1. Pure Unadulterated Booey Time. Jonathan and I are together literally all day, every day. It's a pretty amazing opportunity for us to have this time together early in our marriage. This must be like what it will be like when we're 80 (insert joke about Jonathan being an old curmudgeon trapped in a young person's body here).
2. Fresh bread. Fresh bread is a guaranteed item at every table. A gorgeous baguette generally costs about .80 Euro. Amazing.
3. Vanilla Beans. Vanilla Beans are amazingly cheap here (.97 Euro for each bean) whereas they cost about $5 in the US. I use fresh vanilla beans in my baking, as opposed to vanilla extract. They have such a wonderful, rich flavor. When you use vanilla beans, you slice them open and scrape out the tiny seeds inside. We've been putting the empty bean shells (the part you would normally throw out) in our coffee sugar bowl, which gives our sugar a wonderful vanilla flavor. Definitely a tasty treat in your coffee each morning.
4. Walking. Sometimes not having a car and relying on the bus can be a drag (having to organize your day around the bus schedule and not being able to stay in other towns past 10, the latest bus). But all of the walking I get to do here is pretty amazing. Almost every day I walk to the grocery store. And then after that I walk to family's house, walk to the library (of which I am a proud member), take a bus to a neighboring town and walk around and look at stuff, or just plain old leave my apartment and go for a walk. My legs have become so very nice and shapely :)
5. Coffee. You can get a good cup of coffee almost anywhere (bars, restaurants, bus stations). There is always that experience when you order a cup of coffee at a diner in the US and it's always a toss up as to whether it's a solid drip coffee or whether it's been sitting on the burner for 5+ hours. They don't serve drip coffee here either. Everywhere has espresso machines. I like to order a cage con leche, which is an espresso served with steamed milk added 1:1. It's like a latte, but stronger - less milk.
6. Gaseosa. Drinking during the day is normative (yet another thing I love about Spain). To ensure that people are able to return to work, they add Gaseosa to their beer or wine. Gaseosa is basically carbonated sugar water, an amazing invention for light weights like me. It makes an ordinary drink champagne-like.
7. Cafe culture. There are literally cafes on every street corner, and they are never empty. In a time of severe economic difficulty people are out buying drinks and coffees in cafes. To go out and have a drink with friends is considered to be less of a luxury as it is in the US, and more of a right granted by a modern standard of living. When we stayed with family in Vigo we went to cafes with family probably about 2-3 times a day to get a drink. This is normal life! There are several different types of cafes, but all of them serve liquor and coffee. There are the cafes that are more bar-like, more alcohol oriented, but which also serve a good cup of a coffee. Then there are the bars that are more coffee and pastry oriented. It's like if you took an amazing pastry shop from the US and then put a full bar and coffee shop in it. Pretty amazing. And when you order a coffee, it always comes with a little piece of cake or cookie standard. When you order an alcoholic drink, it will usually come with a little tapa (olives, cured meat, tortilla). A cafe con leche or a beer usually run around 1 Euro and a class of wine is usually around 2 Euro.
8. Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice. In all of the bars they have these incredible orange juice machines. amazing. Although, all of the orange juice in grocery stores is pitiful. It's like orange juice from those tubes of frozen concentrate, but you accidentally put in too much water.
9. Fresh Food. This is probably one of my favorite things about Spain. All of the food is produced locally and organically. When you buy chicken here, they still have small feathers around the feet. When you buy potatoes, they still are covered with dirt. Food here is much healthier and the people are very connected to the food they eat, so much as to say that wine not made at home, wine from commercial vineyards, is not good for you because it has "chemicals" in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment