Back to blogging and off to Spain

Hello and welcome to a long awaited entry in our travel blog,

First of all I would like to apologise that it has been so long since our last blog and I know that there are not enough blogs that would make up for the adventures that we have been on since then but there is no better time to start than now.

In this blog I will speak of recent adventures back to Spain and briefly fill you in on what you missed.

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The last blog we were adventuring while we could and were working in Canada. Since then we have moved to England as I decided that it was time to get serious about pursuing my career (that was not happening in Australia, Spain or Canada) so it was my push that lead us to the motherland, the United Kingdom.

I moved first and Kyran followed a month and a half later. I managed to get an apartment, a job and a car all in the first month that I had arrived, and the job was in the industry that I had studied in! The ever-elusive job in ecology.

I have since spent the summer as a Field Surveyor in an around London, working with all kinds of animals. Below are some photos of some of the animals that I got to work with. 

All in all I am writing this blog now as the autumn leaves begin to turn and I can truly say that it has been a great summer and a great experience.

As for Kyran he kept his Canadian job and works from home. Every now and then when something fails or the company needs something he will go back to Canada to install it or fix it. Which is exactly what happened in this latest adventure.

A quick trip over the English Channel

So after a few months in England now I decided that it was high time that we made the trip back to Spain to see the family. Kyran had finished some big projects and as a sort of intervention from his work I booked us tickets to Spain for 3 days. It was to be three days of sun food and drink, three days to revisit some of the places that we liked from last time we were there.

But alas Kyran had to run back to Canada to fix an invention that had gone sideways.

All in all this is about my trip to Madrid – Spain

I flew in on a Wednesday night ready for a full day Thursday. I stayed with an aunty in Madrid (Who you know how people say "you should have been some one else’s kid", well I should have been hers). Thursday I set out to see if my marriage had been registered at the local registry office in Sol (The middle of Madrid)

See below a photo of me with the Bear and the strawberry tree that marks the middle of Madrid.

Afterwards there is a well known area or ‘bario’ that is close to Sol that you can buy all sorts of materials, laces, wools, basically anything crafty. I am talking shop after shop the area is named after the main street with all the shops on it ‘calle pontejos’. The long and the short of it is that I spent all morning going from shop to shop becoming familiar with what shops sold what, and what prices to expect. After a few hours with a vague idea of what my next project was I invested in a variety of laces and materials.

After that I was pretty buggered, and I went home, bought some food had lunch and... When in Rome… I had a siesta!

Now food, I need to explain this here, some people travel to see things others for other reasons, well I like to think that I travel for food!

So what I went to Spain to eat was ‘pimentos fritos’, churros con chocolate, and a fairly dodgy sangria made by Don Simon (it’s a favourite past time)

Pimentos Fritos: Padrón peppers (Galician: pementos de Padrón) are a variety of peppers (Capsicum annuum) from the municipality of Padrón in the province of A Coruña, Galicia, northwestern Spain. These are small peppers (about 5 cm long), with a color ranging from bright green to yellowish green, and occasionally red. Their peculiarity lies on the fact that, while their taste is usually mild, a minority (10-25%) are particularly hot. Whether a given pepper ends up being hot or mild depends on the amount of water and sunlight it receives during its growth, in addition to temperature. It's said that solely watering the soil of the plant is likely to produce milder pimentos, whilst watering the whole plant, leaves and stalks included, produces peppers of the spicier variety

The taste is mild, but some specimens can be quite hot, which property has given rise to the popular Galicianaphorism Os pementos de Padrón, uns pican e outros non ("Padrón peppers, some are hot, some are not"). Typically, there is no way of determining whether a given pepper will be hot or mild, short of actually eating it, though some maintain that smelling each cooked Padrón for spice prior to eating is a good indicator.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padr%C3%B3n_peppers)

Churos con Chocolate: A Churro is a fried-dough pastry. Churros are traditional in Spain and Portugal. In Spain, churros can either be thin (and sometimes knotted) or long and thick, where they are known as porras in some regions. They are normally eaten for breakfast dipped in hot chocolate. Sugar is often sprinkled on top.

The origin of churros is unclear. One theory suggests they were brought to Europe from China by the Portuguese. The Portuguese sailed for the Orient and, as they returned from Ming Dynasty China to Portugal, they brought along with them new culinary techniques, including altering dough for youtiao, also known as Youzagwei in southern China, for Portugal. The new pastry soon crossed the border into Spain, where it was modified to have the dough extruded through a star-shaped die rather than pulled.^[1]

Another theory is that the churro was made by Spanish shepherds, to substitute for fresh bakery goods. Churro paste was easy to make and fry in an open fire in the mountains, where shepherds spend most of their time.

Don Simon Sangria: It is a cheap sangria that is widely available in Spain and the reason it is on my list is that it was something we use to buy and drink in the park with friends while playing cards. so it is not so much a good drink but it serves as a memory of good times gone by.

So with that said there was pimentos fritos for lunch every day and dinner most nights.

I should also mention that the salad is made with garlic and olive oil and the juices when finished are soaked up with a piece of bread, a baguette is my personal favourite.

Ok moving away from food now, as I am sure that I have made you all hungry.

Another thing that I have always done when going to spain was to buy boots. As a kid going to visit family my mother would indulge me in one pair of well-made leather boots.

So boots are what I set out to find on the Thursday. Now leather boots are one thing but since childhood I have made the decision to be vegan, so I needed to find a set of well-made non-leather boots – this takes time. Half of the shops will look at you like you are crazy the other half will ask you if you are the type of person that only eats fruit.

In the end I did find my boots, see below plus a pair of office shoes since I needed some for upcoming work.

Here is probably the part where I should mention that the best pair of shoes that I got on the trip were free. Here is where you all start to think less of me – I found them beside a skip bin – hardly worn, black, laces up to my knee, and not even leather!!! How could it be!?

Well let me tell you, it was the best thing that happened to me the entire trip.(see boots to the right-->)

OK so moving on!

Saturday, Auntie (my should-have-been-mother) had the day off and I have a stroke of an idea, that we later agreed would have ended us both in Jail. I thought that we should go to the zoo. Now you know I’m vegan but I think that my Auntie in her wisdom knowing how the animals in the Madrid zoo were treated made a wise decision in not taking me there or right now Madrid would have lions in the streets.

So the compromise was to go to a bigger animal park called Faunia (https://www.faunia.es/). Now I have seen a lot of animals but I think that this place had some of the coolest animals that I had never seen. Monkeys that steal your stuff, toucan, snakes of all kinds (like massive snakes and venomous snakes), I had never seen a live flamingo but they had them.

Anyways I will stop with the commentary but here are some of the photos from the park

*mind blown*

The final story to tell was that Saturday night were went out for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called copenhagan (http://grupocopenhagen.com/).

Again a great time was had by all, the food was good and well presented, the staff were clean and courteous, but most of all the company was the best. 

 

To keep the party going my other auntie who didn't want to see me starve bought me A LOT of Spanish food to take home with me!!! Thanks a lot!

That concludes the adventures in Spain - there was an extra-happy ending as well, when I got back to London Gatwick airport, Kyran also was returning from Canada and we had landed within 20 minutes of each other at the same terminal and met in the baggage carousels! Que Romantico! 

Until the next adventure, thanks for reading :)