LBB Note #7: Granada (Day 3: La Alhambra)

Every fairy tale kingdom needs a castle.

Anthony Bourdain described Granada as "The fairy tale Kingdom of Granada". This phrase remained in my head throughout the entire trip, and I would mutter it to myself whenever Granada would show us some of its magic.

One of these moments happened before we headed up the Sacromonte to the flamenco show. On the way there we visited the most popular mirador of the city, right in front of a church at the top of the neighboring Albaicin hill. The place was packed, but it was still too early; sunset was still an hour or so away.

So in the meantime we did what any sane person would have done at that point: get some tapas in the bars/restaurants in front of the church. We were about to finish our first tapa when someone in the neighboring table took out a guitar and started an impromptu flamenco session.

                                       

It was getting closer to sunset, so I walked over to the edge of the park and waited while looking at the fortress. She rose from between a tall cover of trees, small windows making her seem impenetrable. I drew little attack plans in my mind of how to approach the hill in case I wanted to take her, but nothing I thought of was plausible. I then stopped trying to think of how to attack her and thought of her beauty. The lowering sun making the red hue of her walls darker; the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background providing a surreal setting to an already hard-to-believe view. It made sense now; her name. Al-Hamra literally means Red One (feminine, La Roja in Spanish).

As the final rays came down, I realized that this was a lowly serf's view. If you were a Sultan or a nobleman you lived inside the complex. Anyone else that wanted to get a good look at her probably would have had to climb the hill that I stood on. I wasn't too worried, though; tomorrow I would have a Sultan's look of the palace.

As we walked back to the apartment we got a good look at the creek, called the Rio Tarro, that marks the border between the Alhambra hill and the Albaicin, the division between real life and fantasy. 

(Picture credit: Planet Ware)

View from the creek.

The next morning I woke up early, as I always do when there is some level of expectation. We had tried (unsuccessfully) for the last two days to get tickets into the complex. The entrance to the fortress, and specifically to the Nasrid Palaces, is strictly monitored
through quotas. Only a certain number of people can get in in one day, and there was still some uncertainty of whether I would leave Granada without visiting the Alhambra.

We took a cab at 7:30 AM, and we were in line by 8:00. The winding road up the hill was through a heavily forested area, and the morning air was crisp and cold; the coldest of the whole trip, at around 52°F. All this added to the fantasy setting of the visit.

By the time we got to the gate, the screens showed about 500 tickets remaining, and only about a hundred or so people were in line in front of us. It seemed like we were going to make it in.

The walkways from the visitor's entrance to the castle walls were paved and flanked with nice flower gardens and tall trees on either side. We took the bridge into the complex, and finally stepped inside the fortress. I was surprised to see it was like a small town; not only one large building but a small citadel. There were streets, hotels, houses and restaurants. 

The Alhambra has three main sections; the Alcazaba, which is the military fortress that defended the citadel; the Nasrid Palaces, which was the residence of the Sultan; and the Generalife Palace, which is built on an adjacent hill outside the fortress walls, and served as the summer palace and country club for the Sultans and the Sultanas. 

We had been assigned a certain time to enter the Nasrid Palaces, (which is the zone with the heaviest traffic) which that was still a couple of hours away, so we decided to visit the Alcazaba first.

Gate into the Alcazaba

The Alcazaba juts out of the edge of the hill as the bow of a ship would. It has fairly large turrets, and claustrophobic staircases leading down to the barracks and up to the defensive positions. Only the foundations of buildings remain, but it wouldn't be hard imagining the Moorish soldiers tending to their daily business while defending the Emirate.

We began climbing the front of the fortress, the main defensive position. At the very edge there is a tower with a deep cliff below it, from where you can see the entire city and the vega below. At the top of the tower fly the flags of Europe, Spain, Andalucia and Granada.

Back down to the citadel, we sat down for some coffee and a small sandwich while we waited for our turn to enter the palaces. We visited the local museum, which is inside a palace built by Charles V.

