Bordeaux Bound

In Spain and most of Western Europe, Good Friday and Easter Monday are official holidays.  Many schools close for the entire week for "Semana Santa" (week of saints), basically it is their Spring Break.  We decided to go somewhere for the 4 day weekend.  How did J and I decide where to go?  I hopped on the discount airline site and plugged in the dates, then searched every city from Amsterdam to Zurich.  We ended up with Bordeaux (so much time wasted after B!!), a very famous wine region in the southwest of France, along with St Emilion.  Since the biggest appeal is the wine, we booked a "chateau" in the middle of the vineyards.

Fortunately, I did my homework and saw that the chateau was hard to find, so I used our trusty friend, the GPS, with coordinates.  Even with that, we got lost a few times, but we eventually got there.  Once there, we found out that of the couple that owned the house, only the wife spoke english, and she was away taking care of a sick family member.  It made for quite the game of charades, trying to get a map of the town, and ideas of where to go.

They say French, Italian, and Spanish are all related, but J and I found French very difficult, both written and spoken.  We could guess at Italian, but were bad at French.  The other observation we had was that very few people spoke English, and almost nobody spoke Spanish.  So we did a lot of pointing and guessing, along with chopped speech.  J and I have noticed that no matter what foreign country we are in, our first instinct is to speak Spanish.  I suppose it comes from the idea that if the people dont speak our language, then we switch to "foreign" mode, which = Spanish.

The town of Saint Emilion is a famous wine producer, but it is also a medieval city, built totally of stone on a hillside.  From what we saw, it only contained restaurants and wine shops.  It was still a pretty town, and we were able to find an English speaking shop owner that spent a good amount of time with us.

We were also able to visit 6 chateau vineyards.  Sadly, the vines were just starting to grow branches, so they werent as pretty as they would be later this summer.  I still really enjoyed walking through the vineyards.

The wine of Bordeaux and St Emilion all has about the same composition: 80% merlot, 20% sauvignon franc.  One interesting tidbit about cabernet sauvignon, it takes a few extra weeks before it is ready to harvest, but in that region, those weeks have very unpredictable weather, so the risk of rain is too high to grow a lot of it for the wines.  So if you ever have a Bordeaux wine, that is why there isnt much Cab. Sauv.

What post would be complete without the mention of food!  The highlight was definitely the breakfast.  The chateau had an included breakfast spread.  I dont know where they got the croissants from, but they were delicious!  Also included were homemade breads, and several types of delicious jams.  The owner was incredibly nice, and we definitely understood "te" and "cafe".  

We spent a little bit of time in the city of Bordeaux as well.  The city is an interesting mix of Victorian "cohesion" along the waterfront, with a gothic cathedral that stands above everything.

The city was specially designed to look similar to cities like Venice and Amsterdam from the water,  It was a big port before dams made the river too small upstream, even though it is ~100km to the ocean.  But just off the river, there is a cluster of gothic building and plazas, that were quite enjoyable to walk around.  

 We also had a very nice dinner at a small little restaurant, and were able to enjoy a little bit of champagne.

 And finally, our barometer for any new country we go to... McDonalds.  In Greece there was a Spankopita like dish, in Italy, there were fried, stuffed olives, and prawns, and here in France was the ever famous "Royale with Cheese".

Sorry everyone for the long delay between the trip and the post, I'd like to pretend I will post more often, but history has shown I am not so good at that.

Valencia Fallas

In March, J and I went to Valencia, Spain... land of the oranges. We went for a festival called "Las Fallas". Some background: A "Falla" is a wooden structure, anywhere from 2m -47m (6ft - 150ft) tall. The legend says the festival started when the city's carpenters had some leftover wood from the previous year that they needed to get rid of to clear out space. Rather than throw everything out, they decided to build something. Now each community works to build their own structure, fundraising and building the structures.

Some more background: Valencianos love fireworks. I mean, they really LOVE them! "Petardos" are more like firecrackers, ranging from snappers, to black cats, to cherry bombs and even bigger. There was not even a 10 minute period where there was not some sort o explosion. With this in mind, the community naturally decided that the best way to celebrate the hard work and effort of the carpenters would be to blow everything up, and burn them to embers...

