my dad makes the best mint juleps.

...See?

Happy Father's Day to the best dad ever.

an update: new camera, and yes, I'm still here

So in the works is a post series about finding housing abroad - my terrifying and (in retrospect) hilarious experience, plus a "how you can shop smart for an apartment/room rental abroad" guide.

But I can't keep my thoughts on it, because I have more breaking news to share. I got my camera.

It's a Canon 5D Mark II and it is rocking my world.


First picture. Taken on full auto before I learned how to work the controls.


So for those of you who have been wondering: yes, this blog will continue even though I don't live in Bilbao anymore. It'll be a different format, different content and probably move. I'm working on it.

And thank YOU, beautiful new camera, because the quality of images is about to go way, way up. I'm too excited.

that last daytrip: vitoria-gasteiz

favorites

People always think Bilbao is the capital of Basque Country. Frankly, this is because it is the most badass and awesome of the three major cities, but unfortunately it is also incorrect.

The actual capital of Euskadi is Vitoria-Gasteiz, located in Alava. It was my destination for my final daytrip in Basque Country. Three friends and I packed onto a bus last Sunday morning to see what it was all about.

Los Indignados - and my friend Cat has already done a great summary of what that is all about, if you don't know, which you can read here - occupied the main square, the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca with their tent village.


"Indignados"



"Yes We Camp"



my friend Thomas was good enough to sit for about 689789 portraits


We spent the remainder of the day wandering around the city and noticing that it feels more, well, European than Bilbao (or even Donosti in some ways). One friend kept getting reminded of northern Italy. To me, the big, glassy windows on many of the buildings in the center of town were reminiscent of A Coruña.



For lunch we stopped in a couple of the bars that line the small streets of the old city, sharing pintxos around.



Bull's tail stew and carrillera (veal cheek) - from the first place we stopped

All in all a solid little adventure to say "farewell" to Euskadi. For now...

a festival, and students

Laudio had its annual feria right before the Giant Humongous Two Week Spring Break. The festival meant lots of stands with local food...



Idiazabal cheese-on-bread pintxos



Basque cakes


...Tractors (no photos of those, but you're not missing out much - it's pretty much all John Deere over here too, if you're interested in that stuff), livestock...


Some delightfully patriotic cows


(as a side note, at the end of the row of really beautiful horses they had were a cluster of decidedly not-beautiful horses. Hanging over their sides was a sign that said "Horses for meat." What up, culture shock?!?)

...and as an added bonus, my last class got to skip its lesson. Instead, the other (i.e. real) teacher and I took the class over to the feria.

a blog confession. and a cheeseburger.

So first off, during the hectic whirlwind that was my mom having surgery/my dad moving/my best friend getting married all in the week that I was back in the States, I did make sure to get my hands on the sorts of food you can't get here in Iberia. This included Mexican food, American Chinese food (as opposed to Spanish Chinese food, and believe me, there's a world of difference), and a Five Guys bacon cheeseburger.

Three words: no regrets there.

And now, the confession: I really didn't want to write this blog post. Ever go through phases where you just. don't. want. to. write in your blog? I sure am right now. I mean, the school year and my time in Bilbao are both drawing to a close, my mind's off in North Carolina at least half the time and seriously, what am I going to write about? "Students frustrating again today"? "Flowers bloom in springtime"? "Pollen worse in Raleigh"?

Full disclosure: blogging regularly is not the easiest thing. Especially when I don't feel I have much to say. Anyone relate? Other bloggers: how do you get past "slumps" in writing?

moving on.

About two weeks ago, my dad and stepmom found out they would be selling their house. And moving. Soon.

Like this Friday soon.

So here I am, back in North Carolina for my best friend's wedding, going through bunches of old stuff, taking what I want and leaving what I don't want to or can't bring with me.