                                       

After a short line and wait, we finally made it inside the Nasrid Palaces. We were greeted by a massive door of carved marble. 

The inside of the palace was filled with little details: tessellations repeated over and over again on the ceiling as stalactites or on the walls as tiles. It all flowed together (sometimes literally). 

We made our way out to the Patio de los Leones where a large fountain of ten lions of carved marble stood as the centerpiece to an open-air patio with white marble floors. The almost-noon sun shone down especially bright on the marble and I was blinded by the overwhelming white of the place. When I recovered from the snow-blindness I noticed that the fountain supplied each of the four rooms at the edges of the rectangular patio with water, a series of channels of flowing water extende out from the center fountain. 

I was astounded by the use of light of the place. Since all the walls had arabesques on them, the light filtered through, giving a nice well-lit (but not too bright) feeling to the entire inside of the palace. The sound of rushing water was everywhere and fountains were ubiquitous, sometimes with large reflecting pools extending out from a single water source. 

We walked back outside of the hills and through a hedge maze to get to the Generalife on a separate hill.                              

                                       

The Generalife had much more natural setting to it, with gardens of hedges, flowers, trees and fountains. 

The view from the Generalife was honestly the best of the entire city, with the Alhambra in the foreground and the city in the back. It was here were I felt that I was in another place entirely, almost another world; than the city below. In between the staircase of fresh, cold water that feeds the entire complex and the ages-old dark-wood trees, I found a bench from where I could look at the entire panorama and I sat there. 

I sat there imagining the Moorish princes and princesses looking proudly on their flourishing kingdom from atop one of the towers, imagining the victorious procession of the Reyes Catolicos marching in and draping their banner over the sides of the castle walls. I thought about the defeated Boabdil having to escape through the small gate at the foot of the fortress, having to give all of this up, and I imagined him weeping the whole way out. 

I thought about how, though this city was reconquered by Christianity and the conquering Kings were buried in this soil, the main attraction to the city all these centuries later was this Muslim structure. I sat and thought and thought until it as time for me to leave. I honestly don't know how much time I was sitting on that bench, time didn't seem to follow the same rules up there. I was just trying to take all of this in before I inevitably had to start walking down and away. 

Of course, I eventually did. I walked back down the Alhambra to the city below, back to our room and into a car away from Granada, back through winding roads and mountains all the way to Valencia and (I mean this in the least cliche way possible) real life. The Alhambra was really something else, and she was on my mind the whole way back. I was missing her as soon as I turned my back on her and I understood--even if in just the smallest of fractions-- what Boabdil must have felt 600 years ago. 

LBB Note #7: Granada (Day 2: Dead Monarchs and Flamenco)

Granada has a history of struggle. Originally founded as a Roman colony, it was resettled by the Moors for the majority of its history. By the time the 15th century rolled around, Granada was the last Moorish outpost in the Iberian Peninsula. By the end of the 15th century, the famous Reyes Catolicos, Isabella I of Castille and Ferndinand II of Aragon, had the Moors against the ropes. The Moors finally threw in the towel in Granada (and by extension in the entire Iberian peninsula) in that very eventful year: 1492.

Day two in Granada got off to a lazy start. We woke up around 10 AM, and we started looking around for breakfast. We settled on a cafe in front of a church.

Churros con Cafe

We soon noticed that the church in front of our cafe was having some sort of event.

Poor soul. 

We moved towards the tomb of the Reyes Catolicos shortly after we finished both our coffee and watching the wedding scene straight out of The Godfather.

The Catholic Monarchs' crowning achievement (pun intended), according to them, was expelling the Moors from Spain and finishing the Reconquista (They never quite knew what an big deal discovering America would be). Because of this they decided to have their human remains rest in the last city they conquered back, Granada. A Royal Chapel was commissioned by them and built in what would become the center of the Christian city. A much, much larger Cathedral was then commissioned by their grandson Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V, which intended to hold the mortal remains of the Monarchs and of Carlos V's parents (the Monarch's daughter and son-in-law). In the end, the bodies stayed in the chapel, and the Cathedral was sort-of built around it.