J and I hopped a bus and away we went. We expected the fallas to look a little like an average 4th of July parade float, or maybe the fiesta major de Gracia. In short, we expected them to look a little homemade. In this regard, we were completely blown away.

While we were impressed by the quality, we were a little bummed by the themes. The smaller fallas are "critiques", but mostly they seemed to be depressing depictions of the crisis and the state of the economy. The bigger ones were more optimistic and impressive to visit, so we tried to get to those more. Over the years, it has grown to such a level that there are people that design/build fallas year round, and have already started on next year's structures.

I have fond memories of the 4th of July with friends and family, lighting roman candles, black cats, fountains, etc, but all of those memories start after the sun goes down. For Valencians, anytime, anywhere seems to be the motto. The most shocking thing for J & I was seeing the lack of parental control and safety. Groups of kids playing soccer with the small spinners, and less then 3 ft away from black cats and other explosives. At 1 pm every day, there was a "mascleta", professional companies essentially try to burst as many eardrums as possible. We were warned that it was loud, but even so, we were driven further and further away by just how loud it was! Even from ~1 mile away, it was difficult to carry on a conversation. Every night beginning around 8, larger fireworks shows began for a few hours until 1 am, when the BIG show begins. I must say, it was probably the best fireworks show I have ever seen, lasting ~40 minutes, with non-stop explosions of color & sound, it really is quite something.

Valencia also lays claim to being the home of paella. We had an excellent paella on our way back from Murcia this winter, so we were excited to try another. The beach area is full of restaurants that specialize in paella, and based on the recommendation of a friend, ordered "Arroz a la Banda". It's amazing how quickly the chefs can whip up a huge pan of paella!!

Of course, after going here, J wants a paella pan of her own, I think we will need a bigger kitchen :) We also had fideos, or noodles, prepared somewhat similarly. The food was good, but we found that 1 paella was more than enough for both of us, and what we really wanted at the end of the trip was some vegetables, no more rice or oil. I dont want to put it down though, it really was quite well done.

Some other notes about Valencia. If you ever visit, make sure to take a stroll or jog along the "river". It is a dried up river bed that has been turned into a park. It is quite nice to find green in the middle of the city. The 2nd recommendation is the "Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias"

It's a series of museums placed in some pretty neat modern architecture. I'd also recommend the aquarium, J and I really enjoyed the incredible ocean life there.

It was a fun trip and a nice way to get away for a long weekend. However, the constant explosions (including someone intentionally throwing a cherry bomb in front of J and me, part of which hit me in the face), and the hoards and hoards of people were a bummer. "Las Fallas" was interesting, but if we go back, I think it will be at a more leisurely time of year.

2 weeks 2 Holidays 2 countires

Just 2 short weeks after our Italy trip, it was time for the Christmas holidays. We decided to knock a few places off our travel list. Destiny struck a few months ago when a Groupon for a hotel and a hot springs/spa came out on the same day. So off we went to the country of Andorrahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra, a tax haven smushed between Spain and France. Nowadays, people mainly seem to go to ski, buy liquor, tobacco and perfume, but according to some colleagues, butter, sugar and milk also used to be very popular purchases. J and I were hoping to get some skiing in with the spa, but with 60 cm (~20 inches) of base, and no snow for 4 days, it didnt sound like a pleasant first skiing experience for J. So we were left to wander the giant duty free store they call a city, and do some relaxing at the spa.

Caldea Spa has many typical attractions, a large warm pool, smaller hot tubs, saunas, etc. However, what made it different was the principle of the spa that the transition between hot and cold stimulates circulation, so we were also treated to various points of frigid water, including an ice bath for your feet, then back into hot water. It was very interesting, and for the most part, very relaxing, but after our 6 hrs spanning 2 days, I am not sure I need to go back.