Like these roses. Dad and Wendy put a lot into making their backyard gorgeous. I could say all the stuff you usually say about how we never really appreciate these things until they're gone, but it always goes that way, right? Of course it's bittersweet, but it comes down to this: it's time for a new chapter. I'm happy to get to watch them begin it.

a field guide to spanish junk food. part 2: gummies

You thought I'd forgotten about this series, didn't you? That I was going to leave you all alone, clueless and overwhelmed in the Spanish candy store, unless all you happened to want were some caramels?

Think again, because today I'm tackling what is probably the most popular and definitely the most overwhelming of the Spanish candy families: gummies, known locally as txutxes or the less-Basquified chuches.

The first thing you're going to notice when you approach the gummy section is how dang much there is to choose from.


only a tiny selection from a local chucheria


Hang on, you're saying, is that an egg? A turtle? A bone? A brain? A twisty-looking something or other?

The first thing to keep in mind is this: if it looks like something, it probably doesn't taste like that thing. Clownfish don't taste like clownfish, and burgers don't taste like burgers. They both taste like generic chemical fruit flavor.

The only exceptions to this rule I can think of are 1) fruits and 2) chilli peppers. Yes, this is Sp- uh, Iberia, where nothing is ever spicy, but these little guys are picantes nonetheless. Way to buck two rules at once, gummy chillis.

The next thing you'll notice is this: they're all priced by weight, so you can mix and match. And for your first time in the den of sugar rush that is the chuchería, this is your best plan of approach. My suggestion? Go through and grab one of everything that looks interesting. Grab one of everything that looks popular, too. Do a taste test and remember which ones were your favorites.

At this point, I've narrowed it down to a couple standbys I go for every time. Red gummies of the Manneken Pis (see middle right-hand side of picture) are reliably wonderful and taste a lot like Swedish fish, if you can get past the admitted weirdness inherent in chewing on a tiny peeing boy.
Cola bottles are good and, come to think of it, another exception to the "things don't taste like what they look like" rule.

My very favorites, though, are the bizarre fruit licorice tubes filled with cream (see just below Manneken Pis). Picture a Twizzler or an Australian fruit licorice, filled with the filling of a Cow Tale, and you pretty much have the amazing treat you see here. Lucky for you, these are also the most ubiquitous - I've never been in a chucheria without seeing these.

So get after it! Just keep in mind, though, if you're planning on returning to the US, you're going to find yourself stocking up before heading home, then hoarding them Gollum-like upon arrival on American soil. I still bring them back in embarrassing quantities to my friend Elizabeth.


these things: not just blackberry and raspberry flavored anymore

la spezia market

I'm not going to say a lot here, only that the market in La Spezia (very close to Riomaggiore and the other Cinque Terre towns) is outstanding. Great FLP and a lot of really special elaborated foods (breads, cheeses and olives stand out, although we missed the olive boat).


artichokes



grana padano cheese


Side note about that Grana Padano: I was saving half of it to take home with me to Bilbao. Then, on my last night in Milan, I broke down and ate it ALL, by myself, in the hotel room, watching QVC in Italian.

It was so good I didn't even mind that I was watching QVC in Italian.

Doubleheader!

Four years ago, I took this photo in Granada.

It was featured on WhyGo.com today. Awesome, and thank you to the WhyGo folks!

Focaccia: Greatest Hits

And so there I went, blabbering on about different travel styles and the Cinque Terre. Too much self-awareness, especially when I know what you people really want.

Food.

And so here are what I´m going to call my Top Three Focaccia Moments, even though really the pesto-mozzarella one I had in Genoa should be in here. But it´s not, because 1) I couldn´t delay the gratification to take photos and 2) my hands were too freezing to take photos. So my Almost Top Three, as follows:

3. Vegetarian Focaccia.

Ingredients, besides focaccia bread: Black olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms
Where I ate it: Monterosso
Other notes: Greasy, greasy, greasy, in the best way.

