Nothing Whatsoever in Lekeitio

We essentially did nothing today, which was exactly the reason we were in Lekeitio in the first place. Tourism, as I'm sure you're aware, is often a tiring pain in the ass. You slog through forums and cathedrals and cemeteries and asture monasteries, take photos, listen to interpretive audio programs, and pretty soon you are convinced you will kill a man if you're forced to take in any more culture. You want to experience a wonderful day where there is no culture in your lives at all. This is why God invented the beach, where you can sit outside on a balcony with a glass of wine and some snack food and do nothing whatsoever, and best of all, you won't feel guilty. We in fact picked Lekeitio expressly because of its lack of monuments. We are clever people.


Our hotel and roughly a million small children. More on that soon.

My parents spent a healthy majority of the day sitting on the balcony and doing nothing whatsoever, but I succumbed to my wandering urge and decided to go walk around. It's a charming Basque town, and it feels totally, completely distinct from Castile and Leon, not Spanish or French but something different entirely.



I found a little trail behind an apartment building on the hill and followed it, finding myself on a winding path between locals personal vegetable gardens. It was beautiful, lonely, and slightly creepy, as I kept on anticipating some old gentleman with a beret and a musket to barrel out of the bushes and shout at me. This did not happen.

I came out onto the road again and walked by the ocean, pausing occasionally to look down at the ocean and scare myself with the thought of just how much it would hurt if I toppled over the edge. There are hordes of seagulls nesting here in summer, and they scream and mew like children, a constant back-beat to the sound of the waves. I kept on squinting my eyes and hoping to see a whale, or at least a manta-ray, but no such luck. The ever-skillful Basque fisherman took care of the whales long ago.


The delightfully weathered Gothic cathedral next to our hotel. Kids like to play soccer against the walls here.

One observation about the Basque: they love mullets. Men, women, and children all sport carefully coiffed mullets, with no apparent embarrassment or remorse. Basque experts: is this some sort of traditional haircut, a tradition whose origin is lost in the sands of deep time, a hairstyle cultivated among the primordial pine-woods of pre-Roman Euskadi? Or do they all really have a thing for Joe Dirt?


The island in the bay.

Second: I have never seen more children in my life then in Lekeitio. I suspect the Basque tactic for gaining notoriety and independence may actually be outbreeding the rest of Spain. Every couple had a stroller with a baby in it, hordes of sandy kids roamed the streets and hunted for crabs, teenagers carried around surf boards and drank beer, and everyone seemed exceedingly, well, fecund. Lekeitio certainly seems like a magnificent, near-ideal place to be a kid. You've got the shore, fishing, boats to play around in, giant extended families to buy you ice cream, lenient liquor laws - it's hard to imagine anything nicer when you're underage and frustrated about it.

Lekeitio is not a restaurant mecca, and I only spotted a few actual restaurants during my wanderings around town that day. Most Basques subsist on pinxtos, the bar snacks that have been elevated to impressive gastronomic heights in this part of the world. Unlike tapas, pinxtos are set out on the bar as a sort of casual buffet for drinkers, and almost always are served on top of a piece of bread. Pinxtos apparantly are haute gastronomic delights in places like San Sebastian and Bilbao, but Lekeitio's pinxtos were definitely working class: fried egg, mayonnaise, sausage, and ham seemed to feature in almost all of them. Needless to say they taste very good. Since these snacks are free in unlimited quantity with the purchase of a drink, it seems many Basques take the economical route for their evening meal. So for lunch, we ate at a very underwhelming restaurant by the water.


We wanted paella, but they sold the very last dish of paella they had to a small child (who did devour it all,) so we had to choose other things off the set menu. I went for the peppers stuffed with cod and was not happy to find it came in cream sauce, which is just Not my Deal. It did taste exactly like pimento cheese (attention Southerners). I switched with my dad and just wolfed down some roast chicken.

For dinner, we decided to head back to the hotel restaurant, which had pleased us the night before.



We started with the lobster salad, which was very attractive and nicely composed. One thing I like about Spain is how dishes are often prepared with a lot of care to appearance and composition, even in restaurants that are off the beaten track a bit. The flavor was also spot-on here: tender lobster, fish roe, and a Crab Louie-like mayonnaise sauce dressing. There is not enough lobster in my life.