We fled Andorra as criminals, "smuggling" more than our allocation of liquor back into Spain, but we just couldn't pass up Baileys at 40% discount, Amarula for less than 10 Euros, plus gins and good tequila for 30% off. I was really tempted to buy the novelty size of Jack Daniels for 32 euros, but I couldn't because J would help me finish all that whiskey (cough cough to whiskey-loving friends that have yet to visit).

By far, the worst part of the country was the shock that it is legal to smoke indoors, and locals certainly take advantage. Every single place we went carried the overwhelming stench of tobacco, including McDonalds, with the little kids in the playpen, and bakeries. J lamented that we could not even stand to be in bakeries more than 30 seconds, a store that relies on smells bringing clients absolutely repulsed both of us. I've never lived in a world where there was not a non-smoking section at a minimum, and it's been many years since there was smoking at all indoors.

2 days after returning, we set off again for Murcia, and the surrounding areas. We chose this region for a few reasons. People told us that Pamplona (the original plan) would be much better at a different time of year, and Murcia was as far south as we could go without having to pay extra for the rental car, so off we went!

I get very excited every time I see one of the many real live castles dotting the landscape, and even moreso after reading "A Song of Fire and Ice" (J consistently touts that she was on board with this fantasy series before it turned mainstream, and she got me hooked. PS, she has not read the most recent book, so no spoilers). J, of course, looked on in shame as I ran around the castle pretending to be a knight at the Castle of Santa Barbara in Alicante.

The other fun thing about Alicante was the hostal we stayed in. I am pretty convinced that the room we stayed in used to be the kitchen, there was a blocked off ventilation hood in our room. It was a very funky, but very cool hostal.

Murcia is surprisingly famous for vegetables. Fish from Cartagena and the Mar Menor (lesser sea) are also well received, supposedly due to the higher salt content of the water. Nothing like a natural sea salt marinade for those fish!! The region also boasts popular Spanish wines, with Jumilla, Yecla, and Bullas. J and I booked a tour of a local winery (bodega- or house of wine), where we got to see the whole wine making production. It is amazing to me how similar making wine is to making inkjet ink.

The best part was the "sala de aromas". A full room just filled with boxes of different smells, from leather and holly, to banana and cherry, to moldy cork and wet horse. Now we can claim to be experts at detecting "soft notes of vanilla and blackberries, with a hint of leather, light on the tounge, and with a clove- like finish".

Our standing arrangement is that I pick the places we are going and the activities, and J deals with the food, since that is her favorite part. I must say, she picked EXCELLENT choices. In Andorra, we had 2 incredible meals, very creative, well cooked meals. In Valencia we had mazing paella, Alicante jamon, and in Murcia, we also managed several delicious meals as well. I am quite impressed with her ability to sort out the good and the bad without ever seeing the restaurant.

Bonjorno Italia

It's been a while since the last post, so I hope you will bear with me for a long one.

December 6th and 8th form a quirky set of holidays in Spain. The 6th is the day the Constitution was ratified after the fall of Franco, and the 8th is the Immaculate conception. 90% of Spaniards take the 7th off to form a "puente" or "bridge" between holidays. When they happen to fall on a Tues and Thurs, like 2011, many people take the whole week off to form an aquaducto. That's how J and I found ourselves deciding to visit Naples and Rome. 130€ later we were set to go on Ryan Air. Side note:we still cant believe that for ~65€ a piece we can get to Rome during a major Catholic holiday...

We were fortunate enough to overlap with my 2nd parents, Mike & Donna Koeppel, in Naples. Unfortunately, David had to go to a training excercise (can you believe the Navy actually wants him to work?!?!), so we only got to see him for a day.

We heard all the warnings about the pickpockets in Naples, even from Spaniards. That seemed odd to us, given that BCN is just as bad (as J can attest to from her first day here!). We were also warned about the traffic, the mob, and the trash problems. The cant miss recommendations of Naples are the pizza, the ruins of Pompeii, and the Amalfi coast, so it's not all gloomy.

Our first impression of Naples is that the city and streets are not our favorite. In an earlier post, I talked about Athens being dirty. The difference between Athens and Naples is that Athens felt like it was decaying, and turning back into dirt, Naples was dirty in a different way. Small piles of trash littered every alley, building corner, etc, while graffiti on top of graffiti on top of more graffiti turned the city into a bit of an eyesore.

