Catching up with Friends

[April 10 - 17]

Although being on the road over 300 days in a year causes one to fall a bit out of touch with friends at home, the good news is that it allows us to catch up with pals overseas. The Beltran family and Isaac Secreto were kind enough to host us while we worked our way across the middle of Spain.

Marta and David Beltran, friends of the Stevens family since back in the Hanford High School days, invited us to join them in the tourist trap known as Castellon de la Plana. Actually, not too many people visit the town, but it's a nice enough place to kill a few days, particularly when you're recovering from trying to keep up with the locals for a night out in Barcelona.



As seems to be the trend in households around the world, the Beltran-Perez family spend an inordinate amount of time making sure that we were well fed. One sunny afternoon, we took to the city port to grab some lunch, and afterwards visited the wholesale fish market. Here, ships unload flats of sorted seafood directly onto conveyor belts that transport the fish into a bidding auditorium. Potential buyers sit grasping their buzzers, watching the readerboard identify the fish, the ship, and the price. When an item comes up for sale, the price quickly starts to drop until someone sees a price they like, and they hit their buzzer. Gotta be fast, or no fish for you.



Marta also showed us all the local sights, including Benecasim, the beachside community where many of Castellon's locals make their summer homes. Ironically, the two cities are less than half and hour's drive apart. We also saw the city's weekly market, which migrates from town to town each day of the week. Here, you can see the strawberries going for cheap, cheaper, and cheapest. A scoop from the better-looking stack of berries cost slightly more than one from the mostly-rotting stack.



We had a great time catching up with everyone, and found it very refreshing to converse in English about local happenings. Most Spaniards don't speak English, so we're usually communicating in a makeshift mixture of broken Spanish, wild hand gestures, and confused glances about getting a room or a meal.

Speaking of meals, I have to say that my overall impression of Spanish cuisine could be better. While there are plenty of great examples of amazing Spanish foods and regional delicacies, the majority of mid-day meals we consumed consisted of little more than completely average bread topped with cheese and thin cuts of preserved meat (jamon, cover a huge range of quality). Breakfasts, too, leave something to be desired, since the consumption of five meals a day allows the first meal to be a bit meager for my tastes.

Actually, we've had difficulties eating here for a number of reasons, and perhaps my impression is nothing more than the combined effect of these reasons. For one, because there are five meals a day, our typical dinner time didn't coincide with any Spanish meal. When we went to eat, we sometimes had access to only a limited part of the menu, more like the "snacks" than the "real" food. Secondly, we had only a very limited ability to communicate our orders or understand the types of food on offer, so there's another strike against us. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we stuck mostly to cheap eateries, where the standard was a bit lower than some of the better spots. Still, we explored plenty of options, and I'd say that only one-third ranked as "impressive," while the others came in at "completely average."

[Before I get myself into trouble with our generous Spanish hosts, let me mention that I absolutely love jamon, chorizo, gazpacho, paella, the Spanish tortillas, and some of the excellent regional wines and cheeses. I'm sure that with the right guidance, we would have eaten like royalty every meal of every day.]

So then, as we left Castellon, we moved on to Valencia, where we happened upon this cathedral tower bell at the exact moment it started to ring on the hour. BONG! BONG! BONG! Hello?



It's really a gorgeous town, if lacking in heavily-touristed sites. We walked through the streets late at night, passing through squares like these on our way to one of the best restaurants of our trip, where they served us, their sole customers at the time, large quantities of grilled meat. Mmmm... Not cheap, but just what we needed.



One other excellent example of great Spanish food is churros and chocolate for breakfast. This isn't something I could eat every day, but the taste of a crispy fried and sugar-dusted churro dunked in a mug of thick hot chocolate (as thick as glue), is enough to make you swear off any diet foolish enough to get in the way. We tried these first in Toledo, and ancient fortress city on a hill outside of Madrid. Amazing place, with a huge number of paintings by El Greco. I wasn't a big fan of his work, but the more I saw of it, the more it grew on me (which is good news, since the Prado in Madrid was loaded with more of his work).