We walked in and were told that we couldn't take any pictures, but I managed to pull some from the internet. It's first and foremost a church, so you get your usual large gold-gilded altar pieces. This church, following the Monarchs' orders, was dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. The main altar piece included a pretty graphic image of St. John's head on a platter, with his anatomically-correct headless stump still kneeling.

In front of the altar rose two large marble sarcophagi. They had the figures of the Catholic kings laying side by side, as if lying in-state for all eternity (Kind of romantic if you think about it. Not so much when you realize that Ferdinand remarried a year after her death).

The other sarcophagus had the figures of their daughter and their son-in-law in a similar position.

A short flight of stairs led down to the underground crypt, sealed by a large wooden door with a glass window. Looking inside you could see the caskets of Ferdinand II of Aragon, Isabella I of Castille (along with some of their relatives).

It is both really morbid and strange to think that their bones are lying in front of you. People who changed the entire face of the Earth by commissioning the discovery of America and uniting Spain into what it is today.

The rest of the building was a museum, showing the clothes and relics of the monarchs. The pieces of clothing that they wore were so opulent they were woven with literal gold thread. In a glass case in the middle of the museum was the Queen's crown and the King's conquering sword.

We came out of the church feeling a bit down and meditative. We came across this:

A flamenco group had set up their little stage outside the Cathedral and were beginning their show. Andalucia is the birthplace of flamenco, and it's pretty much anywhere you go. This particular group was an established act that wanted to promote their music out in the plaza.

                                    

Flamenco musicians speak of Duende, a certain creative state of mind that is hard to describe (and even harder to translate). I never quite got it until I watched an actual flamenco show in person. The dancer's feet move faster and faster, and it is them that dictate the tempo of the song. The cajon player, the guitarist and the singers all look at the dancer's feet to know where the song and the performance will go from a particular point. There is a lot of improvisation, and the duende in the music and the artists carries into the audience. You sort of become part of the song, and some of the locals actually started clapping, singing or randomly yelling ole or dale at the musicians and dancers. The stomping and clapping and mournful singing start pulling you in and affecting you at a very primal level, to the point that you're completely mesmerized.

After the show, it was right around siesta time and we were looking to go back to the apartment until a large crowd blocked us off.

                               

Granada wasn't pulling any punches. It was intent on giving us the whole deal; flamenco, tapas, processions and all. I still don't know why there was a procession the day that we were there, but I wasn't complaining. I had heard of the Holy Week processions and how thousands of people come down to see the massive floats carried on people's shoulders and the menacing hooded figures. This was something different yet still evocative of those scenes. Much more informal, with school-aged children and young men and women. The crowds weren't as big or suffocating, mostly made up of (what I assume) were the family members of the kids involved. The Jesus float was being carried by a group of high school-aged girls, while the Mary one was being carried by guys around their same age. They all marched to the blaring sound of a solemn brass band, with musical progressions that are very reminiscent of Spanish bullfighting music. All this was happening in the heart of the city, coming out of an alley leading to the Cathedral and towards the statue of Columbus and Isabella that gives the Gran Via its name.

After the procession we did find our way back home, where we regrouped for later during the day.

After a walk up the Albayacin one more time to look at the Alhambra one last time before we actually explored her first hand, we went to a Flamenco show. We climbed down the Albayacin and up the Sacromonte's steep, picturesque hills. 

You can see the old city wall in the back

Among those nice whitewashed houses were some inhabited caves where tablaos (flamenco shows) were being held. That night we walked into a crammed and intimate space, thirty or so people fixated on the two musicians at the front. The music began. 

The music was different from the one we heard that afternoon. Not better or worse, just different. I believe that's the nature of this music, every time it's different. This time around, the crowd wasn't as invested. The musicians still played their hearts out and I was again lured into the steady strumming and the heel stomps that were amplified by the perfect acoustics of the domed room. 

Granada had given us all it could today, but it reserved its biggest experience for tomorrow. 