Every single thing you hear about driving in Naples is true. J and I were grateful that our hosts have adapted into local maniacs behind the wheel, they both navigated through incredibly convoluted routes, and through traffic that appeared certain to cause imminent death. What you dont hear about is the challenge of being a pedestrian in Naples. People dont stop for you if you are waiting at a crosswalk, and good luck finding a signal. My best strategy? Take a deep breath, cross your fingers, close your eyes, and take that first step. I was never pummeled, and I didnt have to deal with the fear of seeing a car come barreling at me, only to stop at the last second. However, once the locals are out from behind the wheel, they are some of the friendliest and most helpful people we have met. This includes one memorable little old lady who walked us all the way to the train station, even though she didnt speak a word of English, and our Italian was limited to "grazie" and "estacione".

For us, the best parts of the Naples landscape was outside the actual city. 3 specific places we enjoyed were Erculano (also buried by the Vesuvius eruption, smaller, but better preserved), the Amalfi Coast, and J's favorite, the American grocery store on the Naval Base!

The biggest takeaway for J and me at Erculano was that this civilization was not primitive, the people just trying to survive, but people that valued art, decoration, and other luxuries. Many of the residences has art on the walls, fountains in the courtyard, and the floors were incredibly intricate with thousands of small tiles, patterned in various colors, and placed very evenly throughout the whole floor. Someone took the time to collect all the rocks, sift and sort them, and then place them carefully in the floor. It just really struck us how many luxuries the people of the town actually had.

The mudslide that closed the road to the Amalfi Coast ended up being a real blessing. We were undeterred by the police saying something in Italian to the effect of "Not this way pal", not when we had our trusty friend GPS with us. Small, numberless windy roady on the map? Let's do it! Fortunately, this route led through forests and into panoramic views of Mt Vesuvius, the ocean, the neighbouring valley, and of course, the Amalfi coast. In my mind, it was just as stunning as the landscape of Oia in Greece, but it somehow felt a little more real (perhaps the small farms dug into the side of the hills helped). I can understand why nightly rates during peak season have priced the lowly mortals like J and I out.

My new hobby is comparing the experiences of Linhaa in Hong Kong (such as cooking solely with a toaster oven, huge language barriers, but having huge varieties of delicious Asian foods), David and Ali's experience in Naples (95% of restaurants are Italian, trying to get pets calm and happy, and knowing you are leaving in a few years) with ours in Spain. It turns out David and Ali have been cheating in finding American comforts, as they are shipped by the Navy. J's ears instantly perked at the proposal of a guest pass, and the grocery store landed on the agenda. What, you ask, were our high priority items that we just cant get anywhere else? Peanut Butter (naturally), Nature'sValley granola bars, Maraschino cherries (for some reason they are just plain bad here), candy canes!, graham crackers and marshmallows (how can I have s'more if I havent had any yet...), Cherry Coke, and deodorant. $75 later, and a promise by Ali that we could borrow an extra suitcase to fit our unexpected presents later, J was a very happy camper.

Special mention has to go to the food in Naples. The fresh pasta's were delicious, but the wood fired pizza was absolutely fantastic. The crust, the fresh buffalo mozzarella, I dont know how David and Ali stay so skinny! The other local delicacy is sfogliatelle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfogliatelle Layers of awesome filled with deliciousness, it rivaled the pizza as our favorite food of the trip.

Rome makes me sad I am not more religious. The pure grandeur of the cathedrals, and above all the Vatican was overwhelming. I can see why so many people come to this place searching for God. I did not know that I was a fan of Raphael, but both J and I were amazed by his frescoes. The Sistine chapel was every bit as amazing as it seems, covered floor to ceiling in Michelango masterpieces. On the flip side, I am conflicted when I think about how poor many of the peasants and worshippers have been throughout the ages, while the Vatican has spent a large fortune in aesthetic pursuit of art and architecture. I cant deny the success of creating an ethereal house of worship, but I cant help but think they could have used the money to help people better...

