Can Culleretes

Josh and I decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Barcelona.

Why?  Because we're special.

This is photo documentation of that memorable dinner.

 

Location: Can Culleretes, Barcelona, España

Bon Apétit!

1786

The University of Texas didn't exist. 

The United States had only won its independence a few years before.

Crazy huh?

Plastic?  I think not.  We only drink out of glass bottles.

After realizing that we couldn't understand the menu in Spanish we opted for English.

I know, I know, we're supposed to know Spanish. Sorry.

Israel: CANELONES WITH SPINACH AND COD FISH

Josh: SALAD WITH PARMESAN CHEESE, WALNUT AND DUCKS HAM

Israel: SIRLOIN STEAK WITH WILD MOSHROOMS

Josh: WILD BOAR GAME STEW

Israel: CINNAMON ICE-CREAM

Josh: CREMA CATALANA

Just in case you forgot.  Only glass for us.  No aluminum here either.

Classy, real classy.

Ridiculously good.  I ate it all.

Josh is on a diet.  He'd getting pudgy.

Not really though.

Proof I ate it all.

We know how to get our money's worth.

Wild boar didn't sound tempting, but it was pretty delicious.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I live in Andalucia.  I live off pork and seafood.  

I miss cows.

After the damage had been done.

Me carnivore. Grrrrr.

Cinnamon Ice Cream.  

Ok.  So I was expecting something totally different with this one.

It was home-made vanilla ice cream with a ton of cinnamon poured in.

It was amazing.  But grainy.

I expected it to be smooth.  I didn't mind the texture, it was lovely, but it caught me off guard.

Catalans know their desserts.

And since we were already splurging on dinner might as well end it with a cup of coffee.

It was definitely a nice touch to our lovely evening.

Why is your napkin all stretched out like that Josh?

Ah yes.  I forgot you let the table have a little bit of all your courses.

Silly guy, tables don't eat that much.

Connoisseurs.

That's our bill......

That's euros.

Ouch.

Worth it? Well let's see.

1. Dinner with Josh

2. 2 1/2 hours of food and laughter

3. Feeling a little closer to home

4. Great food

5. Dining at the oldest restaurant in Barcelona

6. Beginning of a fun night

7. Tons of pictures

8. Great story to tell

9. Catching up with a good friend

10. Living life to its fullest

I think so.

Wooden carvings in the downstairs dining area.  That's the king and queen.

Bailando en Barcelona

Last weekend started on Thursday.  I took a train out to Sevilla at 9 AM, arrived at about 10:15 AM, and started a solo walking tour of the city.  It was beautiful.  I had no map, just my eyes, mind, and their attraction to the sights in front of me.  Basically if I saw something that looked interesting to see I'd walk in that direction, no matter how far it looked.  I didn't have anywhere to be until 10:30 that night so time was not a factor.  After 8 hours of walking, no joke, I had seen basically an entire corner of the city, or so I thought.  In reality I had walked over just about half of it, which was fine with me, I loved every second of it.  I sat and read in front of the capitol, found a huge park and laid in the grass for a little bit, walked around an orange grove, practiced my spanish, saw tons of sights, had a snack on the edge of the river, it was pretty much the perfect little walking excursion.  Will never forget it.

So after 8 hours I called the rest of the Cádiz kids, who were supposed to be in Sevilla by this time, and met up with them on the other side of town.  No biggy.  We met up and walked to the apartment of some of out friends from orientation that live in Sevilla and just hung out

there while my body rested a little.  For dinner someone had the grand idea to go to the oldest tapas bar, like a snack meal type thing, in Sevilla that's been owned by the same family since like the 15th century.  That's old.  

That night I slept super well in our hotel besides the fact that I knew I'd be getting up at 6 the next morning to catch a plane to Barcelona and was going to see the one and only Josh Jeter.  

Barcelona was ridiculous.  There is just way too much to see. API, the program I'm here with, set us up on this bus tour, but it wasn't very good.  It was fast a

nd we were in a bus.  Not too enjoyable.  We did get 2 1/2 days of free time though, so we were able to re-visit just about everything.  But like I said, there's just way too much to see so I'll be making another trek back there soon.

I could go off about how cool everything was but since I lack in textual expression I just wouldn't be able to get the words out to express it in the way each attraction deserves.  All I can say is La Sagrada Familia is probably the most impressive building I've ever seen.  To have a mind to bring something so detailed and unreal to life is remarkable.  Props to Gaudi for his brilliance in all he did.  I've made the goal that as soon as the Sagrada Familia is done, in about 20-25 years, I will be back to see it. I've seen it under construction and was impressed, I can't imagine its beauty when complete.

