Andrew & Allison’s 2015 International Adventure took us this year to SPAIN! We spent a little over two weeks touring Granada, Seville, Barcelona, and Madrid. Every city was beautiful and special in its own way. We ate tons of fabulous food, toured more things than we could count, and met some of the greatest people!
The beginning of our adventure started in…a snowstorm. That’s right. Fairbanks got hit with tens of inches of snow the day before we were scheduled to depart. Andy’s car got stuck at the bottom of our driveway, and my car got stuck on the road leading to our house. Our power went out and we had no water.
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There’s Andy. Shoveling our driveway so he could try to get his car in.
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Andy made an executive adventure decision to pack that night and leave the next morning instead of the next evening. This executive decision needed to involve Madison, Kelly, Bandit, and Max, as we had no water to take showers or do our laundry. So, after work we showed up at Madison and Kelly’s doorstep with our dirty clothes and our dirty selves.
Me: Kelly did you ever think our friendship would reach the level of my dirty underwear on your floor?
Kelly: Yes.
Fortunately, the executive action plan involved a glass of wine and puppy hugs. Don and Donna were good sports through the weather challenges.
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| Donkeys and Dogs. |
Kelly and Madison kindly took us to the airport that evening. We flew Fairbanks to Seattle; Seattle to Paris; Paris to Barcelona.
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| Barcelona bound! |
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| Made it to Barcelona! Waiting for their luggage. |
The plan was to stay in Barcelona for a night and take a train the next day to meet my father in Granada where he had just finished a week long Spanish language school.
Since we didn’t have enough time to explore Barcelona that one night and planned to return in about a week anyway, we just relaxed, splurged on a five-star hotel, and had a fabulous dinner at one of Barcelona’s highly recommended restaurants.
We decide to stay at the Mercer Hotel, located at Calle dels Lleó 7 in the heart of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. Regarded as a five-star “boutique hotel,” the Mercer sits tucked among the Roman fortifications and medieval arches and is built on top of a section of the ancient original walls. The hotel boasts four restaurants/bars; the Mercer Restaurant, featuring local fish, meats and vegetables, Le Bouchon, a French bistro with a variety of tapas and cocktails, the Cocktail Lounge, offering an array of drinks, cava, and Spanish wines set within a 2000 year old stone wall, and the rooftop terrace, with a menu of cocktails and light appetizers.
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Font of the hotel. www.tripadvisor.com
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The Mercer offers five types of rooms: superior, deluxe, junior suite, premium-junior suite, and a full suite. The rooms range in size and view; be prepared to pay anywhere from $500 – $800 a night.
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| Our room |
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Looking down onto the patio
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| View from our room. You can see some of the original Roman walls to the right. |
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| Rooftop pool |
After touring the hotel, we explored around the Gothic Quarter a bit. The Gothic Quarter sits right in the center of the old city of Barcelona, stretching from La Rambla to Via Laietana and from the ocean to Ronda de Sant Pere. A majority of the buildings date back to the Midieval and Roman eras. We checked out the gorgeous Barcelona Cathedral, the small and beautiful alleyways, and some of the very talented street musicians.
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Barcelona Cathedral
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| Trotting along, doing some window shopping. |
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| Beautiful little floral hut along La Rambla |
Andy made us reservations at one of the most sought-after restaurants in Barcelona, L’Artic Bocoi del Gótic, located at Baixada Viladecolns. The restaurant, like the Mercer Hotel, is made up of the ancient Roman walls and features Catalan dishes with fresh seafood, vegetables, and a huge wine and cava list. Their main culinary feature is Coques de Recapte, which are Spanish flatbreads with a variety of topping choices including peppers, eggplant, goat cheese, pork loin, and duck.
It is well-known that the Spanish eat late. Late. Like 9:00 p.m. late. We knew this going into the trip but I don’t think either of us truly believed this to be the case. Turns out, it is indeed the case. Andy made reservations at L’Artic Bocoi del Gótic for 7:00 p.m., which, to us, is a normal time to eat dinner. We arrived at 6:45 p.m. to discover that the restaurant didn’t even open until 7:00 p.m. It was so strange. We just sort of stood there staring into the restaurant until the bartender took pity on us and invited us in early. He indicated, however, that our waitress would not be ready to serve us until 7:00 p.m. There wasn’t a single other person there, or waiting outside. The next set of guests didn’t come trickling in until almost an hour and a half later.
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| Restaurant all to ourselves! |
We took advantage of the privacy, and enjoyed a quiet dinner just to ourselves. We ordered olives for an appetizer along with xistorra, a Catalan sausage made with a mixture of pork fat, beef, bacon, paprika and garlic. We enjoyed it with a bottle of cava, Spanish sparkling wine.
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| Xistorra |
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| Pesto, red pepper, and goat cheese coques de recapte. |
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| After dinner coffee, about 9:00 p.m. And look at all those people back there! |
After dinner we meandered back to the hotel and had a drink at the cocktail lounge where we were treated to a barrage of screaming children, running up and down the stairs and doing somersaults in the lobby. It was incredibly disruptive and highly out of line for a five star hotel; no one seemed to be doing anything and any requests by hotel patrons to silence them was met with “that’s just Spanish parenting.” Alright, great, thanks.