Rome truly spans the ages, starting with the Coliseum, and the Empire of Nero. I came away surprisingly disappointed, I guess maybe I expected too much, I wanted to feel the gladiators, but the outside is so much more iconic than anything inside. Then we work our way to the Pantheon, built is ~200 AD, it is the largest non reinforced dome in the world! You could put a sphere 43.2 m in diameter in the building and it would fill up the entire church to within centimetres. It is 1800 years old, and STILL one of the most incredible architectural feats in human history... wow...

Following that, it moves into the middle ages and the rise of the Vatican and church, and all the way to Martini branded skyscrapers and fashionable shopping of today. The other structures that stood out were the fountains. Even though it is a big touristy schtick, Trevi fountain was worth every second of the visit. It was fun to "stumble" across other fountains and plazas, including Villa Borghese.

While we had some good food, Rome was a bit of a letdown compared to Naples. Perhaps we weren't in the right district, or perhaps Naples just set the bar too high. We have developed a benchmark to determine the level of culture... unique things on the McDonalds menu. Italy gave us olives, stuffed with meat, then breaded and fried, fried shrimp, and my fave, pistachio McFlurry. They're the finest delicacies we have seen yet!

Both J and I left Italy with the same concludion, the city of Naples does not pass the "Could I live here?" test (despite the food), but Rome does. All in all, it was a very good week

My favorite holiday

As the end of November approached, I became more and more concerned about the best holiday of the year (ie: Thanksgiving).  Would we be able to find turkey? Cranberries?  And since we were inviting guests...a dinner table?  A couple weeks before T-Day, we started our mission to find the supplies.

Turkey: As is the case with many other things, the ovens are smaller here than in the US.  In fact, 3 of my baking pans are sitting in storage until I move out of, well, Europe.  So before leaving, I took note that the turkey could measure 42cm x 38cm x 24cm max.  And off I went!  Sadly, our normal meat market didn't carry whole turkeys.  I knew of a few other carnisserías so I still had hope.  As I walked by a meat market, I saw some whole chickens so I thought I'd give it a shot.  I asked if they carried whole turkeys and the butcher nodded and motioned to point them out.  Turned out that what I thought were chickens were turkeys!  They were only ~5.5kgs!  [Alright, it would've been a pretty big chicken but I don't think I've ever seen a turkey smaller than 16lbs (7.26kg)].  So I ordered one for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I was all set.  Didn't even have to ask her to measure it for me.  Smooth.  

Although it was a European sized turkey, I didn't have a container big enough to brine the turkey.  So I wrapped the tail end in paper towels and hoped that capillary action would take care of it.

Dinner table: We found the dinner table relatively easily.  The table normally seats 4 but extends to fit 8 so it was perfect; however, we didn't like any of the chairs in the store.  We went to a few stores in search for chairs but ultimately decided to get a set from Ikea.  The ones we wanted were not in stock the first day we went, nor were they there when the website said they would arrive. On the bright side, we did indulge get some of those delicious swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam (seriously, don't skip on the jam...it totally makes the meatballs).  Yum.  On the 3rd try, they were finally there so we were able to get the chairs the weekend before T-Day.

Cranberries: This was, by far, the hardest thing to find.  Grocery stores, numerous produce markets, even the nicest market rumored to have everything didn't carry them.  Cranberry sauce, in my opinion, is the keystone to the dinner.  Combining the salty turkey and gravy with the sweet and tangy red sauce is my definition of heaven.  Thanksgiving without cranberries is like Ikea meatballs without lingonberries...depressing and without purpose.  We went to a store that specializes in foreign products and they were getting a case of the canned stuff a few days before Thanksgiving.  Canned cranberry sauce...I suppose it's better than having nothing, but yuck.  So I planned to get a can and jazz it up.  As the days went by, their shipment kept getting delayed and maybe they would get it Thanksgiving day.  Seriously?!?!  I'm feeding 5 Spaniards their first Thanksgiving dinner ever and you want me to wait until the last minute get the most essential component?!?!  I resumed my search and thought up a few backup plans.  After asking around, I eventually ended up at a Bio/organicky store that might have them.  Didn't see any in the produce or canned section...asked a clerk and he said that maybe they had some in the back of the store.  SUCCESS!!!!  Frozen cranberries!!!  I was clearly ecstatic.  (I know it was clear because the clerk was startled and then asked me if I needed them for something medicinal.)

