NYR #48: Ride the Tren de la Fresa

Literally: Strawberry Train. Laura first described it to me as something for kids at the train museum, so I had a picture in my head of one of those mini-trains that they have at amusement parks, or a little train car in miniature that kids can explore. I don't really know.

Needless to say, it's not like that at all, but rather is a really old-school train car (think wooden benches for seats) that makes the trip from Madrid to Aranjuez (the path of the very first train line in Spain) ONLY DURING STRAWBERRY SEASON!!!!

The hosts dress up in period (mid-19th century, maybe??) dress and pass out small cartons of deliciously fresh Aranjuez strawberries, while reciting Spanish poetry. The poem they recited while we were on the train was calles, "La chata en los toros", and is about Isabel de Borbón, the daughter of Queen Isabel II. She was really popular in Madrid because she was kind of a party girl and really loved going to bullfights, and this poem is all about her and her ladies-in-waiting getting ready.

Sadly, the views out of the train weren't particularly spectacular, but it was a lot of fun to do once, and the train is super-pretty and old. I rode the train with Max and Ashley when they were here, and we had LOADS of fun. Perhaps a bit too much fun, because on the way back, I conked out on Max's shoulder for the entire trip.

NYR #42: Start a day with churros from San Gines

This is another one from WAY back in March (but it gets repeated with just about every visitor that I have had, so it counts that I haven't written about it until now).

So when I was a child, Saturday mornings, my dad and I would go get donuts at Winchell's. I always had a very specific donut request: strawberry with strawberry icing, or plain with sprinkles.

Winchell's has long since gone out of business, and frankly, the thought of eating donuts kind of makes my stomach turn a bit (they're just TOO sweet). But churros in Spain...those never go out of style.

Pure awesomeness

Let me introduce you. The churro: straight-up fried dough that you can coat in powdered sugar and dip in chocolate. Or just dip into chocolate. Or dip into coffee, if you're into that sort of thing.

The first time I ate at San Gines, with Aubs, I wasn't able to finish the chocolate. The second time, I finished my chocolate. The third time (with Vica) I finished mine and maybe had a little of hers. The fourth time, with Max and Ashley, I definitely finished my chocolate and about half of Ashley's.

Basically, it's delicious. And I want to go back right about now. 

Sandwiches

This post will probably only make sense to friend Aubrey, but for the past two weeks, I have made myself sandwiches for dinner.

Turkey, mozzarella, tomato, mayo and mustard on wheat bread. All of those ingredients combined and eaten together (not separate!) in one, or sometimes even TWO, delicious sandwiches. For dinner.

That is all.

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! I will be celebrating by writing papers. Woo!

Krakow! Part I

Got into Krakow Friday morning at about 9:30.  It was cold and snowing and really grey--Absolutely perfect Winter Wonderland weather! 

Hung out at the house while Vica studied for a test and I worked on a paper and then we went to lunch...delicious pierogi:

 From this cute little shop!

There are approximately 5 tables for 4 people in this joint. If someone is sitting at a table, you just up and join them. It's adorable.

After, Vica took me to a little coffeeshop to do some work while she went to take her test. Unfortunately, the coffeeshop did not have a chai tea latte. However, they did have a chai coffee, which I ordered sans coffee, thinking that it would be somewhat like a chai tea latte. Instead, I'm fairly positive that it was simply chai-flavored hot milk.

It was like drinking a snickerdoodle!

London IV

Breakfast Saturday morning: K&M wanted to take me to this brunch place near their house called Brew, but the line was out the door, so we went to another brunch place near their house: Giraffe.

It's a chain, but that doesn't matter because the food was delicious. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!

Them's some blueberry & banana pancakes. They are going on my list of all-time favorite pancakes.
Even if I hadn't been pancake-starved, they still would have made the list. 

I haven't had pancakes in about 3 months. Normally, that doesn't bother me. In fact, pancakes aren't my favorite type of breakfast food. (I prefer waffles).

HOWEVER, when you don't really have the option of ever having pancakes because you are living in a country where, for whatever reason, the ENTIRE POPULACE does not believe in eating a decent breakfast...well, then. Pancakes become a PRETTY BIG DEAL.