LBB Note #7: Granada (Day 1:Tapas)

We got off in a random street of Granada. Any feeling of claustrophobia I might have had in downtown Valencia was amplified several times here. The streets were incredibly narrow and with the added dimension of slope (and a lot more traffic), it was nerve-wrecking.

We got to our apartment/hostel (we weren't sure what it was at that point) early. We took a while to find the place, but we eventually rang the bell and got buzzed up. We then opened the large, heavy and old door.

The apartment was dead in the heart of the historic district,it was located along the Gran Via de Colon; one of the main streets in Granada. We rested a while and planned our angle of attack. I had traveled all this while and I had only one goal at this point, see the Alhambra.

Granada has three main hills and a fertile Vega, or valley, at their feet. The three main hills are the one that the Alhambra sits on, as well as the Albaicin and the Sacromonte. The Albaicin has a large neighborhood on it; one of the main ones in Granada, and is a large part of the city's historic center. The Sacromonte is Gitano (Spanish gypsy) territory. Up there you can enjoy all sorts of tablaos (flamenco shows) in their cave houses, and it is considerably more removed. I told Brandon that before anything else I wanted to catch at least a glimpse of the Alhambra before it got dark, so we began our trip up the Albaicin.

                                      
At the end of the steep hill we finally came across the Alhambra. It was still pretty early; the sun rays were still yellow and shining off her reddish walls. We had a few minutes before the famous "golden hour", when the last rays of the day hit the fortress and turned her walls a bright vermilion. We didn't mind the light though; the tall walls, and their respective turrets, against the sharp background of the Sierra Nevada provided one of the most (if not the most) impressive sights in my life.

 

Well, mission accomplished. When I saw her I said to myself that my trip was more than worth it; I could grab a car right back to Valencia. But, let's be honest here, where's the fun in that? Time for some tapas.

So if you remember from an earlier blog, I mentioned that tapas are not free in Valencia. That seems to be true for most of Spain, but here in Andalucia they play by different rules. If you order a round of drinks; say beer or wine, then your drinks comes with a delicious (and free of charge) plate of food. The guilt that comes from ordering just one round of beer, getting food for it, and just having to pay for the drinks is something I still haven't recovered from. I felt like a moocher, just taking advantage of the system; waiting to be humiliated by the entire town for my sneaky ways. Obviously that was never the case, in Granada that's not only common behavior, but also expected.

We walked down the street from the park where we looked the Alhambra to a small plaza in front of a church. Sure enough, two Tapas bar were placed side by side in the corner of the square. We took a seat in the crisp evening (it was a lot cooler here in Granada, around 60 degrees at almost all times) and ordered a round of beer. Sure enough, our beer came with a plate of food.

First free tapa!

It was some sort of cold salad; vinegar and salt with tomatoes, potatoes, olives and croutons. After a four hour trip and a forty minute walk up a steep hill; it tasted delicious. But within the grand scheme of tapas, it was okay. But I am reminded of the concept of great food from humble ingredients. I just don't understand the philistines that complain when they don't get enough food (Or "Texas-sized portions" as they describe them) or enough peppers to make them secrete their own weight in mucus. If how hot a certain pepper is is the main criteria, isn't Southeast Asian cuisine the best in that aspect? (Hint: it is.  It's also superior in all other ways, shapes or forms.) Take for example the olive. The olive is ubiquitous in Spanish cuisine. They bring you a non-pitted olives as a small appetizer while you wait for the rest of the food, and I can surely tell you that that one single olive has more flavor in it than all the barbecue sauce I have ever eaten up to this point.You just have to get out of your comfort zone and what you're used to to realize that Spanish food is hands down the best Western food you can get. How are you gonna enjoy a culture of a new place if you just constantly miss your own? Food is a really good way to take a country in, and I sure don't want to drop the ball with that. But I digress.

After the first tapa, I'm sad to say, we lost track of time. We catastrophically missed our window of picture-taking. I could barely get up in time to take in this dreadful picture from the cliff at the end of the plaza.

