No pain, no gain…or a very, very long train in Spain June 20, 2009
Posted by bbop in food, friends, music, travel.Tags: San Sebastián, Santiago de Compostela, Wilco
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For some reason, maybe because I started writing this in Tulsa (more on that, I suppose, in a future post), the Jayhawks song “Tampa to Tulsa” keeps going through my head while I try to compose this recap of our time in Santiago de Compostela and San Sebastián and the trip between the two cities. Admittedly, “Santiago to San Sebastián” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. But I guess for me, at least, the song evokes a long journey. And our 11-hour train ride across northern Spain was nothing if not long. It wasn’t entirely terrible, though. At any rate, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
When we left off in Lisbon, we were about to catch a flight to Santiago. It’s the main city in Galicia in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula and, during medieval times, was one of the biggest pilgrimage sites in all of Christianity. Getting from Lisbon to Santiago was actually one of the big travel dilemmas of the trip — thanks, Wilco tour routing! — and we uncharacteristically left it unsettled until just a few days before. Our initial plan was to take a bus that would get us there relatively inexpensively, although taking about 10 hours to do so. Since we couldn’t buy the bus tickets in advance anyway, we waited to see if a potential car ride with a friend might materialize. When that didn’t work out, we were back to the bus. But after a quick Internet search and with a daylong train ride from Santiago to San Sebastián already looming, we ultimately made the grudging decision to trade some cash for a little peace of mind and booked ourselves onto a flight. In hindsight, I think it was probably a good move.
By flying instead of busing, we were able to explore Santiago’s famed cathedral a bit instead of only getting a fleeting glimpse at some ungodly hour. That would almost certainly have been our fate if we had decided to take the bus. And as we learned in Granada, it would have been a minor tragedy to visit a city with a famed attraction and not see it. I’m not going to say anything else about Santiago since my tag-team partner Brianne has already written a nice account of our time there on her blog and I doubt I could do better.
After Santiago, it was time to catch our train to San Sebastián. We initially planned to split a rental car with friends Dunja and Rob, but at some point, the decision was made to take the train instead. And although it was a long ride, weaving its way across the rugged Spanish countryside and stopping at any number of towns and cities, I have to say it was kind of enjoyable in a weird way. There was a café car nearby with a good supply of bocadillos and bebidas, and I just managed to finish the Jimi Hendrix biography I was reading, Also, I had made a surprisingly prescient purchase of a road map of Spain and it was interesting to follow our progress across the country.
What can I say about San Sebastián except that our two nights and one full day there were phenomenal? Part of that certainly had to do with the beautiful weather. And it also didn’t hurt that our hotel was literally a block from the crescent-shaped Playa de la Concha (pictured above). I’m generally a sucker for any place where you can seemingly be surrounded by urban hustle and bustle one minute and be swimming the next. San Sebastián, like Sydney, Australia, is one of those places. So despite having just a short time to do so, it was a treat to be able to take a quick dip in the Bay of Biscay and enjoy its exceedingly tranquil waters.
Other highlights of our time in San Sebastián included a very boozy evening with Dunja and Rob and Dunja’s parents on our first night in town. Much of the evening, for me anyway, will forever be lost in a haze of pacharán — a potent liqueur with flavors of sloe berries and anise — though I know that some incriminating photographic evidence exists. And we enjoyed a delicious prix fixe lunch in Martín Berasategui’s Michelin-rated Kursaal MB restaurant that, coincidentally, happened to be located at the concert venue. My main course, pictured below, was a Donostia-style stewed spider crab with a parsley foam (I believe it was actually called “parsley air.”).
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to explore much of San Sebastián beyond the triangle between the old town (the Parte Vieja) and its adjacent hill (the Monte Urgull), the general vicinity of our hotel and the area around the venue itself. It would be nice to be able to go back and spend a few relaxing days there.
