mostly loud young Americans, eating and overreacting to this Icelandic delicacy. There is indeed even one clip involving Gordon Ramsay retching at it on his own show, and even Andrew Zimmern went to shoot an episode of his Bizarre Foods series there and said ‘That’s hardcore. That’s serious food. You don’t want to mess with that. That’s not for beginners.’
Read moreJules Verne and the Dead Berserkers
Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jökull of Snæfell, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the Kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth.
The time had come to leave the well-heeled and hip confines of the capital ‘city’, pick up my soon-to-be-beleaguered hire car and head out into the countryside. The aim for the first day, the first opportunity for me to unleash myself into the wild, was the Cornwall-shaped peninsula of Snæfellsness.
Read moreA Food Walk Around Reykjavík
How do you get to know a place; get to know a city? You can read about it in a book or peruse the pages of Wikipedia. You can arm yourself with context. Hit the sights: stroll around the key monuments and spend time in the museums. If you go to Paris you just must go to the Louvre. But is Paris only hewn from the art of foreign and long-dead artists? No; it’s also a big confusing and sprawling mass of coffee shops, absinthe bars, high-end restaurants, chummy Brasseries and fragrant pastry shops. I learned to tolerate and even like Paris through its food. I fell in love with Spain through my belly. Portugal clung close to my heart for its multicoloured buildings as well as its good cheap wine and wonderful fish and custard tarts. Innocuous little Belgium warmed itself to me for its fine beer and Hamburg too became a personal fan favourite thanks to its pickled herrings and curried sausages. So, despite not knowing what to expect - for Iceland is no top draw on the list of foodie countries - I would try to know Reykjavik via my gut.
Read moreNortheast Snapshots #3
On a sunny morning, warmer than it should be in a place so green and wet, Bilbao is magnificent. Curling out around the prim and taught little cathedral, no higher than the three-story apartment buildings, the old town bustles with weekenders. Unlike the homogenous white-washed villages of the southern end of the country, the northern regions adopt individuality. Each building, stuck to the one before it and clinging to the one after it, has its own design and colour scheme. Covered balconies called galerias stick out in reds, blacks, maroons, sapphire blues, counter-coloured against pastel walls; peaches, pinks, vermillion, burnt honey.
Read moreFeasting in Bulgaria’s Thracian Lowlands!
Bulgaria is not a name that conjures up the idea of European gastronomy. One leaves that to France, Spain, Greece, Turkey. The Balkans alway brought to mind a people between Slavic and gypsy and Mediterranean. An area of wars and power struggles; from the Ottomans to the struggles in Kosovo. An area where there used to be a place called Yugoslavia. The last thing on anyone’s mind was ‘oh, but the food!’.
Read moreGobbling up Austria #2
Vienna was always a place that sounded classy. A place that sounded elegant; suited and booted. A city of waltzes and coffee shops, yet also a city of sausage and schnitzel. But it was also one of those cities that lacked a firm trademark image or look. For most people when you say London, Paris, Moscow, New York they already know it. You say Melbourne, Tokyo, Madrid and people know the names but not the visuals. That was Vienna to me.
Read moreGobbling up Austria #1
Austria… What did that word conjure up? A small topography-laden blip of a once great empire? A poor man’s Bavaria? A county of bonkers hikers attacking the Alps in shorts and sturdy boots filled with fat socks? In truth Austria was one of those places I definitely knew without knowing.
Read moreBanqueting around Bavaria!
Munich’s reputation and fame, or infamy, preceded it. This was a city, a big one, whose image was one of drunken debauchery. The capital of Bavaria: a land of huge glasses of beer, busty blonde women in dirndls handing out baked pretzels and plates and platters loaded up with sausages and slabs of indiscriminate pork meat with a side helping of sauerkraut and spicy German mustard. Of course, this was a stereotype, though, like the Cotswolds in the UK or Andalucía in Spain; one where it existed for real.
Read moreCaves and Wine
The gastronomic throngs and beatings of the Spanish Christmas were long gone, but my body had yet to shuffle off its mortal coil of fat. It was yearning to be lighter, breathe more easily when exercising and give my liver a few days off. However, my addiction to restrained hedonism and well-thought out scholarly gluttony meant never saying ‘no’ to more eating, more drinking, and more travelling. So, along with fellow face-stuffers Joy and Debbie, a car was hired and we headed deep into the southeastern lands of La Mancha; to the province of Albacete.
Read moreFood and wine in Middle Germany.
Der Hunger kommt beim Essen - Appetite emerges while eating [German proverb]
The idea was a simple few-day holiday in Frankfurt to visit friends. But, as ever, it was really an excuse to ply my body with an objectively unhealthy amount of food. This was Christmas; the frilly squares in all the towns across the land had been bejewelled with twinkling lights and countless wooden huts that steamed with food cooking in the cold. This was Christmas; and there was a lot of food to be had.
Read moreEast From Madrid #4: War and Wine
The last morning started with a trip I had longed to make since my days at university. The old ruined village of Belchite; victim of the Civil War.
Read moreEast From Madrid #3: Castles from the Sea
The sea would remain our companion for the morning. The big aquamarine slab of glitter that was Valencia’s languid coast. The heat, palpable and clingy, met with the breeze on the hill at the first stop of interest through Valencia’s ugly northern outskirts. The monastery of El Puig - one of the region’s great houses - sat, bursting out of the titular village around it. A rosy pink crenellated slab of old stones surrounded by boxy hodgepodge houses that didn’t hint at luxury. Then rice fields. Then the line of holidays high rises and then the sea.
Read moreEast From Madrid #2: Pious Rice Fields
Summer had finally had finally rid itself of the long trousers and jackets and had hauled itself over the Valencian Community; Spain’s eighth largest region. The air had taken on that spongy tangibility only really present in celestially warmed coastal zones; and the decision was taken to finally drive roofless. Exuberance at its finest.
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