My dad had a rustic lentil soup. Lentil soups seem to be ubiquitous across cultures, and this was a good, meaty example of the genre. It's the perfect dish for a cold, cold night. As it was raining that evening and the temperature was rather chilly, it was apropo.



I had monkfish with crab, which was excellent - pan sauteed with some butter and herbs. I have gained true respect for the monkfish during my time in Spain. The monkfish is the most hideously ugly fish in the world, the kind of beast you would expect to lurk in the shallows and lop off the legs of innocent women in bikinis, the kind of hideous monster you would expect to emerge from primordial slime when the moon is high. Despite its appearance, it tastes delicious if properly prepared, with a unique texture and a delicate flavor - indeed, it's often called the "poor man's lobster". I also enjoyed the crab claws that came with it. The kitchen cracked them ahead of time. You would not believe how many times I have ordered a dish like this with uncracked crab claws, forcing me to engage in disgusting behaviors to get at the delicious meat because I sure as hell am not wasting it. Have a heart, chefs. Crack the damn crab legs.



My dad had a mixed seafood grill, which was about the same as the pan-sauteed seafood we'd had the night before, if in variety. Tasty and simple, if not particularly flashy. That's what you get for ordering set menus! (But they are a killer deal).



My mom ordered prawns a la plancha, a classic Spanish preparation. Reminiscent of China's beloved salt and pepper shrimps, the little beasties are grilled and salted, leaving the shells cracker-crisp and delicious and the insides sweet like butter. Basque prawns are the best I have ever had. I ended up eating all of her left over heads and tails. I don't care if I am disgusting. I have no shame, I have no remorse, when it comes to suckin' on shrimp heads. I am not repentent.

We headed to bed. The next day we would head to Asador Etxebarri, the food highlight of our trip.

Drive to Basque Country

One last shot of Avila's castle walls.

We left early for our drive to the Basque Country, where we would be staying in the seaside town of Lekeitio. Euskadi is the proper name for the Basque homeland and it truly is a land unto itself - an autonomous region populated by a fiercly nationalistic and unique people. The Basques have been in this region of the Iberian peninsula for as long as anyone can remember, before the Celts and before the Romans - some scientists theorize that our early human ancestors simply turned into Basques in this rocky and green country. The Basques maintained their lands and their individuality against scores of inroads by parties as diverse as Romans, Visigoths, and Charlegmagne's forces, although efforts to turn Euskadi into a bona-fide independent country have met with no success. Fierce fighters, the Basques were known for their bad attitudes by the Romans and in one extremely famous incident, slew Charlegmagne's pal Sir Roland in exchange for the French force's sacking of Pamplona.

But Basques aren't just tough - they're smart. The Basques have commanded economic power entirely outsize to the population and fertility of their lands for hundreds of years, primarily through their impressive seafaring capabilities. Basques discovered rich cod-hunting lands off Newfoundland and Labrador, dominated the whaling industry, and (once their Canadian fishing rights were voided by the Bourbons,) turned their lands into a powerful center of trade, export, and import.

Everything was going beautifully for the Basques until the Spanish Civil War, when (most famously) the Basque city of Guernika was savagely bombed into oblivion by combined German and Italian forces with the blessing of Franco. After the victory of Franco, Basque culture and language was stringently repressed, forcing the Basques to go underground. But the Basques would not be defeated: the Basques bounced back from the lean years of the dictatorship with a vengeance, turning Bilbao and San Sebastian again into centers of industry and shipping.

Today, the Basques are incredibly wealthy and well educated even by EU standards - if Euskadi was an independent nation, it would boast one of the higher GDP's on the continent. For tourists, the Basque country has just about everything going for it - incredibly beautiful scenery, impressive culture and art, and what is widely considered to be the finest and most refined cuisine in Spain. If you can past the X and Z suffused language and the highly-overblown threat of terrorism from the ETA independence movement, Euskadi is one of the most interesting places in today's Europe.


We drove out of Avila fairly early and off into the plains of Castile and Leon. By now, we could anticipate what the scenery would be: rocky desert and scrubby plains punctuated with an occasional humongous castle or cathedral. The route towards Bilbao goes through many of the cities that made Castile and Leon great back in the days of the Empire - Burgos, Tordesillas, Valladolid and Huesca, among others, now dusty outposts (albeit outposts gaining some economic power in recent years). The drive was about six hours or so from beginning to end, but the landscape did eventually begin to change, as the elevation got higher and the trees got bigger and greener.



