Valls: Food + festival + human towers = best last-minute trip ever

Late January, Dreamer was browsing her well-worn copy of Fodor’s Spain travel guide, looking for a weekend destination for February. She looked up the Catalan city of Sitges, thinking it might be a fun destination for Carnival, and as she read a couple pages past that entry, a tiny paragraph about the nearby town of Valls caught her eye. Three things immediately jumped out: calçotada castellers and, most relevant, last Sunday of January. “Wait,” she thought. “That’s this Sunday!” It was Wednesday. But hey, we’re used to doing things the Spanish way now, right? And we love eating onions. The dynamic duo,

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Mah-mah-my Girona!

After spending a couple of early December days in Figueres, hometown of Salvador Dalí, we moved on to the nearby Catalan city of Girona. Girona’s old town is beautifully preserved, and best seen while walking along the old walls. Girona’s old town includes El Call, an old Jewish quarter. A famous Jewish scholar named Nachmanides (aka Ramban) was born here. We visited the old Synagogue to understand this history better. But back to modern-day Christian traditions. While this city didn’t have a Christmas market as cute as the one in Figueres, we did spy a Tío de Nadal in the local

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Figueres: Surreal long weekend

We delved into surrealism last December with a trip to Salvador Dalí’s hometown over Spain’s early December puente, a term used for a long weekend here. The Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres holds the largest collection of the artist’s work. The whole thing is . . . well, surreal, from the giant egg-adorned facade to sculptures that were kind of pay to play. You can bet Dreamer was all over capturing that Rainy Taxi experience… and then, everything else on display here, too. It’s a very unique place. Perhaps our favorite parts of the museum were the ones we

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Mallorca: Buenas ensaïmadas por allí

As winter descended upon Madrid last year, we really started to miss the Valencian Community – the weather, the food, the language, the sea. So when we came across some discount plane tickets to Mallorca in November, we decided it was finally time to visit the Balearic islands off the coast of our old home. Of course, first order of business after landing in Palma de Mallorca was to try a local delicacy: ensaïmada, a flaky pastry made with lard (saïm in the Mallorquín language), and often filled with cream or fruit. According to our research, the best ensaïmada in

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Harvest time and day drinking in Spanish wine country

Aah, wine country. Next in line for our “have car, will travel” vacation in early September 2017 was Spain’s wine producing region, La Rioja. And it just so happens we arrived at harvest time. We stayed in the romance suite of a renovated 16th-century monastery in the town of Casalarreina. Everyone in Spain had gone back to work or to school after their August vacations, meaning we had the place pretty much to ourselves; and it was a rather affordable trip to boot. In nearby Haro – capital of the upper Rioja region – we decided we might as well

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More ham: Rural and French Basque country

Basque Country and culture extends across the Bay of Biscay into Southern France , so we took a day to explore this connection along with a couple of small fishing villages on the Spanish side. We started in Pasai Donibane, or Pasajes de San Juan, a small fishing village near San Sebastián, where we stopped to walk around and have lunch. Apparently water sports, particularly those involving boats, are quite popular in Basque Country. We even had a view of the water at lunch. We then headed across the French border into Biarritz, a glamorous beach resort town. Très chic!

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