Also, I love this restaurant because they included their own version of this poem on the back of the menu:

Smiling is infectious,

You catch it like the flu,

When someone smiled at me today,

I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner,

and someone saw my grin,

When he smiled I realised,

I’d passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile,

Then I realised its worth,

A single smile just like mine,

Could travel round the earth.

So if you feel a smile begin,

Don’t leave it undetected -

Let’s start an epidemic quick

And get the world infected!

Cheers!

London II

I say that the turkey meal was a miserable failure because, well, because...just look at it:

It was kind of a mess, and a little bit tasteless. And it lacked delicious sweet potatoes. Have you seen the recipe that my mom used this year? They were apparently fantastic. It's a pity that I wasn't there to eat them ALL UP. 

But this is what the inside of the restaurant looked like. It was a lot like Christmas, what with the tree and hall. And the fact that it was a restaurant at the Christmas Market. You know, 'cause that makes a difference.

London I

I was in London for Thanksgiving. It was awesome. Actually, it was more like I was in London for Black Friday, but same dif.

I got there Thursday night, and after a little bit of a hassle with the express train (note: an express train to Victoria Station does NOT stop at Clapham Junction), joined up with K, M and friends for a delightful dinner at The Stonehouse Restaurant (I think it was more of a gastropub).

Friday, we wandered around the city, which is my favorite thing to do in Europe. And we wandered into a lot of dessert shops, which is my favorite thing to do in life.

First up, Notting Hill, and The Hummingbird Bakery. They had whoopie pies (both chocolate AND pumpkin!)! And they had a delicious red velvet cupcake (unfortunately not as delicious as Bent Spoon, but still delicious). This was at 11 AM. Who says you shouldn't eat dessert for breakfast?

Next, we headed on over to the delightful Christmas Market in Hyde Park. It reminded me of a mixture between a State Fair, a Renaissance Fair, and Santa's playground in the mall. It had all of these cute little wooden huts all decked out with garland and holly, selling spiced cider, mulled wine, hot chocolate, fudge, candy, and bratwurst. There was a lot of bratwurst. I guess Christmas Markets were imported from Germany.

At the Christmas Market, we ducked into a little restaurant that was selling Roast Turkey with all the Trimmings in an attempt to make up for the delicious T-day meal that we had missed the day before. It failed kind of miserably, but at least it gave us a chance to sit down someplace warm and chat for a while before going back out in the cold!

Seville & Córdoba (Part II)

After Córdoba we headed down to Sevilla (which took up pretty much the rest of the day). Our hotel was a pretty sweet place, and we went out to tapas/dinner in a place kind of near the old Jewish neighborhood. Towns in Andalucia almost always have an old Jewish neighborhood (like from back before the Jews were kicked out of Spain in 1492), and it's always a pretty well-preserved example of medieval Spanish architecture. But that's beside the point...

The point is that for dinner I got a goat cheese and raspberry crepe, and it was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in my entire life.

It was actually a lot simpler than I had anticipated. Goat cheese. Crepe. and Raspberry sauce. I dunno...for some reason I was expecting real raspberries, not sauced ones. But it was still delicious.

The next day, we hit up the Reales Alcázares (Royal Castle-Fortress-Thingy), which were originally built by a Muslim king, but when the Christians conquered Seville, Pedro el Cruel decided to do some remodeling.

(BTW: Pedro el Cruel was probably no more evil than your average run-of-the-mill conqueror, it's just that this is the moniker that stuck).

Castles in Spain are awesome in that they have the cool little wall decoration/archer turret-things which are definitely my favorite part of castle architecture.  No matter how many arches and spires a castle has, I will always get the biggest kick out of the top of the walls.

And Pedro el Cruel really know how to get someone to spiff up a castle. The reason to visit this one is that it is one of the best examples of Mudejar architecture in Andalucia.

Mudejar architecture is the Islamic style of architecture, but built for Christian purposes. So you see a whole bunch of Islamic details, like Arabic writing or awesome capitals, or even this cool starry-golden ceiling.

And of course, castles are never complete without gardens, and gardens are never complete without mazes. (And PEACOCKS!)

Molly and Catalina are lost in Wonderland

Pretty Peacock

3/4 liter of oil? That can't be right...

My wonderful, lovely mother sent me to Spain with a package for cornbread...so I could demonstrate the delights of good ol' American cooking to my housemom. I thought it was a great idea, because I love cornbread, and box mixes are fantastic. So easy, so tasty, so... easy!