But relaxing was not often in our vocabulary on this trip, and so after our ninth Wilco show — which I think I’ll honestly remember more for the ticketing shenanigans than the show itself — we were on the move once again. (People who had bought tickets through the fan club presale were assigned some very mediocre seats and there was a sort of free-for-all in the hours immediately preceding the show to try to obtain better seats; fortunately our new friends Bea and Juan, as well as Dunja and Rob, managed to reach a pretty satisfactory resolution and we also benefitted somewhat from their success.)
Anyway I can’t say that San Sebastián was the most memorable show of the tour, but it was indisputably one of the most memorable cities. Fortunately, we would conclude our time in Spain with what promised to be another highly memorable city, Barcelona. Of course, it wouldn’t be fitting for this trip if we had a straightforward journey there. But at least this one only involved a pleasant hour-long bus ride from San Sebastián to Bilbao and a subsequent flight to Barcelona. As we had learned, it could have been worse.
Wilco//6-01-09//Palacio de Congresos e Exposicións de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, SPAIN//support: none
Wilco (the song)/IATTBYH/Pot Kettle Black/A Shot in the Arm/Side With The Seeds/Handshake Drugs/Bull Black Nova/You Are My Face/War On War/Jesus, etc./Impossible Germany/The Late Greats/You Never Know/Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You/Hummingbird//e1: Misunderstood/Poor Places>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)//e2: Kingpin/Monday/Hoodoo Voodoo
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Wilco//6-3-09//Kursaal, Donostia-San Sebastián, SPAIN//support: none
You Are My Face/Wilco (the song)/IATTBYH/One Wing/Muzzle of Bees/A Shot in the Arm/Side With The Seeds/Handshake Drugs/Bull Black Nova/Jesus, etc./Impossible Germany/I’ll Fight/California Stars/The Late Greats/Hummingbird//e1: Via Chicago>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)//e2: Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You/I’m A Wheel
Portugal, we hardly knew ye June 12, 2009
Posted by bbop in food, music, travel.Tags: Portugal, Wilco
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One of the truly unfortunate outcomes of our breakneck itinerary was that we barely had any time to spend in Portugal, a country in which I was fortunate to spend several days a few years ago and really, really enjoyed. Brianne had never been there, so I felt especially badly for her that we had essentially one afternoon to explore Lisbon before we were on the road again. Sometimes, I guess, such is the price of rock ‘n’ roll tourism.
Part of the reason we had such scant time in Portugal was that we had an epic journey from Seville to Braga, Portugal, where the next show was. Braga is a smallish city about 45 minutes drive northeast of Porto, which is about three hours’ drive north of Lisbon — I think you can see where this is going — which is about an hour-long flight from Madrid, which is about a two-and-a-half hour train ride from Seville. So it was literally planes, trains and automobiles; I think it was the trip both of us were simultaneously dreading and morbidly interested in seeing if we could actually pull off. Sure, we could have probably spent a boatload of money and found some sort of direct flight there, but what fun would that have been?
Recall that we hadn’t even gotten back to our hotel in Seville until nearly 4 a.m. because of the crazy late festival. Our train from Seville to Madrid — as it turned out, a very nice and highly recommended AVE — left at 8:45 a.m. So we were both a bit zonked by the time we finally pulled into Braga little more than an hour before that night’s show was to start. (Don’t even ask how we managed to find our hotel in Braga. We were armed with some generally unhelpful Google Maps directions and a tiny inset map that was part of the bigger map of Portugal we got from the rental car place. I recall a good amount of circling around and some silent prayer.)
Wilco certainly couldn’t have picked a more beautiful venue to make their debut in Portugal. The newly restored Theatro Circo was really nice, maybe the nicest venue we saw on the whole trip. I probably remember admiring the theater and wondering exactly who was going to come to this show more than the show itself, but it was a solid enough performance until the very end when Nels had either an amp or pedal malfunction and the show, which was probably about to end anyway, simply did.
Somehow we found a good restaurant still serving food after the show and, after being brushed off once, managed to get seated and actually eat a decent meal. (In the interim, we actually considered going to McDonald’s, which occupied a prime spot in Braga’s city center…but it was closing just as we walked up.) The next morning, we resisted the urge to sleep in and hustled out of Braga to maximize our time in Lisbon. Sorry, Braga.
