Paella is the traditional dish in Spain made with rice, green vegetables and meat or seafood. Most of their food are taken from the mediterranean surrounding the country.
I spent two weeks in that wonderful country with so many things to do and so many places to visit. I had a friend staying in Bilbao and decided to stay there on my first days. Bilbao has this incradible Guggenheim Museum - Museum of modern and contemporary art designed by a Canadian architect. First thing you think after seeing the museum is: whatever the architect thoung when designing the Museum, the result is just incredible. But there wasn't many people at the Museum, guess because Bilbao is kind of a small city. I remember during my Visa application at the Spain Embassy in Maputo they've asked more than 3 times, why am I planning to go to Bilbao? I actually planned to visit Bilbao first and then to Madrid and Barcelona.
I think I wouldn't mind staying in Bilbao much longer. The place is so peaceful and the food is cheap. Best place was in "Casco viejo". The next day of my arrival I was walking around and the Map showed Casco Viejo, didn't have any idea about the place. The meaning of Casco Viejo is "Old town or seven streets". Casco Viejo is the historical part of Bilbao with historical churches, the Mercado de la ribera and the best glasses of chiquitos of wines and pinchos. Pincho is a typically snack that you can find in Bars, Restaurants and they are made with slices of bread with diferent ingredients on top of each pincho. You can't miss the pinchos when going to Spain because they are really delicious. Before coming back home I went to the very popular shopping mall and market "El Corte Ingles" and bought many ingredients for pinchos and took them all to Mozambique.
I had so much fun walking around Barcelona. Didn´t know anything about Gaudi, the most famous and popular Spanish catalan archited who's responsible for the most beautiful buildings I ever seen. Most of his works can be found in Barcelona like the Sagrada Familia as per picture bellow, the Magnum opus, Palacio Guell, Colegio Santa Maria de Jesus and more.
The Sagrada familia is still under construction and is known as the most admirable catholic building. I took a touristic bus at the "Plaza de Espana" and had long stops in most of the Gaudi architectures. I was really impressed with what I saw there - thousands of people admiring the building that is still to be finish. Not sure when will that construction ends as we are the ones paying for the construction : the tourist guy in the bus repeated that when the building had started one of the workers asked Gaudi when will they finish, cause it seems a huge building and different from what they´ve seen before. Antoni Gaudi has answered that this building is meant to be different than others because the owner of the building is someone very special and gave them unlimited time to finish. He was talking about God of course. We wanted to get into the building but the line was huge and we also had to pay the entrance as that money will be used to help the Construction.
I also went to the Barceloneta - the beach. Uf, to cold to swim at that time, but of course as always there's always someone crazy and I saw few guys swimming. One of the evenings we went to a Bar to watch an african group that was performing. Me and my friend Laura had to stand and dance cause the show was really bad :-(. Maybe bad for me cause I am african and I know the real african performances but good for them. I love dancing and both me and Laura decided to show them the real african dance. Laura is Canadian but stayied in Africa so she is also a great dancer.
As always there are good and bad experiences. We went to Barceloneta - the beach in Barcelona and we decided to have lunch there. The restaurants were expensive and the food tasted like fast food. The cola cola was 5 euros and the food wasn´t that good so next trip to Barcelona, no food at Barceloneta :-). Everything is art, take a look on what they do with the stones on the beach - just beautiful.
Hum, cant wait to visit Spain one more time and eat that delicius pinchos or Paellas and visit the beautiful spanish culture.
Warm hugs from Marciana
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