Since we had decided to invite some of our coworkers, this meant we also had to clean the house.  The time finally came to complete the long standing list of chores, one of which was organizing and dusting the bookshelves.  So I pulled off all of my (cook)books to clean off the counter and that made me wonder...

Is it bad if your collection of cookbooks and recipes is almost as tall as you?

Onto the food!  I was doing the turkey, cornbread stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, rolls, biscuits, and pecan pies.  Jeff was taking care of the mashed potatoes.  Prepped the cornbread for the stuffing and the green beans ahead of time but, since I was taking Thursday off (cause Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Spain, ya know), I planned to do the majority of work during the day.  Food prep was pretty much on schedule throughout the day.  The only thing that was running behind schedule was...the guests.  I forgot to account for the traditional Spanish tardiness...but with a few changes, everything was back on track.  

The turkey was ready around when the guests arrived.  They were quite excited to see a whole turkey in the oven.  

And then began the Thanksgiving traditions!

Sitting at the table with friends

Lots of food

Final products: cornbread stuffing, rolls (turned out so cute!!!), buttermilk drop biscuits, turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes (2 ways...way to go Jeff!), cranberry sauce, 2 pecan pies (with and without chocolate)

And, of course, no Thanksgiving would be complete without...

Hand Turkeys!!!

Happy Thanksgiving =)

The Digs

It's been a while since I posted, and it's been even longer since I was supposed to send out pictures of J and my apartment, so I figured I would finally get around to it. First you will have to sit through a 7 month old story of finding an apartment (because, you know... scrolling down to the pictures just wont work online).

As part of my relocation package, I received 2 months of temporary housing, and HP helped ship all our stuff from San Diego to Spain. That meant that I really didnt want to move in anywhere until a few months after I arrived. Apartments here are not really listed until they are empty and ready to be rented, so it gives a small window of having no furniture to put into an apartment and having no place to put the furniture that arrives where I was hoping to find our place to live.

We had 3 main requirements: 1) a nice enough kitchen that J could do all her cooking 2) a good amount of natural light, living in the dark just seems depressing and 3) within 10 minutes of a train station that would take us to work. Of course it also had to be big enough for us not to trip over each other, and hopefully have a place to put all of my things, but we were pretty negotiable other than those 3 things... little did I know just how tough that would be!

The typical stereotype in Europe is small apartments, with small rooms, and small appliances. I can safely vouch that that is generally true. I would rather say that apartments here try to fit too many people in, and have too many walls. Over the course of a month, I saw probably 40 apartments in person, and hundreds more online. Some general themes were very apparent. At least in Spain, there are some hideous floor tiling. Carpet is non-existent, but some of the tiles were more like casino floor patterns. There are too many rooms. They put 3 small bedrooms, instead of 2 medium ones. Kitchens are in their own 10 ft x 10 ft rooms. You might have 2 bathrooms, but one of those bathrooms is so small the toilet is right underneath the shower. We were ready for some culture shock, but the general quality of apartments was startlingly bad. There seemed to be 2 types of apartments, the low cost places that I might have considered when I lived in college, and "luxury" apartments that had pretty hefty price tags, even by our California adjusted standards.

2 Weeks into the search, I found it, the "Princess place". 1 block away from the train, in a pretty hopping neighborhood with bookstore/cafe next door, facing east, and a relatively big kitchen, though modestly decorated. Of course, I wanted to check with J, but I was pretty excited for it. Got the confirmation that she was excited by the pictures I sent, and I called the rental people to say we wanted it. Bad news, another rental agency had put down the deposit that morning, so even as I was fawning over it, it was not meant to be. No matter, there was an apartment the week before that did not get good morning light, but got great afternoon light, and was a decent compromise... ok, we'll take that. Not to be, apparently that place had been reserved the day before as well.