You know you're coming into Euskadi when the signs start going funny. The Basque language is utterly bizarre, and has no relatives anywhere in the world, originating as mysteriously as the Basques themselves. It is a language that contains an almost obscene quantity of X's and Z's, completely defying your standard-issue English speaker from spelling a goddamn thing. I've been back for two weeks now and I still had to look up the proper spelling of Lekeitio. Although the spelling of Basque looks like something invented by malevolent alien beings, when spoken, Basque sounds relatively normal.

As we drove further into Basque land, the landscape grew verdant, green, and rocky, composed of leafy canyons and small, high-up canyons, traditional Basque farmhouses perched at crazy angles on the side. The Basques adore apartment buildings: even the smallest canyon hamlet had a 12 story high rise apartment building sprouting out of nothing in particular. Do the Basques have something against spreading outwards and would rather keep their development moving up?

We were headed for the fishing village of Lekeitio, located on the Biscayan coast, roughly an hour from Bilbao. The coast was immediately beautiful, reminescent of nothing so much as Mendocino in California - dramatic rocky cliffs falling into the ocean, surrounded by lush pine forest. It was a drop-dead gorgeous Saturday afternoon and hordes of vacationing Basques were hanging out on the beaches and pulling beat-up surfboards out of their cars. They were also smoking weed. (Some joke that the Spanish government supplies the Basques with copious amounts of marijuana to keep them from revolting. Who knows.) We rolled up the coast for a while and found ourselves at our destination.





We were booked into the Princess Aisia Lekeitio, one of the nicer hotels in town with a lovely view of the waterfront. The hotel itself was the base definition of faded glory: it probably would have been a real showpiece roughly 30 years ago, but now smells vaguely of moth. The design scheme focuses on the poor princess the hotel was named after, a minor Spanish noble who was parked here with her children in lieu of anything better to do with her - some distressingly dead-eyed mannequins stood in the hallway. Still, the blue and white color scheme of the hotel was appealing, our room was large and clean, and the staff were friendly indeed - especially when we learned how to say thank you in Basque. It's Eskerrik asko, in case you were wondering.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon hanging out on the balcony. I went for a little stroll around town, taking in the village - it's just about the perfect little Basque fishing village, with a colorful shoreline composed of old fisherman's houses and fish markets, and a twisty, turny, and very vertical interior. Lekeitio is a popular Basque vacation spot but does not seem to host too many tourists from elsewhere - though of course the first people we met at the hotel were American. The little bay the village sits on boasts a beautiful cypress-lined island (with a land bridge that is exposed when the tide goes out), a well kept up beach, and insanely cold water. The water's sub-arctic temperatures didn't seem to deter the hordes of daytrippers, however, who splashed around in the shallows, played with their kids, and sunbathed topless with obvious pleasure. They were probably all high.

We decided to eat at our hotel's restaurant, which was supposed to be quite good, and had a big dining room with a view of the water. Our waiter resembled nothing more then a brusque, if friendly, Basque Hank Azaria. We all decided to go for the set menu.



My mom and I had some simple sauteed mushrooms for our first course. Pretty good, if unremarkable: if you put a mushroom in front of me, I'm going to eat it unless it is poisonous, and even then I probably won't stop to check. I should probably avoid foraging in forests.



My dad had white asparagus with crabmeat. The Spanish love canned white asparagus, are crazy for the stuff, but I've never liked it. It reminds me of what normal healthy asparagus turn into when they are undead. Dad thought it was fine. Apparently he enjoys consuming zombie vegetables.



My dad and I both had the sea bream, which was really quite good - as expected for a Basque fishing town. This was sauteed in quite a bit of butter, a simple and always successful preparation. The flavor of the fish was flaky, tender, and mild, reminding me somewhat of a Biscayan sand dab (one of Northern California's finest aquatic treats). Very tasty.



My mom had what I believe was a kind of sole. The flavor and preparation were about the same as we had - in other words, good - although mom did not enjoy negotiating the bones. I happily relieved her of the fish head. Insofar as I can tell, the Basque have the same delightfully freewheeling attitude towards seafood consumption as the Chinese do. In simpler terms: eating fish heads is awwright.