(That was, of course, sarcasm. This picture is amazing.)

Oh well, back down the hill it is! (But not before some floodlit Alhambra pictures.)

 On the way down we found a pretty large number of Arabic themed souvenir shops. We ignored them, bee-lining for more food. They were tourist traps anyway.

                                     
We then came across Oliver's. Oliver's is a tapas bar a literal stone throw away from the Granada cathedral. We came here because Anthony Bourdain came here in his Granada episode, easy as that. Part of the conditioning I performed on Brandon in order to convince him to come with me included showing him that particular Parts Unknown episode. Here's the promo for it:

After having him watch that show, he didn't need much convincing. 

Oliver's is a stand-up bar, in a very literal sense. You wait standing up (and in our particular case at the very end of the bar, ostracized from the much, much older crowd around us), but it didn't matter. We got two very good Alhambra cañas (Alhambra is also a brand of beer, and caña is a serving size of about half a regular beer bottle) which came with, in my opinion, the very best tapa of the entire trip. I present to you: Kentucky Fried Octopus.

(It wasn't officially called that, I just christened it that)

We also had this delicious ham drizzled with Olive oil on bread a few rounds later.

After Oliver's we were tired and with a full stomach, so we went back to our apartment to get a good night's sleep (according to official records). Tomorrow would be a new day. 

LBB Note #7: Granada (Day 1: The Trip)

I hate to be reduced to a stereotype, but in this particular case the journey was worth more (or as much) as the destination.

I have, at this point, four weekends left in Spain. Having spent my first two in Valencia, I thought it was time to head out and explore. The IRES guys set themselves up in a buddy-system type arrangement, with Brandon being kind enough to stick with me. My plan, I told him, was to go to Granada. After 15 minutes of research, he came back with a few questions: A five hour drive? A Medieval town? I'd lie if I'd say that I didn't have doubts as well, especially considering the more glamorous trip to Barcelona the others were taking, but as far as I know, coming to Spain is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Every weekend is a gold mine.

We set up transportation through Blablacar, a carpooling app that lets people schedule trips and share the costs of gas. The room was reserved through AirBnB, which is pretty much the hostel equivalent of Blablacar. Using these apps that were recommended to us by people we had met at this point, we just spend just 40 euros for transportation and accommodation for the weekend.

We got off of work at 1:30, quickly got Bocadillos (Spanish sandwiches made of a medium sized baguettes and various protein options) and quickly walked to the meeting point with our driver. Lougan drove up in his tiny silver Peugeot. He seemed pretty friendly and not very serial-killer-y, so we got in the car with him and started the long trip. He said he grew up around Granada, but I honestly doubt this since he spoke with Spanish with a Pepe Le Pew-style accent. He was a genuinely happy person, always laughing and blaring music the whole way there.

The scenery transitions I saw on this trip are like nothing I have ever experienced before. A short drive outside Valencia, it was just wide coastal plains peppered with random outcroppings of rock. These mountains, or rather cerros, weren't organized in any particular mountain range, instead just jutting out of the surrounding plain on their own. They were covered by next to no vegetation, just bare rock.

Coastal plain and outcroppings, along with a couple of giants.

As we drove down to Murcia, the standalone cerros now lined up neatly and weren't as tall, but they provided a nice backdrop for the many, many orchards and crops that were on either side of the road.

The whole road was littered with your odd church or castle, nestled up on a very sharp hill. I must have seen easily 10 or so castles and 20 or so churches perched on top of cliffs. I find this interesting, because anywhere else in the world, the sight of castles would be quite a big deal, an anthropological site with droves of people walking up the hill to visit a true Medieval castle. Here, many people dismiss them as part of the normal scenery.

...but what a scenery.

 




After Murcia, we crossed into Andalucia, and we were immediately greeted by a large sprawling plain that only reminded me of Texas. It had large squares of crops that changed from the gold of wheat to the green of whatever leafy vegetable they might have been growing. It gave the terrain a sort of checkerboard look.

