The best thing about Spain are, not surprisingly, the tapas. This is especially the case because we went in the winter when the beaches and other warm weather activities (i.e., bullfights) are not available. While we were in Madrid, we learned the story behind tapas; to paraphrase, too many people were getting drunk so the King said that whenever someone has a drink, the drink must be covered by a plate so that people wouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach. Tapa is Spanish for top, so hopefully that story wasn’t just BS!

While traditionally, tapas are free, you have to pay for tapas at many of the restaurants now (perhaps this is an effect of tourists). It was fun to pop into a restaurant, have a few tapas, and then move on. Most tapas were between €3 and €5 euros, so you can try a few plates and have a drink for €15. What we didn’t know about until we arrived in Spain, were a different type of dish called pintxo. It’s like a tapas tapas, where instead of a small plate of food to share, you get a bite; usually on a piece of bread. Perhaps it’s because we weren’t Spanish, but we saw a lot of pintxos under “Tapas menus”; which is beneficial for the restaurant, but not as good of a value for the tourist.

The quality of the food seemed to be pretty good and there was a lot of interesting combinations (that worked too). We had a lot of seafood because there is high availability in Spain; although apparently most of it is not locally fished in the Mediterranean area. I still think the seafood may be better than other places in Europe, because the locals are more willing to eat seafood and thus suppliers will supply better quality ingredients.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: spanishxmas, travelling