We headed off to bed to the sound of the ocean - not something I've done in a few years. A good day.

Segovia: Roast Baby Pig, Devil's Bridges and Other Delights

Segovia's impressive Roman aqueduct.

Today we decided to drive to Segovia, another of Castile and Leon's iconic cities. A very old city, it's home to one of Europe's most splendid Roman aqueducts, the royal Alcazar, and a cathedral, situated within some impressive city walls. It also (not incidentally) happens to be Spain's center for cochinillo, Castile's beloved roast suckling pig. You shouldn't be surprised that this town was a hit in our family.



Before we left for Segovia, we went for a stroll on Avila's city walls, which admit visitors. You can't ride a bike on em' like the walls in Xian, China, but they do accord great views of the plains around the city, as well as a sense of how lonely it must have been to be a 12th century sentry.


Not unattractive up here.


The area around Avila. See if you can find the bull ring.


Nice stained glass windows here. The cathedral served double duty as a defensive fortress when times got rough and nasty.


Avila's main square. Occasionally fills with package tourists in baseball caps, but usually more salubrious and packed with fearsome looking abuelas/children playing soccer.


Avila's very old cathedral. I went inside and checked it out - it's got beautiful stained glass windows and a profoundly Gothic ambience inside. The interior museum contains some of the most distressing Christian art I've ever seen - if you happen to really enjoy wooden carvings of Christ's dripping blood with profound anguish on their faces, you should head to this cathedral immediately. On a more positive note, they have an excellent collection of illuminated manuscripts, so elaborately and skillfully produced that it's hard to believe humans made them. (If someone told me to make an illuminated manuscript, i would spend roughly twenty minutes on it, proclaim it too boring, and go off to read about kimchi tacos on the Internet. Weep for us).



Detail of the aqueduct.


The aqueduct from above. Meson Candido, one of Segovia's most beloved pork restaurants, is to the bottom right.

We left for Segovia around noon - a quick fifty minute drive. First I should tell you about the city's aqueduct. It's the first thing you see when you drive into town, a tremendous granite span, striking in its pristine modernity. It's hard to believe something so huge and so well preserved looking can be so old, but it is - built during the reign of either Vespasian or Nerva, it provided water to the then-frontier Roman settlements below. People of the medievial era, being somewhat stupid, decided it made far more sense to ascribe the aqueduct to the Devil then to, say, curious and unproven phenomona like Romans. The townsfolk called the aqueduct the "Devil's Bridge" instead, and there it remained, merrily resisting quite a few attempts to tear it down (a few Moorish invaders simply gave up, not having recourse to awesome things like dynamite). The aqueduct even provided fresh water to the city until quite recently. One wonders how townspeople managed to explain away the even-curiouser phenom of a bridge that ran with water.


Meson Candido, located conveniently right next door to the aqueduct.


Lunch was at Meson Candido, the most venerable of Segovia's various and sundry temples to cochinillo pork and roast baby lamb. A true institution, open since 1905 and chugging along ever since, Meson Candido operates like a gigantic and hectic machine - rather reminiscent of Beijing's monolithic Peking duck houses. The decor is true old-school Spanish, composed of all wood salons stuffed with wall-eyed animal heas and retro relics from the restaurant's very long life, and quite a few of the waitstaff seem to have been around during the building of the aqueduct itself. Celebrities, heads of state, and other dignitaries have all devoured the tender flesh of baby animals here, and the tourists and accolades just keep coming, seemingly unfazed by the passing of decades, the financial crisis, or the pitiful wails of animal rights activists. Reservations are highly recommended, but of course I didn't bother to make any. We simply ambled up (it is right next to the aqueduct) and asked for a spot. It took them about twenty minutes to get us seated, wherein the wait staff directed us up three separate flights of stairs in different directions to find our appointed table. Once seated, a tablecloth, place settings, and utensils were thowcked onto the table at mindblowing speed, menus were passed out, and we were compelled to order soon.



We started with a simple mixed tortilla, Spain's beloved egg and potato omelet. This was acceptable, though I've never really understand the vast appeal of eggy substances. Plenty of vegetables in here and a creamy center.