        

Turning into Andalucia

 





Andalucia was a world unto itself. The plains spread wide and into the distance, while the shadows of truly large mountains rose in the background. This became especially true the closer we drove to Granada; as the plains gave way to uphill roads and our ears began to pop. We could see slivers of snow up on the peaks around us.

We came to an area of the road about a hundred kilometers from Granada where the scenery again changed, this time into something similar to the Dakota Badlands. Red earth pillars, sharp and uneven, rising into the air.

Some of these red earth mountains had caves on them, and some of these caves had nice wooden doors. From what was told to us, people have been settling these caves for centuries now, and they have been modernized into what you would generally think of when it comes to a house: Wi-fi, running water, drainage, electricity. The only main difference is that it's built into a cave.

We finally came to a point where the road stopped climbing, and then we began our descent through steep wooded forests down into the Vega in which Granada was nestled. After four long but incredibly rewarding hours, we arrived in the narrow, steep streets of eastern Granada.

LBB Note #6: Revenge of the Spanish

If you asked at any point during my previous note "Why is he eating at an Argentinian restaurant if he's in Spain?", then you are a completely sensible person. That's why the following day I decided to go out to a Tapas bar a few blocks from my flat, again with the roommates. We each picked a tapa (the arrangement where tapas are free as long as you drink does not apply in Valencia), and waited anxiously in the outdoor patio for it to arrive.

Chris ordered fried shrimp in a dry tomato paste. I don't know what that paste had, but that is hands down the best tomato-based food I have ever eaten. Spicy (not hot), flavorful, strong and pairing very well with the shrimp, Spanish food came out strong.

Brandon ordered Patatas Bravas. A fairly simple, basic dish of potatoes in a tomato based sauce (not the same one as the previous one). Again, the amount of flavor put into even the humblest of ingredients (like the potato) is astounding. The sauce was hot and spicy (by European standards), and slathering a good amount of it on the perfectly seasoned baked potato with chives, salt and butter gave you a full palette of flavors.

My dish arrived last, and again I sort of cheated the Spanish out of an original dish. I ordered Bacalao (cod) ceviche. I know, I know; ceviche is of Central or South American origin (Which is disputed up to this day. Most people assume it's Peruvian, but there is evidence both for and against this theory), BUT there were no limes in Pre-Columbian Latin America, so it does have some Spanish aspect to it. The ceviche was good, not great, and I've had better. What was a welcome change to the tried and tested ceviche combo was the bread that came with it. Baked in house, it was still warm from the oven and it had some sort of garlic seasoning on it that went well with the fish.

Accepting the better judgement of both my roommates, it'll only be Spanish food from here on out.

LBB Note #5: AIDICO Visit

If you talked to me at all before I came to Spain and asked me what I would be doing here, I would have told you that I would be working at a company called AIDICO. I would be at one of their many labs and coming up with hazard mitigation techniques for six weeks. That wasn't meant to be.

Spain and AIDICO are still in a tough place. A result of the Paro (which is what the Spanish call their labor crisis, a topic that is impossible to avoid if you spend any more time than an hour here), AIDICO was forced to scale back all of their operations, declare bankruptcy, and leave us in no-man's land less than a month before our scheduled arrival date in Spain.

By now you know we were picked up by UPV, and I'm currently doing my research there. On Wednesday we had the day off  from the university to tour the facilities at AIDICO and see some of the research and labs they have over there. 

I don't know why we took the picture like this. We look like the try-hard Avengers.

AIDICO is on the outskirts of Valencia, quite a ways away from our flats in Benimaclet. It is located in an industrial park and surrounded by research institutions that specialize in other fields, like nanotechnology and logistics. The whole park has a very forward-thinking architecture style.

The bridge leading into the industrial park, with Dr. Yazdani and Ana Barella in the foreground.

The first thing we saw was the concrete lab. Pretty standard stuff; cement, gravel, sand and water, and plenty of mixers rolling and mixing concrete. From here we went to the imaging lab. I was really surprised by some of the ultrasound, x-ray and other imaging devices they use to see the condition of structures without having to tear into them for inspection. 