3 weeks into the search I found a place that I really liked as well. The kitchen was small, but there were no walls, so we could expand the kitchen as far as we wanted, it had a nice storage area for all my camping/Scuba equipment. It was a little pricier than we had hoped for, but I starting to get a little worried about finding a good place, so I put down a "non-refundable" deposit of half a month's rent. Imagine my surprise when my rental contact calls me the morning of the lease signing and tells me not to sign anything, that I am backing out. She explains that apparently this company has a very sketchy lease, where I would have to sign for 3 years minimum (compared to a normal 1 year minimum lease), and they wont budge on that, but they would give me my money back. I agree with this idea, 3 years is a long time to commit to an apartment. Happy to get my money back, I still faced the small problem of not having a place to live. To add to the fun, J would be moving to BCN in about a week and a half, and I was leaving for a business trip to the US in a week, so I needed an apartment and fast.

4 weeks in, the rental contact Claire (a very cool french girl that really put in a lot of work to help set up visits to places that I found, and did a lot of research to find other places) and I were starting to wonder about our options. There was 1 nagging place, it had a really old looking kitchen, but it was gigantic by Spanish standards (roughly 1200 sq ft compared to the 700-800 that most places were), and the price was in range. Pessimistically, I decided to give it a shot. I walked in, and in the entryway, you can see pretty much the whole apartment. A loft above (similar to the loft in my parents house where I grew up), windows on both sides to let in light, and a kitchen that has a countertop separating it from the rest, so it felt very connected. The floors were scuffed, and it was obvious the place was going to need some elbow grease to fix up, but another person came to view the apartment right after me, so I knew I had to act fast, and put down a deposit.

The Beginning: Acting fast has its downsides. Turns out, the lights in the bathroom didnt work, the light in the hallway was burnt out, the hot water heater that controlled the kitchen was broken (but apparently there is a 2nd hot water heater in the bathroom, so fortunately I could wash dishes and shower in there). Also, a few lights in the kitchen were burnt out, and worst of all, the oven did not get above 200... Farenheit. We found that little doozy out trying to make bread, cooking for 3 hrs, then trying to finish on the stove. Thus began the battle of the oven. After multiple calls to the landlord, and broken spanish trying to understand what was happening, they finally came to fix the oven. Turns out they were able to get the oven to go from 200 F to 500 F, but pretty much nothing in between, so 2nd round of bread ended up burnt on the outside, raw on the inside... not pretty. In the end, we were able to convince them to replace the oven completely, and from that day on, we have been very happy with the apartment.

The tour: Family room/Dining Room/Loft. This is where most of our time is spent, a huge open space with vaulted ceilings that we've separated a bit by the couches. The rug in the photo is a place holder for the dining room table we plan to buy, any day now :) You can see that our plants sit out in the middle of the room, where they get better sunlight during the day. There is basil and mint there, hoping to add more.

Dining Room/Kitchen: We eat most of our meals at the barstools on the kitchen counter, pending said dining room table. There was no space for the fridge inside the kitchen, so we went the easy route, and put it outside! It has worked surprisingly well.

Other notes, coat rack that took 2 months to find, and super sweet storage space up the ladder on the far right, where we store all the things we dont need often, like luggage, camping gear, boxes, etc. Very underrated part of the apartment...

A very important part of any good apartment:

We found a bulk liquor store where we have bought things like habanero rum, blood orange and lime liquor, tiramisu and vanilla, as well as others... very good find, to go along with our wines.

The Bedroom: An obscenely large space for how much time we spend, we actually have plenty of closet/dresser space, a welcome surprise. It is nice waking up to sunlight, and having a big vaulted ceiling above your head, very open feeling. Well done whoever found the apartment :)

One downside is that we have a washer dryer combo, which, unfortunately, leaves clothes pretty wrinkly, so you can see the pile of my clothes ready to be ironed...

And finally, the bathroom. No European bathroom would be complete without a bidet!!! Other than that, a pretty normal bathroom.