We tried a grilled tuna salad escabeche (vinegar) style with red bell peppers beneath. A pretty good rendition, with chunks of grilled tuna rather then the usual canned. I liked the tangy vinegar flavor of the escabeche combined with the peppers. Not a knockout but a great counterpoint to the main attraction - the cochinillo.



The cochinillo (roasted suckling pig) was, as expected, divine. My dad proclaimed it the best piece of pork he's ever put in his mouth and as a North Carolina native, he knows that of which he speaks. The Candido families tradition involved cutting up roasted pigs with the edge of a plate - not a ritual we saw performed. Juicy, tender meat was covered in a layer of super-crisp and crackling skin, all sitting in a very juicy and rich broth. We got a middle piece composed mainly of ribs and belly, but some luckier diners had a leg thrown in the mix for their troubles. We perhaps made a mistake by ordering a single-person person - we should have ordered the quarter pig for two and been done with it.



We also had some salt roasted prawns, the Spanish variant on China's beloved salt and pepper shrimps. These were pretty good (though we would have better in Basque country). Spain seems to be some sort of curious epicenter for delicious-ass prawns, perhaps attracted here by mysterious underwater vibrations (military technology, I bet). The tail meat is always nice but I prefer sucking the heads off these beasties much more - all that delicious bright red goo inside, yum yum.



Dessert was Segovia punch, a dessert dearly beloved in this region of Spain. Composed of sponge cake bathed in marzipan with a cream center, it had a nice creamy and pillowy texture, and a slightly nutty, not overpowering flavor, alongside a pleasant caramel sauce. It also happens to be rather fetching looking, with its criss-cross top.


Segovia's cathedral.

Stuffed to the gills, we knew we needed to see more of Segovia, so we unstuck ourselves from the table and began walking up the hill, from the aqueduct and into the old city. It's definitely a steep walk: Segovia's old city is located on a narrow and windy promontory - great for defending against invaders and sweaty business for pork-stuffed July tourists.


A display of fish in one of the square's restaurants.

We passed by Segovia's cathedral, but did not go in. Visitors to Spain often suffer from cathedral overdose, wherein even the sight of a cathedral with rose windows/flying buttresses/carved images of bleeding saviors can induce cold chills, personal itches, and hives. True story. So we passed on.


A Segovian.

The cathedral is located in Segovia's fetching and rather elevated main square, lined with nice-looking restaurants and tapas bars, cochinillo and roast lamb centric restaurants, and tacky-ass tourist shops. Restaurants in these parts consider preserved baby pigs and lambs to be excellent decor schemes and display the intensely dead little fellows in whimsical window displays all over the city. PETA types might want to go somewhere else, maybe give Segovia a pass. Hell, just avoid Spain entirely and save yourself the trauma of being constantly irate.


The Alcazar in question.

The path to Segovia's famous Alcazar palace winds through the city's old Jewish ghetto, where the city's productive and considerable Jewish population were forced to live during the ever-escalating crackdowns of the Inquisition. Although they were consigned to the least desirable portions of town (and, on one occasion, had their houses knocked down without their being consulted to add on to the cathedral,) they managed to build a large synagogue, attractive wooden houses, and exist in relative harmony with their Christian and Muslim neighbors. Sadly, the Jewish expulsion order of 1492 can be attributed to Segovia: Isabella and Ferdinand signed the order in the throne room of the Alcazar.




One of the Alcazar's towers.


One of the castle's splendid Moorish-style gardens.

A stroll through the narrow alleyways of the old ghetto led us to the Alcazar, placed most attractively on a rock promontory at the far edge of town. The blue and white castle's pointy towers and Germanesque slate roof give it a true fairy-tale ambience - as does the terrifyingly deep moat (yes, you can spit into it, but you probably shouldn't, that's probably not right.) It's rumored that Walt Disney based Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney Land on Segovia's own palace, but we can't really be sure. I suspect Cinderella's castle definitely carried out less in the way of inquisitions and testicle-crushing torture within its walls unless there is something about Walt Disney Land I don't really want to know about.


The landscape around the Alcazar. Castile and Leon's landscape reminds me nothing more then high-elevation Southern Utah.