From there it was on to the fire lab. Here, in a large hangar away from the rest of the buildings, two large furnaces (one oriented horizontally and another vertically) were used to do fire tests on structures. 

Vertical furnance

Door fire test

At AIDICO they also have a simulated project-in-progress that's used to test safety equipment for construction workers. They usually throw off sandbags that simulate real people off three or four stories.

Construction safety lab

We ended the trip with a visit to the Nanotechnology building in a separate area of the industrial park. There they are adding microfibers to concrete structures so they could to analyze the stress and strain forces remotely, as well as corrosion resistant paint on concrete. I saw my first electron microscope, so that was really cool.

AIDICO seemed like it was a bustling and interesting place half a decade ago or so, but now it just seems like a technical ghost town. I'm glad to be over at UPV.

Let's cook, Jesse!

LBB Note #4: Ar-gen-tina!

On the topic of eating too much, this is a food episode from this past Sunday.

There is a fairly large group of South American immigrants in Valencia. I can immediately pick out their accent from a mile away. It's the lisplessness of their Spanish that automatically betrays them (and I can only imagine it gives me away too).

One of the largest groups here are Argentinians. When deciding what restaurant to eat at at the end of the week's supplies of groceries I decided to go to an Argentinian asado place that was a five minute walk from our front door, dragging along my two roommates. Anyone that knows about beef knows that Argentina has arguably the best beef in the entire world. Superior than it's Uruguayan and Brazilian cousins, and, in my personal opinion, narrowly besting Texas beef (Please don't tell anyone I said this, they won't let me back in the state if they find out); if I was stuck on death row and had to pick a final meal, I would bring in some guy fresh off the Pampas to cook half a cow for me.

Walking into the front door we were greeted by the sing-songy Spanish of a mid-thirties guy in chin-length dirty-blond hair. This guy looked (and sounded) as Argentine as they come; we were in the right place.

We ordered the house standard: a parillada for three. The food took a long while to come out, but the just the smell of beef on the barbie and the charcoal beneath it was almost worth the wait. When it finally arrived, it was a pile of sizzling meat on a small portable grill. There were red-hot charcoals at the bottom of the contraption, and the heap of meats on top were spitting and splashing their juices all over the tablecloth. It was beautiful. The IGD (Improvised Grilling Device) radiated its heat all around the room and into our faces. I swear I could feel my eyebrows curling to the heat of it.

There were four cuts on the grill:
-Chorizo criollo is heaven in tube form. Pork and various spices crammed into pig intestine and gently grilled at a different heat than the rest of the cuts.
-Secreto de cerdo was honestly the wild card of the meal. I didn't know anything about the cut except that it came from a pig (It's kind of in the name). Apparently it was the cut that's between the paletilla, which is the front ham, and the panceta, which is in the chest area. It was tender and light without being mushy and just the perfect pork taste.
-Tira de asado was the third cut. It was a cut of beef I'd also never seen before: ribs cut parallel to the spinal cord instead of perpendicular to it. What you're left with is the cross section of four or five ribs, and obviously the meat around it. It was my least favorite of all the cuts, but by no means bad.
-Bife. The pièce de résistance, the main event, the moment we were all waiting for. The best cut of beef in the entire world, this particular one was cooked just right. Sitting between rare and medium rare, the point where it's still tender and flavorful without it being a literal bloody mess, the taste is simply the best. You can't go wrong with ingredients this good.

I also want to send out an honorary mention to the unsung, supplimentary staple of the asado: chimichurri. A mixture of herbs in olive oil, it adds a special taste that no other condiment does.

Tale of the tape, against the three of us I estimate we were served around five pounds of meat.

Pictured: Five pounds of meat.

While we did have to take several breaks, and we did go through about three liters of water to wash the food down; we soldiered on and finished the whole thing (I did have to help my roommates at certain points, but the goal was ultimately reached).

This meal is now the best one I've had in Spain. (The Spanish have to step it up)