Besides seeing all the sights it was really cool to see Josh.  It made me sad that I didn't end up in Barcelona, but I know that I was meant for Cádiz for a purpose so I'll continue to seek that.  Josh and I had a great time.  We caught up on life, talked about our experiences, laughed a but load, and basically just had a chance to feel like we were 100% back home.  It was nice. We also ate dinner at the oldest

restaurant in Barcelona, Can Culleretes.  That was an unforgettable experience and definitely a story that stands alone from my whole trip to Barcelona.  We've definitely got a long way to go on being refined.  Josh more so than I.

Who knows when I will make it back to Barcelona but God willing it will be soon.  It's a beautiful place.  The culture, the architecture, the language, the air, the people, the sounds, they're all so different from the rest of Spain.  Madrid seems to compare, but then it doesn't at all.  I can see why many Catalan people say that their not part of Spain, it's truly like entering a different country.  I can't wait to see what other regions of Spain are like.

P.S. One thing API has really impressed me on is the location of the hotels that they book for us.  This beautiful sight was literally right across the plaza from me.  I'll forgive the bus trip. 

Last Days of Total Freedom

This is my API Cádiz crew. (L-R: Ben, Mariah, Me, Kelsey, Russ)  It's a pretty interesting group to say the least.  There's three Texans, a Rhode Islander, and a Washingtonian (That right?). This picture was snapped on Wednesday on top of Torre Tavira.  It's the highest point in the old city and served as a watch tower for merchants.  They installed the first camera obscura in Spain on this tower and if you've ever seen a camera obscura, or haven't, this one's a must to check out.  It was amazing although quite brief of a show....kind of disappointing on that note. 

This past week we had the Intensive Spanish course and it was great. Our professor, Laura, was amazing.  She was pretty young and taught us as if we were kids.  Pictures and everything!  It was great.  It really helped.  Not only did she actually get the work we needed to get through out of the way but she gave us time to chat about anything and everything.  We covered just about everything there is in life.  We mostly talked about differences between Spanish and American culture but that's probably one of my favorite subjects to talk about right now.  Although Spain is very much like Mexico in appearance, or Mexico very much like Spain, I'm enjoying learning about its history, economy, culture, fashion, politics, and just about any other subject I can get a conversation going about.  Overall the Intensive Spanish course was a great success.

 One of my  final carnival experiences was a "Disney" show, as they called it in the ads, although it didn't have much Disney to it.  It was basically an old guy in an oversized shirt who spoke in a really weird voice, and a young woman in short shorts and small jacket.  Although my comrades and I didn't make it through more than 20 minutes of the show, the Spanish kids were entranced.  I don't know why though.  First of all there were no stage decorations, just an empty black stage with a couple of plain chairs as props.  The show was in the middle of the day so there weren't any lighting effects.  No pyrotechnics.  Nothing swinging around. No nothing.  Just two characters on stage talking.  They sang songs and did the whole, "watch me attempt ridiculous stunts but fail at them/do them but trick you and do them in a way that's not as cool as the way I made you believe they would be" bit.  But the kids ate it up.  The best part of what I saw was a song they sang before I left about a girl who couldn't go out to play because she had to iron, wash clothes, sweep, hang clothes, cook, dust, you get the idea.  I loved it.

A fireworks show over Castillo de San Sebastian was the event that truly marked the end of Carnival 2008.  It lasted for about 30 minutes and was a way of assuring me that the small town I call home was now going to be a small quiet town.  So far it's been nice to have the town nice and quiet.  Although I could do without the cold weather.  Except it's not really that it's cold, it's that it's windy here all day long and nobody knows why. Global warming maybe?

Well to stay out of the cold I attended a flamenco show which I was invited to by a friend at Peña Flamenca la Perla de Cádiz.  I met Ally, my friend, on New Years in Houston at a family

 friends house and it turned out that she lived in a tiny town about 35 minutes from Cádiz, and has all sort of cool friends, besides being cool herself.  One of the girls that Ally studied flamenco with in Seville (Ally: 1 Cool Pt), was performing so she invited me to tag a long (Ally:

2 Cool Pts) with her and her boyfriend (Ally: 3 Cool Pts).  I was introduced to her friend, Samantha (Far Left) who in this show played las palmas (clapped the beat) (Ally: 4 Cool Pts.)  Then Ben, Mariah and I, who tagged a long with me, just stood around and talked to Ally and Alberto till the place started turning off its lights.  Alberto is in school studying music so we talked about that for a while, and then I brought up the fact that I wanted to see the Misfits in Seville and turns out Ally was a punk rocker back in her day (Ally: 5 Cool Pts.) so that was cool.  Then we talked about ways people express themselves since Ally is an artist (Ally: 6 Cool Pts.) and Alberto is a musician and I dabble in drawing and other things.  But yeah it was sweet and by the end Ally was up to at least 10 Cool points. 

Life is good.  It's nice to feel so safe and secure in a foreign country, and it's only because I truly feel like I'm being watched over.  It was a huge blessing to have met Ally in Houston, and that's just another blessing to add to a growing list of blessings that only deal with this study abroad adventure of mine.  God is good.

School?