The Alcazar tourist see today is, at least inside, a 19th century remake - skillfully done, but definitely not old. This is because a horrible 1862 fire destroyed the vast majority of the palace's interior, bringing about an 1882 reconstruction, jury-rigged from drawings of the interior before the disaster. In its later life, the Alcazar was used as a site for military records and as an Artillery Academy (imagine trying to escape over that drawbridge, yon pantalooned and chicken hearted cadet of old, imagine that).


The view from Avila's Alcazar.


A retablo portraying Santiago or St. James, whackin' some Moors. I'm afraid you can't see the detail but it is extremely gruesome.


A mural portraying Isabella's proclamation of her queenly status.


View of the very old park below the Alcazar, still popular with soccer players and city residents.


A reconstruction of Ferdinand and Isabella's throne room.


A Moorishesque ceiling. Truly gorgeous, even if it is reconstructed. One of the best aspects of Spanish architecture is the interesting Moorish influence.


A pine tree on the palace grounds.

A tragic story about the Alcazar involves Prince Pedtro, the 12 year old son of Henry the 2nd. Apparently not the brightest of children, the 12 year old Pedro fell to his death out of one of the Alcazar's windows in 1366, an event immortalized by a sepulcher roughly where he broke his fall. It is rumored that his maid, upon realizing what had occured, jumped out the window right after him. (Which makes sense. As the babysitter of the child of the King of Spain, would you want to explain what happened to your employers? Didn't think so.)



We walked back to town after the Alcazar to explore a little more, passing one pork and lamb restaurant after another. My dad and I found this place, which had an impressive display of baby pig. A whole pig can be bought for about 70 euro, if you're inclined to tackle a whole one.

We drove back to Avila to kill the remainder of the long afternoon. Spanish days seem to go on longer then days in the USA, seem to go on forever and ever, an interminable length of time. This is a good thing becasue when you are drinking wine and watching the swallows beneath a medievial way, liquid and slow time is a good thing, you don't want the minutes to rush ahead, you don't want to get to the next thing. Spain appears to have negotiated a slower rotation of the earth for its own personal use, and that is reflected in the people as well - people who amble one foot ahead of the other down the sidewalks during the height of (our) rush hour, people who stop to study menus, thoughtfully regard bottles of booze in the wine shop, stand in the center square and philosophically smoke a cigarette. So too is the attitude towards food: you eat late, later then anyone else does in the world, and when you do eat you draw things out - walk from tapas bar to tapas bar, sip wine and beer, darkly consider the mussel you have just skewered with a toothpick. Slow is Spain. Perhaps that is why the Slow Food movement is not so dominant here, because no one knows how to do it any other way, because McDonalds doesn't serve wine and probably doesn't let you smoke either. Spain (metaphorically) watches us zip by on our Segways, shrugs, and thinks about lunch time.

For dinner, we shrugged and went for tapas at our hotel's upstairs restaurant, La Bruja, which boasts both excellent reviews in the area and an excellent outside view of Avila's floodlit city walls. (Avila's tourist brochures like to tell you that it is the biggest floodlit monument in the world, which is sort of like saying you have the world's biggest ball of twine, but whatever fills you with pride, Avilians).



This is one of the most bizarre things I have put in my mouth to date. The menu billed it as a "salad" with mandarin orange, arugula, hazelnuts and shaved dark chocolate. Always game for weird-ass stuff, I was surprised to find that this was in fact a pasta dish, made with fettucini. The flavor continued the magical-mystery tour: ever eaten one of those Terry's chocolate oranges? The ones you whack on a table? This tasted like a pasta tossed with wedges of those dark chocolate Christmas treats. Totally bizarre. We didn't finish it.



A very nice Spanish cheese plate. I know exactly diddly squat about Spanish cheeses - christ, I'm still working on the Italian roster - but these were tasty as anything, especially the earthy and complex blue and the crumbly and irritable goat. Manchego cheese can be truly lousy, but the cheese industry in Spain is improving by the year - we encountered some really nice cheeses during our time in Spain. I'm also very partial to Spain's quince jam, a traditional accompaniment to cheeses - with its delicate saffron and stone-fruit flavor, it's an exotic addition to any cheese course.


Beef ham. Seriously, that's what the menu said. They meant to say it was beef dried in the manner of ham, of course, and so it was - spicy, aged, gamey, very good. I liked this a lot.


We headed off to bed at a relatively early 12:30. We'd be driving all the way to the Basque country the next day.