2. Potato-cheese focaccia.

Ingredients, besides focaccia bread: Potato, amazing cheese (asiago?)
Where I ate it: also Monterosso
Other notes: Perfect amount of crunch (from crispy cheese) and squish (from perfectly cooked potato). Mmm.


And the #1 focaccia of my trip, my life, ever:

Ingredients, besides focaccia bread: mozzarella, green beans, focaccia
Where I ate it: Princi bakery, Via Speronari #6, Milan.
Other notes: This is the best baked goods place I´ve ever been to. I know them´s fightin´ words, but I´m sticking with it. There was just enough pesto on here to give you that tangy, salty kick but still left you wanting more rather than overwhelmed. And green beans! Amazing. I wasn´t gonna, but I went back for a cream-filled carnavale pastry afterward. Couldn´t help it. I´m ´bout to start drooling, Homer Simpson-style, just thinking about this place.

I can´t stress this enough: Milan is worth it just for Princi bakery. The place will possibly be packed when you go, so it may take you a while to get your order in. Take it as the good sign it is and use the time to build the anticipation.

the cinque terre

the picturesque Manarola by night


Ah, the Cinque Terre. Five pristine, gorgeous towns along the Northern Italian coast. If you read any Rick Steves, at some point you're going to come across several gushing passages about how very wonderful and picturesque this place is. The towns are so small, he'll tell you. It's relaxing. It's so picturesque (get ready, I'm going to be using that word a lot)!



cat lounging picturesquely


Rick Steves is telling you the truth. It is small. It is gorgeous. It is relaxing.

And it is so heavily touristed that it's hard to tell where the Disneyland tourist stuff ends and the actual "local culture" begins.

This isn't a slam of the Cinque Terre. I really did enjoy my time there, I really did appreciate how beautiful it was. What I'm saying is, if you have a high value for your travels to include something picturesque (yes!) and to be able to get by on English because most people speak at least a little, the Cinque Terre is your spot. I want you to listen carefully: I think that's totally valid. It's just that I discovered that...

...If you place a higher value on, for example, "authentic local food," such as it is, the CInque Terre should perhaps be a day or two stop only on your itinerary. With the exception of one very good focaccia (don't worry, a focaccia greatest hits post is coming), every meal we had out was - there's not really a nicer way to say this - mediocre tourist food. I'm talking the same quality frozen pizza you get in the US. And while I couldn't blame the residents of the five picturesque (that's the 4th use, if you're counting) towns for adapting in this way to accommodate tourism, I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when I arrived in the less beautiful but much less tourism-impacted La Spezia.


exploring in a picturesque cove of wildflowers, photo courtesy my friend Bryan


Let's be clear: I'm not saying here that I wasn't a tourist. By golly, I was all sorts of tourist. I gawked at sites and snapped photos and, let's face it, even the fact that I was interested in such a thing as "authentic local cuisine" is a dead giveaway. But there are different styles of tourism, and as it turns out, mine consists more of pushing myself culturally (I barely know a word of Italian, see previous post) in order to access a part of a country less impacted by hordes of people descending upon it to take pictures and eat pizza, but not pizza that's too unfamiliar, pizza like they had in America, only here in Italy.

Whew, what a long sentence. Congratulations if you made it through that one. Conclusion: the Cinque Terre really are beautiful. Jaw-droppingly, mind-numbingly gorgeous. And, no surprises here, you're not the first person to realize that. Weigh what's more important to you, a perfect-looking spot or a more authentic eating experience, and plan accordingly.


picturesque boat

genova!

Shortly before we left on this adventure, the friend I was traveling with suggested we make a pit stop in Genoa on the way to our destination in the Cinque Terre.


We should have booked at least two nights there.

The city has really everything you could want: a university vibe in some areas, gorgeous buildings, free blood oranges on the ground (ok, just the one).

And pesto. My golly, that pesto. All I can say to explain how much I loved my piece of focaccia with cheese and pesto slathered all over it is I'm seriously considering naming my first dog "pesto." "Here, pesto! Roll over! That's a good boy!"

