K & L's Travel Blog

We start our day with grocery shopping.  The kitchen has no provisions.  Not even salt or pepper. This apartment is part of a rental company; it is not someone’s home.  I guess the agency’s policy is to provide a clean slate, but it does make cooking a challenge.  Recipes have to be simple with as few ingredients as possible.  Past tenants complained about this in the reviews.  At the grocery store I bought butter, olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic.  This seems like a good start, especially if I focus on fish.  

It takes a while to get into the rhythm of the meals.  At home we eat breakfast early and lunch at noon.  Here they just have very little when they wake up but around 10:30 they have a “snack,” usually a small sandwich.  Then around noon, they stop at a bar for a drink – vermouth or a beer with a small nibble.  This is to wake up the palette for lunch.  Then at 3 PM they settle down for a two-hour lunch with courses.  Tapas and drinks around 6 to 7 and dinner at 10 PM. Lorena and I are typically asleep at 10PM, and have been eating a light dinner at the apartment about 8:00.  We enjoy the long lunch tradition but we have to be careful to stop for something midmorning because waiting until 2:30-3:00 for lunch is a long time. Hangry is not pretty! .  

Lorena sought out and successfully reserved a spot at a Galacian seafood restaurant, O Currachuro.  It is small and has only 10 to 12 tables. Our reservation is for 2 pm and when we arrive we are about the third table to be seated.  By 3:00 the place is full, but despite the bustle, the servers were kind and attentive. They brought us a little bucket with pictures of the dishes and translations.  We choose oysters to start and a type of Gallacian bouillabaisse for two for the main course.  The dish had a very flavorful light tomato broth with potatoes. We tried hard to identify all the various kinds of fish.  After some translation we think it had rock fish, brim, mussels, grouper and some sort of flat fish.  All very fresh.  The oysters were like drinking sea water: briny, fresh and good.  I read that the Catholic tradition of eating fish on Fridays contributed to the excellent seafood markets in land-locked Madrid and the daily imports from the north.

Not only was our meal excellent quality, we also were (predictably) thrilled with the price.  We had a bottle of good wine, appetizers, quality fish and expresso for a total of $70.00. Try that in Asheville! They don’t regularly tip here.  It makes you realize what a wallop tipping adds to a final bill. As is the practice throughout Europe, the restaurants pay the waiters a living wage.  There is not really a way to add a tip to the bill (no tip prompts before paying) though leaving a couple of Euros for outstanding service is not uncommon. It was a wonderful meal.  I want to go back and try everything on the menu.  

After lunch, we wandered through the Sabatini Gardens.  Perhaps it was the cold weather, but they were only lightly attended. The gardens were fun. Formal in the French style with a great view of the Palacio Real. A busker with accordion filled the air with the usual sentimental movie tunes like the Godfather theme and more lively show tunes like “Hello Dolly.” 

From there we wandered up to the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple gifted to Spain in return for their support during the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Back at the apartment we enjoyed a Roman-style pizza with mushrooms & truffles for dinner. Another full, and delicious, day.