That time turned out to be an afternoon, which is hardly enough time to spend in one of Lisbon’s three main sections much less get a feel for the city. Not to mention it was a warm Sunday, so the capitol was definitely in weekend mode. But we did our best, heading first to the Belém neighborhood about three miles west of downtown to visit sites like the Torre de Belém (Tower of Belém) and the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Monastery of the Hieronymites), two of the best examples of Portugal’s Manueline style of architecture. One place I definitely wanted to get back to on this trip was the Pastéis de Belém café, where they have been serving the most delicious little custard tart — its namesake, pictured at the bottom of this post — since 1837. It’s sort of like the Café du Monde of Lisbon, and I can’t think of too many things in the world I would rather eat than a plateful of those things sprinkled with a little cinnamon and powdered sugar.
After Belém, we headed took a cab up the narrow, winding streets of the Alfama district to the sprawling Castelo de São Jorge. I think you can see the castle from just about anywhere in the city — we certainly could from our hotel window (see below) — and it was a good starting point for a short walk down through the Alfama. The neighborhood, which is Lisbon’s oldest and mostly survived the 1755 earthquake that rocked the city, features some stunning views and charming old-world streets that make up sort of a small village within a city.
There was so much else to see and do in Lisbon, but alas not nearly enough time. We settled for a quick dinner on Lisbon’s notorious “eating lane” (Rua das Portas de Santo Antão), where you can’t walk more than a few steps without being approached by a menu-bearing waiter. Normally I wouldn’t have gone there to eat, but the venue for that night’s show was, by coincidence, on the same street. And what a fun show it turned out to be! Jeff had mentioned on several occasions in Braga about how there were “plenty of good seats” available for Lisbon and we again worried about how many empty seats there would be.
Our seats were some of the best that we had on the entire run, which probably had something to do with our enjoyment of the show. But for whatever reason, the band was especially loose and fed off the small, but spirited crowd. I think the moment I will remember most was two kids, a girl and a boy, coming down to the foot of the stage for the encore. During “Spiders,” Jeff leaned down to them with his guitar, handed the girl his pick and proceeded to have her strum for about 20 or 30 seconds while he changed chords with his left hand. Maybe you had to be there, but it was very cool.
Afterward, we went out for an unexpected, but fun, drink with some people we met in the lobby and called it a night. Our hastily booked, rather pricey flight to Santiago de Compostela — via Madrid, of course — beckoned early in the morning…
Wilco//5-30-09//Theatro Circo, Braga, PORTUGAL//support: none
You Are My Face/Company In My Back/One Wing/Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard/IATTBYH/Pot Kettle Black/Radio Cure/Bull Black Nova/A Shot in the Arm/At Least That’s What You Said/Via Chicago/Impossible Germany/Jesus, etc./Handshake Drugs/You Never Know/Hummingbird//e: Poor Places>/Reservations>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)/The Late Greats/Heavy Metal Drummer/Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You
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Wilco//5-31-09//Coliseu, Lisbon, PORTUGAL//support: none
Wilco (the song)/IATTBYH/Company In My Back/Kamera/Handshake Drugs/Bull Black Nova/Radio Cure/You Are My Face/Pot Kettle Black/War On War/Jesus, etc./Impossible Germany/Sky Blue Sky/Hesitating Beauty/Say You Miss Me/Heavy Metal Drummer/Hummingbird//e: Ashes of American Flags>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)/You Never Know/The Late Greats/Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You
Food of the Canaries May 23, 2009
Posted by bbop in food, travel.add a comment
These are papas arrugadas con mojo, one of the signature dishes of the Canary Islands. They are essentially new potatoes boiled and served in their skins. (Arrugadas apparently means “wrinkly” in Spanish, so they are literally wrinkly potatoes.) I had them the other night at an awesome little place called Bodegon Viana in La Laguna, Tenerife. They really good, but quite salty. I wasn’t sure, at the time, which was the mojo sauce; subsequently, I learned that they both are.