Sorry, no pictures. I was too busy stuffing it into my gaping maw. You'll just have to imagine it.

There was also an incredibly greasy but incredibly good rabbit lunch. And a pizza that involved raw tomato, which I managed to be pretty cool about, considering.


It certainly is.

if obelix had proposed right then, i would have said yes

Asterix and Obelix: favorite costume by far


Those of you in the non-Catholic world may not have noticed, but this past week was Carnival. A celebration in wackiness, costumes and all things enjoyable before Lent starts, Carnival (or Carnaval in espaneesh) is like an extended Mardi Gras. Except instead of one day, it's a week long; instead of ladies lifting up their shirts for beads, costumed children spray each other with silly string (as far as I can tell no one lifts up their shirt for anything here); and instead of raucous drunkenness it's... well, OK, there's still a lot of raucous drunkenness.



They set up a fairground with rides in the old part of the city here in Bilbao, where every adorable child in the city dressed as a pirate, dinosaur, flamenco dancer or clown dragged their parents Saturday afternoon.


daaaaaaaaaaaaw look at the little lion!


Luckily for me I was off to Italy, land of the truly wacky-doodle Carnaval (or Carnavale, as they say - say it with me, in an obnoxious Italian accent: Car-na-VAH-lay!), the next day. My friend Bryan and I gathered up extra confetti from the stands in Viareggio, then had an all-out confetti war. I was still picking confetti out of my shoes/hair/clothing days later.

Then off to Milan I went, where I went straight to the cathedral, the Duomo, and encountered the Most Confetti Ever.



As a side note: men in Venetian masks are not to be trusted. They will Silly String you like it ain't no thing.

i found this blood orange lying on the ground

and then I ate it.

tales of Italy, Carnaval and everything else I ate (not true, only highlights) coming soon.

a field guide to spanish junk food. part 1: caramel family

caramel/coffee/cream varieties


Ah, the chuchería. These junk food meccas are found all over this fine peninsula. The moment you step inside, you realize how much America in fact has to learn in the snacking department. Upwards of 20 varieties of puffed rice snack; gummy and sour treats beyond what you had previously even imagined; caramels with beautiful down-home looking labels. A first visit to one of these places can be daunting - where do you even begin?

Fear not: "A Field Guide to Spanish Junk Food" is here to help you navigate the snacking wonderland you've just discovered. Today, Part 1: the caramel and coffee candy family.

I rounded up some of the more common caramel and coffee flavored candies (OK, common in the Bilbao area), did a tasting (hey, it's educational) and came up with my top 3 most absolutely special and delicious local caramel treats to be found in your local chuchería.

Third Place: La Cafetera, Café con Leche (Pastillas Aroma)

Flavor: Coffee
Where it's from: Pamplona
Why it's awesome: Rich, creamy coffee flavor. And check out that label - this one definitely has the coolest label.

Second Place: Caramelos con Piñones, El Caserío

Flavor: Caramel and pine nuts
Where it's from: Tafalla (Navarra)
Why it's awesome: First flavor you notice: delicate caramel. Second flavor you notice: roasted pine nuts. And there are actual pine nuts in there, so the texture is fun, like a Bit o' Honey if it were hard instead of chewy.

First Place: Caramelos de Malavisco, Confiteria de Santiaguito.

Flavor: Caramel
Where it's from: Bilbao
Why it's awesome: Whoa, look at that amber color! The "Santiaguito" is perfectly simple: just pure caramel flavor, in that amazing "crust on top of a creme brulee" kind of way. Simple things done right, y'all. These are the ones my dad devours when I bring them home to NC.


Go forth and devour caramels.

silver lining

It's been raining the past few days. When I say "raining," I don't mean the big, fat drops we get in North Carolina (or "Northern Carolina," as the Ryanair website so charmingly calls it) that make the pavement steam and the air smell like wet grass. I mean sirimiri, that typically Basque weather that is a soft blanket of mist. It's not even drizzle, it's really more of a gentle mist or spray. The Basque sketch comedy show Vaya Semanita rips on it all the time, because this really is a rainy place.