Despite this, the glass of wine was tasty and the bar atmosphere was fun.
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Cocktail lounge.
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Returning to our hotel room we were pleasantly surprised to find some nighttime treats waiting for us as part of the hotel’s turn down service. Yum!
We fell asleep shortly thereafter and were awoken about 4:00 a.m. to a huge thunderstorm with thunder and lightening echoing like crazy in Barcelona’s small, narrow alleyways. It was beautiful to listen to.
The next morning we got up early to catch our train to Granada. The hotel had this awesome espresso machine, that worked similarly to a Keurig. It made the most delightful cup of espresso I ever had (and it would not be my last cup on this trip!)
After waking up like 20 minutes late (“Tiny Wife, you need to get up…time to get up…get up get up get up…”), I downed like five of those bad boys, packed my stuff and trudged after Andy to catch the cab, grumbling the entire way. Time to catch our train to Granada!
The rail system in Spain is really quite sophisticated. Called the “Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles,” abbreviated as RENFE, the line offers five main train types ranging from medium distance trains to AVE-Long distance trains. The easiest and most efficient way to travel is by the AVE-long distance trains, which will take you between Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and numerous other towns and stops at high-speed. Andy purchased all of our tickets online beforehand which was very smart. We highly recommend doing this, as lines to purchase tickets can be long, and popular routes are often fully booked. Depending upon the length of your stay, consider purchasing the RENFE Spain Pass.
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Ready to board the train!
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| Lines. |
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| And more lines. Donkeys were getting impatient. |
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| Finally made it on board. Don demanded we buy him a doughnut. |
We made a connection in Madrid on our way to Granada with about a 2 hour stop-over. I was delighted to find that the Madrid train station contained a little turtle refuge! The tropical garden area in the station is nothing new – apparently it had been there for decades as a little slice of nature for passing train-goers. What was new, however, was the population of turtles that seemingly grew overnight.
Over the last few years people having been dropping off their pet turtles here in the tropical garden. The reason why it began, and continues on, is unknown. Some people theorize that families with pet turtles who can no longer care for them or whose children lose interest in them have given them a second home here; others point to the 40% up-tick in ticket price when carrying a pet on board. Whatever the exact reason, it’s definitely the highlight of an otherwise meaningless stop-over between travelers’ destinations. They were the cutest little things, climbing all over each other and snapping at the seagulls. They had a big pond, warm boxes of sand, and plenty of trees and plants. The population of turtles remains surprisingly stable, at around 275-300 turtles.
The turtles even have a caretaker, a woman employed by RENFE, Aurora Peña, who is in charge of keeping them clean, fed, and happy. They’re such a delight; don’t miss them if you find yourself in the Madrid train station.
After dragging me away from the turtles, Andy found us a little restaurant and ordered us some lunch and a bottle of wine while we waited for our train.
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| “Why do you like the turtles better than me?” – Don |
We finally made it to Granada in the early evening and checked into our hotel to meet Dad. We ran into him almost as soon as we walked into the lobby.
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| Look who we found! |
For our stay in Granada, we selected the Meliá Granada Hotel, near the Granada Cathedral, the Alhambra, and the Albayzin district. Situated across the street from a variety of restaurants and bars and next to numerous upscale shopping, the hotel had the perfect location for all of the activities we had planned in Granada. The hotel features 232 rooms, many with beautiful views of the Alhambra, Albayzin, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The hotel has a small restaurant in it that offers a rather over-priced buffet-style breakfast, which you can purchase with your room. There’s so many cute cafes and coffee shops near the hotel that it’s not really worth it to purchase breakfast there.
The Meliá Granada offers the classic room, Meliá guestroom, premium room, classic room with terrace, and the supreme room. During summer months, expect to pay anywhere from $80 – $170 a night. Andy and I had a super cute little room overlooking the bustling street outside.
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| Meliá Granada Hotel; www.melia.com |
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| View from our room |
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| Our room. |
Andy and the donkeys immediately laid down and took a nap. It had been a long day of travel!
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| Out |
After the nap, we met Dad for dinner at La Castellana, located at Angel Ganivet 4, right across the street from the Meliá Granada Hotel. While we picked this restaurant based purely out of geographical convenience, we picked a pretty good one. The menu was extensive, with a varied of salads and a huge seafood list.
This is where Andy’s foray into the world of pork began. Spaniards are really into their pork. It’s everywhere. Pork everything. As Ross Gellar would say, “Instead of a jacket it’s a pile of pork. And instead of a chair, it’s a pile of pork. And instead of the end of the day, it’s the end of time and pork is all that has survived.”
Dad and I, not being huge meat eaters, avoided pork most of time. We, of course tried the Iberian ham (more on that later), but for the most part, we steered clear. Andy, however, dove head first into the dizzying world of pork like a child in a candy store for the first time. It was simply incredibly how much pork he ate.
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| Pork appetizer. |
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| Pork shoulder. |
For dessert, he ordered the pork cheesecake. Just kidding. But, if that had been on the menu, he probably would have ordered it.
We retired early that night, tons of adventures awaited us in Granada!