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.
Read moreTapeo: a tapas crawl
Restaurant. A place of restoratives. We can thank the French for that word, for that establishment, that most common way of eating. Go, find a place, be seated and take the menu, flick through with the respective groans of thought, alight on whichever starters and mains you’d like, as well as a peep at the wine list, and order.
Read moreFoodie in the north: Navarra/La Rioja
After the early morning flatlands of Castille, Pamplona arrived under a dense sky of pillowy grey clouds that spat rain at the cobbles. The great city of Hemingway and bulls had made itself clear. You may enjoy me, but you shall not do so lightly.
Read moreSevilla: the Moorish picture book
The great Sevilla. Byron said it was ‘famous for oranges and women.’ V.S. Pritchett in his lovely book ‘The Spanish Temper’ claimed that ‘Seville is a city of shadows which tunnel under a dense foliage that is dead still, and pleasure seems to walk with one like a person’. That great travel poet Jan Morris spoke of the ‘dazzle of Seville’. It is not a city in need of writings. Less a hidden treasure like medieval Caceres or handsome and green Oviedo, and more a celebrated star of the south.
Read moreThe Expat's Home
“The World. That place you call home.”
So said the BBC advert that coolly asked the viewer to learn more about their world. But it was right. The world was the place that I called home. Of course my real home is my town. The small unimpressive town of Maidenhead that slinks off the River Thames. The house, my house, almost unchanged, for 28 years. Berkshire, my green county, stuffed with small villages, grand houses and fields and fields and fields. That is the home of my history. But maybe, Madrid is my home, or Moscow, or, as purred by the BBC, the World…
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