The thing about all the rain here in Basque country is that it makes you appreciate the clear days so much more. The sunshine really does feel more special after a few days of grey, intermittent mist showers.

Especially days that end in evenings like this:



I really do love this city.

i think all that oven wants is a good exorcism

Snickerdoodles

No, they're not complicated. Anyone can make them (although not as many people seem to bake in Iberia as in the USA. I wondered why this was, but now it dawns on me that maybe all the ovens here are as evil as mine, which I cannot get to cook anything without burning it). But anyway, LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE.



So cute, right?!

Adapted from the standard Betty Crocker recipe:


3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 1/3 (plus change, a heaping 1/3) cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt (but a short 1/4 teaspoon; I've already almost doubled the salt here, let's not get crazy)

Vanilla extract, preferably a lot of it. I like a teaspoon or so. I'd probably add a tablespoon if I weren't over here with limited resources, trying to make my vanilla extract last.

Some more sugar, mixed with some cinnamon, on a little plate.

Heat oven to 400ºF. Or a little less than 200C, if your oven is crazy evil. Like mine.

Mix 3/4 cups sugar, the butter, shortening and eggs in large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.

Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Roll balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture you have on your little plate. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.

A note for people with evil ovens that love to burn your treats: 1) parchment paper is your friend. Lay it out on the cookie sheet. This helps but is not enough to foil the most determined of evil ovens so 2) make the cookies a little smaller so they cook inside faster. The bonus here is it also makes the cookies more adorable. 3) turn that broiler function on. It's your only hope of your cookies getting a nice tan on top before the bottom is incinerated. Freaking oven.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Which is to say, 5 minutes in an Evil Iberian Oven. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Makes 40 tiny cookies, or like 20 regular-sized ones.

the catalan snack that changed my life

Check out this raw tomato, just chillin' on my plate like it ain't no thang.


It's finally happened, folks. I think I've found my gateway drug to raw tomato enjoyment.

Regular readers will recall my long-standing distaste for raw tomatoes. I had almost resigned myself to a life of missing out on that sharp, acid bite of a raw tomato that people with more fortunate tastebuds are always raving about.

Then, last saturday, came pa amb tomàquet. That's right, you clever linguists: bread and tomato. It's crazy simple: toasted bread, rubbed with garlic, smeared with a raw tomato cut in half, and drizzled with olive oil. Oh no, you don't get to cook it once the tomato's on there: you just rub that tomato snot all over the place, then go to town.

I tried it; I liked it.

Then I had it again on Sunday; I loved it.

Then, curious to see if perhaps it was just something in that magical Catalan air, the same something that had possibly influenced the fantastical thought lives of Salvador Dali and Antoni Gaudi, I bought my own crusty bread and a tomato back in Bilbao.

I made it myself; I liked that, too (though not as much as the Sunday one; see picture. Seriously, that stuff was killer).


Sunday's p amb t


I'm still not up to full tomatoes yet, but that distinctive flavor and tomato snot are right there, on the bread, and I'm pretty into it.

There's hope for me yet.

so worth the pickpocket risk factor

It's routine for every visitor to Barcelona, really: take bus to Parc Güell; dismount bus; wander around; be amazed; take photo with the lizard-dragon thing. Also, possibly have pockets picked in the crowds. Petty theft is big in Barcelona.

So yes, basically, it's a tourist trap. But here's the thing: sometimes tourist traps are for a reason. The reasons here:

Columns of rocks rising up to create half-formed caves.



A wildly elaborate tile bench, winding its way across the top of the park.



A covered palace of white columns where you look up and are greeted by fantastical starfish in a sea of white tile.



And that lizard. He's beautiful, really.