Of course, we forgot to remember that ingredients/measurements/everything is different in Europe...which makes it all a little bit harder.

3/8 Cup? I'm not sure I can measure that with the cups I've got back home.
Also...what do you do when they only have olive oil? You make olive-oily cornbread.
At least the eggs and milk are the same.

Cooking with conversions can be really difficult. Especially when the conversion widget on your apple dashboard tells you that 3/8 cup is almost 3/4 liter. (It's not.) Thank goodness Maribel knows that 3/4 of a liter sounds like way, way too much oil. She may use oil like it's going out of style in other recipes, but at least she knows.

With an online (and more correct) conversion chart, we were able to guesstimate the amount of oil and milk needed.

I would love to be able to show you a picture of what it looked like fresh out of the oven, but we were so excited to try it that we just cut right in.

yumm....cornbread. fresh out of the oven. 

It was delicious, although it tasted kind of like olive oil. Maribel liked it, although she said that it is definitely better with honey.

Thank goodness it's pretty hard to mess up cornbread. Especially when you smother it with butter and honey.

Japanese food in Madrid

Not gonna lie. It tastes kind of funny. Sort of like American food tasted funny in Vietnam.

Last Sunday it was kind of a narsty day out (the first real day of fall: gray and cloudy and cold), so I went to Starbucks to study with a friend, and chilling in Starbucks on a cold day just makes the world so much better, even if the Starbucks lacks the tasty deliciousness of the Caramel Apple Spice Cider. (Dear Starbucks...)

Yes. They lack apple cider in Madrid. I do not understand how they can survive autumn without apple cider.

Anyhow. We got kind of hungry for something warm, so we left Starbucks and happened upon a Japanese udon place.

When you're cold and hungry, udon is the perfect thing. Beef noodle soup with thick, chunky noodles. What's not to love?

I would say that the only problem with this udon is that they added sugar, or something. It was surprisingly sweet, which was not unpleasant, but still a little odd. I'm not sure whether that's the way udon is supposed to taste, whether it's this particular restaurant, or whether it's because I'm in Spain, but I'm placing my money on the latter.

Hamburguesas

Apparently Spanish children are the most obese in all of Europe. I learned that today in a magazine, and it actually doesn't surprise me. What IS surprising is that the adults are still so freaking skinny.

"But Spanish food is so healthy, right?" I hear you say. "Isn't it a part of the Mediterranean diet that all the doctors and nutritionists were recommending a few years back?" Wrong.

Spain may form a part of the border of the Mediterranean Sea, and its diet may share some characteristics with the Mediterranean diet (like a heavy reliance on olive oil), but in reality, Spaniards like their food much like Americans like theirs: fried, greasy and full of beef. I can't count the number of times that I have eaten some sort of fried meat while I've been here, not to mention the croquetas (croquettes--delicious fried chunks of béchamel sauce, cheese and ham...kind of like a mozzarella stick, but better. Not healthier, just better.)

And of course, the side of me that actually wanted to eat healthy in Spain died when a friend and I discovered this hamburger at a restaurant 10 minutes away from school. We go there on Tuesdays when we have a relatively short lunch break.

It has egg (over-easy), bacon, beef, lettuce and tomato, and maybe cheese. I don't normally eat eggs over-easy, but it is totally worth it for this burger. It might be the best hamburger that I have ever had in my entire life, which is saying something, because it's competing with buffalo burgers AND green chile cheeseburgers. And you KNOW it's good if it can compete with those.

On Picnics

The picnic is alive and well in Spain, in case you were a bit worried that it was dying a slow and painful death.

I'm not entirely sure when I last had a picnic (tailgates don't count), but yesterday I rediscovered how much fun they are during a 5-HOUR picnic in the Parque del Oeste with my intercambio, Laura, and a bunch of her friends.

(Intercambio is the Spanish term for a language exchange and a fun way to make new friends!)

There were bocadillos, and Tex-Mex Doritos (which basically taste like the Nacho Cheese ones), and homemade lemon cookies, and Pringles, and Fanta Naranja, and...and...sooo much food!