One odd note: We have looked for and been unable to find the $2.99 clear plastic liners. Opaque liners for 10 euros, yeah, but a few euro clear liner... doesn't exist. Weird.

To those that made it this far, hope you enjoyed the tour of the apartment, we have plenty of space for visitors, so come on by. I dont know know how me managed to find a place that is such a nice space, is on the top floor of our building (so no noisy neighbors), and is only 10 minute walk from the center of town. Next on my list of topics... the neighborhood. Hopefully it will be sooner than 2 months from now :P

Birthday

In Spain, it's traditional to bring treats into the office around your birthday.  I like to bake; but I don't like getting fat...which means that I usually bake something, try a little, and then give the rest away.  In the US, people just took their treat and went on their merry way.  In Spain, however, bringing in treats means that I'm fielding questions about whether it's my birthday, why I decided to make something, etc. etc.  (You'd think that people wouldn't really care when random treats come along, geez.)

At last, my birthday has come around so I finally get to bring in treats without following it with a huge explanation...it even fell on a Sunday so I could bake ALL weekend!  I was super excited so I started looking at recipes about 3 weeks in advance.  I eventually landed on 4 things...

Gameplan:

Cookie Crusted Profiteroles w/ Vanilla Creme Filling: Saturday: make dough for profiteroles and cookies, form and freeze.  Sunday: make 1st stage of filling.  Monday morning before work: bake profiteroles.  Finish and bottle filling.  Fill pastries in office.
Croissants: Sunday: make dough and freeze.  Monday morning: final rise and bake
Chocolate Cookies w/ White Chocolate Chips: make and bake Saturday
Apple Walnut Mini-Muffins: make and bake on Sunday

I really wanted to make the profiteroles and croissants...but I had to have the cookies and muffins as a backup in case the first 2 didn't pan out.  There was a lot to do so took Friday off for grocery shopping. =)

As I began the prep work, I thought that perhaps I was a bit too ambitious...

 Too late now!  Full speed ahead!!!

Saturday went pretty much to plan.  Making and piping out the profiterole dough was something I had done before...just now I topped them with a cute little butter cookie hat!  (I'll have to think of something to do with the extra cookie dough seeing as how I had to make 4x the quantity required.)  Vanilla filling didn't get made...it was really hot so I lost motivation and put it off until Sunday.  Cookies came out pretty well though...one down, 3 to go!

Thankfully, Sunday was a bit cooler due to the overcast skies and rain.  Much better weather to stand near the oven and bake.  Making the croissant dough was really labor intensive (which was, of course, part of the appeal) but it was made more difficult by Barcelona's summer heat.  The butter got soft very quickly and I was making frequent trips to the freezer.  (In case you didn't know, croissant dough requires a significant amount of butter to be folded and layered into a base dough.  How else do you think you get the layers?)  But I eventually got it done and froze everything for Monday.  Made the vanilla filling and was pretty pleased with it.  Muffins came out fine.  2 down...2 to go!

Monday morning, I woke up at 5 to finish the profiteroles [bake] and croissants [final rise and bake].  Why couldn't I bake them a day or two beforehand?  Don't be naive...neither would have never withstood the humidity of Barcelona for that long!  Had to be done the day of.

Profiteroles baked up beautifully from frozen!  They were adorable with their little cookie covering! =)  Mini croissants turned out pretty well too.  As everything was cooling, I folded whipped cream (none of that canned stuff) into the filling from Sunday, bottled everything up, and packed up to go to work.

Clockwise from bottom: profiteroles, muffins, croissants, cookies.  Treats went over pretty well!  I had a 2 hour meeting before lunch so I filled the tray before I left...and it was empty when I got back! =)  The croissants were very popular.  People were hesitant to get a profiterole until I labeled them.  Overall, the profiteroles were my favorite and they were so easy to bake from frozen.  The cookie crust helped the top stay nice and crunchy and it contrasted really well with the creamy filling inside.  I'm temped to make some and keep them on hand...but then that would take another couple hours out of my day.

And here goes a special shout out to my mule!

Now, what am I going to bring in for American Thanksgiving?...