RoamingRajuWe decided to spend part of summer 2012 in Spain. As always, I booked this trip months in advance. We flew to Barcelona via Air Canada, from Denver to Toronto, and on to Barcelona. Spain is a vast nation of autonomous regions. This was quite evident as we moved around the country—culture is different from place to place and there is quite a competition between regions. More about that later.
Once we arrived in Barcelona, we went straight to our hotel—those days, Hilton was my hotel of choice—it’s funny how a simple acknowledgment of loyalty ties you down! Anyway, it is a beautiful City. We checked in and my cousin from India was meeting us in Barcelona a few hours later. We were all excited to explore the beautiful architecture of Barcelona. The famous architect Gaudi made his mark on Barcelona.
Mind Your Credit Card
Spain is a beef-eating country. It was tough to find vegetarian food in Spain. We found this small joint next to our hotel that made the best mushroom risotto. After about our second time eating at the place, I did not have enough cash on me, so I gave them my credit card. Turns out someone made a copy of my credit card in the back before bringing it back! They charged a few hundred dollars at some remote village in Spain, and I had to cancel my credit card and go through the fraud process!
One of the best memories I have of Gaudi architecture is in Park Guell. What a wonderful place. There was a lot of walking for sure, but the structures were just amazing. While we were looking at one of the structures, I saw this young artist using his pair of scissors and a piece of paper to make cutouts. I asked him what he was doing, and it turned out he could make your face from a piece of paper for $5 while you wait. This kid was talented. In less than 2 minutes he handed me a cutout of my face. It sure resembled me—see for yourself in this photo!
We were walking in Barcelona like crazy! We walked everywhere. We went to the famous Sagrada Familia, but it was going through renovations. We visited Casa Mila, walked through Gothic Quarter, the Cathedral, and so on. My cousin really likes high-end stores, so we went and walked around in those fancy stores—that itself is tiring. It seemed to me that you could easily walk a mile in one store. One evening, we thought we would try out the famous tapas in town. Not a good idea for a vegetarian. There was almost no selection of tapas for us. This was certainly not a foody trip. Maybe things have changed in the past 10 or so years.
Saffron Hunt
My parents use saffron for their everyday cooking, so I always send saffron to them from the US. The best saffron comes from Spain so I thought while I was in Spain, I would look for high-quality saffron for them. We went to a supermarket and they had saffron in checkout lines but in very small quantity. I usually buy 1 oz tin (saffron is very light in weight, so a 1 oz tin is about 3 inches by 2 inches by 1.5 inches in size). I asked several people in the store and some lady in the line suggested I go to another store a block or so down. We went to this tiny store and sure enough, they had many varieties of saffron. Not knowing how to judge saffron, I just bought what was most expensive!
After a few days in Barcelona, we rented a car from Hertz and began our journey towards Madrid. Being a capital city, Madrid had a lot of action. One day, we were seating for lunch in a small restaurant and all of a sudden, some kind of protest started. I always like to know what is going on, so I started to talk to people and found out that the northern Spain region wanted independence and was protesting. Before it got too bad, we decided to drive back to our hotel. My cousin was driving, and Madrid has all these underground roads—your GPS gets confused! It seemed like the entire City of Madrid has an underground parallel road network. I was quite impressed. One night we decided to go to a bullfight. This was a mistake. Everyone was smoking in the arena—a common sight in Europe, unfortunately. I had to ask people behind me to please not smoke as I am allergic! Anyway, the fight started, and we had no clue what we signed up for. The person fighting the bull did some nice tricks but started actually attacking the bull with his sword. We could not watch the gruesomeness of the show, so we decided to walk out.
Bullfight 
Protest 
Flamenco Dance 
Royal Palace
That evening, it was my cousin’s birthday, so we decided to celebrate by watching a Flamenco Dance show. This was something to see. It was in this very small place, but the dancers were so good you could watch them all night long!
The next day we visited the Royal Palace in Madrid. It is huge! We went to the plaza, the cathedral, and so forth. One day, we decided to take a day tour to a small historic town called Avila. They had medieval architecture in this small town, and I was marveling at the water system they built a couple of thousand years ago. They had overhead pipelines coming from a reservoir! It was a quiet, charming town. We enjoyed strolling through the town, seating around near the plaza for lunch, and otherwise enjoyed our time.
Arrest Warrant in Spain?
While we were visiting the town, I parked the car in what seemed like an open parking space. It turns out it was a handicapped parking space—there were no signs. The only way you could know that it was a handicapped parking space was the stripes were in a different color. We did not know. So, when we returned, there was what looked like a parking ticket on our windshield written in Spanish. Our next stop was back in Barcelona. I showed our hotel concierge the parking ticket and asked him to call the parking office to pay for the ticket. He called and they said it takes them five days to get a parking ticket in the system, so they could not accept the fine until the ticket was in the system. We were leaving for the US in the next day or so. A few months after we returned, I received what looked like a summons in Spanish—they must have received my address from Hertz. I decided to just ignore the stupid thing and threw away whatever they sent me. As long as I don’t go back to Spain, I think I am OK!
Countryside Hospitality
The following day, we started driving back to Barcelona. We decided to take a scenic route this time around. While we were driving through the countryside, we saw these cherry orchards. We decided to stop. We went into the farm and were tempted to start picking. I started to look for someone and called for anyone that might be there. Finally, I saw someone, so I went to him and asked if it was OK for us to pick some fresh fruit from his farm. He did not understand a word I was saying. I could not figure out what he was trying to tell us. So, I showed him with hand gestures that we wanted to pick fruit. He got that and nodded that it was OK. I offered him some cash. He would not accept any money. I kept insisting and he kept saying no. We had fun picking fresh cherries in the middle of nowhere in Spain!
My cousin left for India a day earlier and the following day we went to a beach. Turns out all the beaches in Barcelona are clothing-optional😊 We rushed out of there rather quickly. The following morning, we packed up and flew back to the US. Did you have a trip where everything was great but the food? Please do share with your comment. Until next time…
I think our experience was the same food wise(Aug 2019). Being a vegetarian it’s hard finding good options. We went to Sevilla, extraordinary city but difficult to communicate and finding veg options was in itself a task. I enjoy reading your travel diaries Rajubhai.
Thanks, Pankti. Yes, Spain is a tough place to be a vegetarian. It is similar to South America (Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, etc.).