And then there were the games. We played soccer (kick the ball around the circle, not an actual game). We talked--some Spanish, some English, some Spanglish. And even though I said that a tailgate doesn't REALLY count as a picnic, there is at least one thing that they can have in common: FOOTBALL! That's right, even though we're in Spain and the whole wonderful, lovely and very, very American sport of football doesn't really exist here, someone brought a football to the tailgate--erm, I mean, picnic--today, and I was in heaven. We played catch for at least an hour or two. It might not have been that long, but I think it was. After all, it was a 5-HOUR PICNIC!

It was almost like being back home, at a K-State game, except instead of a parking lot, I was in a lovely, verdant green park, and instead of eating the Madre's delicious ribs, I had a bocadillo with tomato and tortilla española and a Fanta Naranja.

Thank God for football season!

PS: My Wildcats are 4-0! GO STATE!

31 days

So far, I have been in Madrid for exactly one month. Crazy. I'll let that sink in for a bit, for those of you who need it (ahem, mother)...

So far, in 31 days, I have not visited the Prado. I am very surprised by this, seeing as it is one of my most favorite museums in the world. However, I have visited a very interesting exhibition of early surrealist photographs, as well as a kind-of-schizofrenic exhibition at the Reina Sofia. So I haven't been neglecting museums as much as you might think.

Also, in 31 days, I have only visited the Retiro a handful of times. I blame it on the fact that I live in Argüelles, but mostly it's because I'm just plain lazy.

In 31 days, I have visited 4 libraries and several bookstores. I blame this on the fact that I am a student and books are my life.

Finally, in 31 days, I've probably drunk as many Fanta Naranjas and eaten half as many Magnum Doble Chocolate ice cream bars. Also, at 4 Maria cookies per breakfast, I've eaten well over 100. Not to mention the paella, gazpacho, tortilla española, pisto and croquetas that I've eaten. ¡Delicioso!

Paella and Things.

I love paella. It isn't actually a Spanish dish, so much as it is a Valencia dish, but still. It is delicious, and there are restaurants in Madrid where you can get it, and have I mentioned that it is delicious?

Last Saturday, Christina and I went walking (literally, we covered Madrid and were probably moving for at least 4 hours straight). We met up in the Chueca metro stop (we happened to be riding the same train when we got there, which I find super-coincidental), and made our way to a delicious little paella restaurant called, "La Paella de la Reina".  We had gazpacho, too, and it was all fantastic. Here are some pictures of Christina's paella plate and mine taken at approximately the same time during the meal:

Mine's the one on the right, in case you can't tell. And I might have helped Christina polish off the rest of hers. Afterwards, we were so full, that we felt like exploring, so explore we did. We wandered by Middlebury's campus in Madrid, walked down Paseo del Recoletos and down the Paseo del Prado, over to the Puerta del Sol, and up Calle del Preciados to Callao and Gran Vía.

On Preciados, we found this:

Twist is better, but the plain yogurt here clearly has more fat in it, which makes it super-tasty.

And on Gran Vía, we found this:

    

It's a restaurant named, "Nebraska", and its slogan is: "Enjoy yourself in Nebraska!"  It makes me wonder if any Spaniard has ever actually been to Nebraska.

Speaking of Spanish food

Check out the delicious chocolate mousse cake that my host mom made me for my birthday!

It was so rich and creamy and delightful!

Madrid

I'm here! I've arrived (quite safely, too, I might add)! And the city hasn't changed a bit since I was here last (2008, for those keeping track). It's still hotter 'n snot and the streets a dirty and dust-filled (even though individual people mop the sidewalks outside of their shops/apartment buildings, they never seem to really get clean...probably because someone almost immediately tosses down a cigarette or a used metro card).

I've mostly been recovering from jetlag (hey--it takes me awhile, ok?). But I have managed to visit some of my favorite places (and eat some of my favorite foods)!

For instance, pictured below is the Casa del Pescador (The House of the Fisherman) in the Parque del Retiro (from now on, it's just the Retiro). The Retiro was just one of the many places where former kings of Spain would go to hunt/fish/kill things for fun. Fernando VII was one of these kings, and within the park, he built lots of cute little hunting lodges, such as this one, intended for fishing:

The Retiro is absolutely my favorite place of all of Madrid. It's like Central Park, but better, because there are more even more walking paths and it's quieter.

It's also near a bunch of little shops and restaurants, like La Taberna del Toro, the restaurant in which I ate what is one of my favorite meals in Spain: Gazpacho and Calamari.

Don't they look just absolutely delicious?