Food

Hola!
So I realized that I haven't been talking much about the food of Barcelona/Spain. I'm not really sure why I'm not talking about it, it's not bad. Some of it is quite amazing, but some dishes have an acquired flavor. Most of the food is very bland. They don't use spices or hot sauce or anything really, so it's either bland or fried. All of the fried things I've eaten have been really good.

Let's get a little more specific. Tortillas in Spain are not tortillas in America. They're potato and egg - no vegetables, no sauce, just potato and egg. It's really good with something else, but by itself it's kinda bland. An absolutely spectacular Spanish concept is the Tapas. Tapas can be any variety of things; calamari, croquetas, mushrooms, papas bravas, bread and tomato. But if you're in Spain and you see a Tapas Bar definitely go and see what kind of tapas they have. Now, what is normally done is that a group of people will go to a restaurant and order a number of tapas, they're usually appetizer sized, and then just pick off the plates of tapas. It's absolutely wonderful and has a very laid back and casual atmosphere to it.

Here's a croqueta right before it disappears. It usually comes with 4 or 6 of these. We were hungry...


I could seriously write a book about the various sorts of tapas that I've seen/ tried, but my absolute favorite so far has been the papas bravas. It's basically fried potato wedges with a special spicy sauce on top. (FYI - American "spicy" is much hotter than Spain "spicy") Another simple tapa is "pan con tomato" or bread with tomato and that's pretty self explanatory.
Tapas are usually found in the restaurants and bars, but my host mom has been cooking a different dinner for us almost every single night. And she loves her seafood. We've had squid a few times and grilled fish and mussels and snails, yes snails. I was about to eat one and then I saw the little eyes and I couldn't do it. I apologized to my host mom and she just laughed at me (in a nice way).

Here are some mussels from a restaurant. Delisioso!


Here's another dish that we ordered. It's a rice and seafood thingy. It was really good.


And here is my all time favorite drink of Spain - Sangria! It's a fruit punch with wine. A-MAZING!!! I'm determined to find out how to make it so I can have it in the states.


And me and my roommate found a wonderful little candy shop in one of the touristy neighborhoods. Spain has some really good candy.