What I ate in Spain this summer!

Happy Friday!

In continuation with my last blog post about my summer vacation, today I'm going to be posting about the second part of the trip: Spain!

After France, we rode a really fast train for 3 hours and that took us to Barcelona where we stayed a few days. After Barcelona, we took a roadtrip down to the Andalucian provinces and visited the beautiful cities of Seville, Cordoba, Malaga, Valencia, Granada, and some smaller beach town like Marbella and Javea. 

Everything was just soooo beautiful and picturesque, it really was like those pictures you see on the travel section of Pinterest. Just breathtaking and the history is really amazing, the Arab influence is really visible in the food and architecture. 

In Barcelona, one of my favorite parts was visiting the giant food market called La Boqueria. This market is one of the most famous markets in the world for the quality and variety of the fresh fruits, veggies, meat and fish. Best of all, it is located on a really famous and busy street called Las Ramblas which is constantly full of tourists from all around the world. My favorite part was that right when you walk into La Boqueria you just see an entire rainbow of colors, I automatically assumed it was candy: but nope it was...fruits! Cute little to-go fruit containers perfect for a healthy snack while on your daytrip. Also, other than normal cut up fruit was fresh fruit juices that were being juiced right there! This was just so amazing to me because everything looked very very appetizing and they were actually selling like crazy.

After we finished from La Boqueria, we strolled down Las Ramblas, the really famous and super busy street. We came across a part of the sidewalk that had a giant umbrella and 6 or 7 small tables with lots of chairs. And, a big sign that said: "3 Tapas + 1 Family Paella + Dessert = 8 Euros". We thought this was a really really good deal since we had been seeing other restaurants in Barcelona that were selling just the Paella for almost 40 Euros! So, we decided to give it a try. In short: DELICIOUS AND WORTH EVERY CENT.

The waiter told us that the tapas we would get would be the "Tapas of the day", meaning we wouldn't get to choose them, but we were fine with that. We got basically fried everything!! Fried portabello mushroom, fried calamari, fried eggplant, fried potatoes, and a tuna pasta salad.

The Paella was also very amazing and definitely lived up to being the famous dish of Spain. The seafood was incredibly fresh and the rice was very rich with Saffron and other spices. YUM!

A few days later, we were in another city called Cordoba. My mom likes to say that we are very lucky people, because on our first night in Cordoba, we stumbled onto a FREE Flamenco show! It was some sort of community get-together where everyone in the town comes together for a night of entertainment and drinks. That night happened to be a really special one because they had Flamenco dancers that were really well-known in Spain and had won many awards for their performances! Just our luck!! We sat right down and enjoyed the show. I loved all the performer's dresses, they were so detailed and really made the dancing just look that much better.

Just look how beautiful the streets are!! So quiet, peaceful with those lovely white walls that make everything look so bright and happy and CLEAN. 

This was my absolute favorite piece of architecture, it was in an ancient Arabic Fortress in Seville, and everything was just so geometrically detailed and articulate!

Did I mention the beaches were simply perfect??

While in Granada, we eventually found out what the word "Granada" means in Spanish: Pomegranates! 

The whole city was lined with Pomegranate trees that were bursting with fruit, and they were free to the general public for fruit picking. We might have gotten a little carried away (My mom started stuffing them into her purse), she kept saying its because Pomegranates in Houston sell for $1 each and they're never as sweet as these were.

We had such an amazing time and I know that Spain is a country I would love to visit again sometime! Adios!