So school hasn't started yet, and classes don't officially start at the university until the 19th.  I do have an Intensive Spanish course next week that I have to take but it's not really anything special and doesn't really seem to be that big of a deal, just something my program set up to prepare us for the real deal.

But until then I'll just continue wondering around this city trying to learn every little street of this maze I call home.  It's pretty fun trying to walk home and realizing your lost, but only because you can't ever really be lost.  You'll run into something familiar really fast and know exactly where you're at.  Then the fun is over.

I had my camera with me the other day when I was out on the beach so I snapped some pictures of the the sunset.  I'm going to keep track of how many sunsets I see while here.  Right now I'm at 3.  The beaches here are pretty nice.  It's still way too cold to get in, at least for me, but I've seen a few brave souls venture in a little.  I'm super excited about going

 fishing, snorkeling, building sand castles, and just doing everything else there is to do by the water.  I'm not really a beach person, but i've never really had the beach so close to me.

The kids here are super cute.  I want to take one home with me.  They just seem way more innocent and into being kids then kids back in the US.  I walk around the streets and they're playing ridiculous games and their moms all have them dressed super nice.  It's adorable.  It's great.  They're silly and I enjoy laughing at them as they run past me or maybe just popping a smile up to their parents because their kids just made my stroll a cajillion times better.

I have to do my own laundry.  Which means I have to hang my clothes to dry.  Which i've never done before in my life.  A new adventure awaits.

Cádiz Gone Crazy

Here in Cádiz we're in the middle of "Carnival".  Basically it comes a month before "Semana Santa", Holy Week, and it's a time to party as hard as possible before you enter a state of religious celebration.  It's been pretty crazy and I've never seen so much trash in my life.  To be honest with you I think people in the states would party a lot harder than the people in Spain.

The week is full of singing and shows, the main attraction is the chirigotas competition.  Chirigotas are humorous groups that perform satirical pieces about everything from politics to current events.  They really do cover a huge range of topics.  From younger generations smoking weed, to bad doctors, to royal affairs, to the catholic church.  They're pretty funny, if you know they're background.  If this happened in the states we'd be singing about Britney Spears, O.J. Simpson, George Bush, social security, the elections, maybe the federal interest rate cuts, topics along those lines.

It's been nice to see and be here for Carnival but I'm excited to see the city at it's normal self.  It seems really chill and the people i've met that studied here say it feels like a long vacation when you study here.  I've already begun to experience anxiety from how slow people move and live here.  I'll definitely be returning to the states a much more patient man.  That's if I ever return at all...

I will. Just kidding.  Don't get your panties all in a knot.  It is super t

empting though.  Making friends, which I have and are great and I feel so blessed to have made in only two days and I've already watched a movie in one of their dorm rooms, makes me not want to leave because I want to...I'm not sure what but I don't want to leave them.  Of course I love my friends back home, but for some odd reason this is different.  We''ll see what clicks on this topic later on. 

It's nice to have a week off before classes even start but the city looks pretty crappy right now and I don't want to wander around in streets of garbage.  There's already more than enough dog poo for me in the streets of Cádiz, human waste isn't going to make it prettier.

¡Olé!

And so my journey begins.  On January 27th, 2008 my parents dropped my off at George Bush Intercontinental Airport where I boarded a British Airways flight to London, where I was barely able to catch a connecting flight to Madrid with my traveling partner Mariah.  

Mariah is a great story.  Mariah just so happen to sit next to me on a practically empty flight to London, where through a little chit chatting we discovered that we were both from H

ouston, both students at UT, and both going to Cádiz with API to study.  She's great.  I've given her the nickname of Sleepy because she seems to be sleeping or wanting to sleep at just about anytime of the day.

We were in Madrid for 4 days for orientation and sight seeing with groups going to Seville and Bilbao.  Madrid has some baller sandwiches for €.80 and sometimes cheaper.  They were everywhere and varied in fillings so I made it a habit to get some of these for a snack...or just so I could try every different type.  

I really got to know the Bilbao students and really enjoyed their company during our stay in Madrid.  The funny thing is that most of them are from the north east so I got to tell them about Jeff Bechdel and how much (playful) crap I give him for being a "yankee."  The whole north/south topic of conversation is so much fun.  I was even asked at one point if there were monkeys in Texas. Yes, monkeys.  

Oh those Bilbao kids.  They're all art students and maybe that's why I fit in so well with them.  Before we left for Cádiz I got the offer to be snuck to Bilbao in a suitcase and that definitely let me feel the love.  The Cádiz kids are cool, but Bilbao hit me hard and quick with who they were.  Pretty cool.

Unfortunately we had to part ways and now I'm in Cádiz, but Cádiz is baller.  It's small but beautiful and has everything you need.  Living in the dorms on my own is very scary and intimidating but by the grace of God some of  the kids here have already extended their hands in friendship.  God willing more and better friendships will flourish from this little housing situation of mine.