Land of tapas, paella and sangria (una semana en Espagne)

We couldn't have found somewhere more different from where we've spend our last month in Najac.  Najac is a small French village, not many people or cars, the main diet consisting of bread, duck and cheese.  It was also frequently quite cool and was certainly very hilly.  Now we find ourselves with a different language, different customs, a greatly varied diet, flat, hot, humid, traffic jams and hordes of people everywhere.  After 3 months eating mostly French cuisine, it's great to indulge in the different flavours of Spanish.

Tapas highlights are almost as endless as the variety of pintxos displayed for the drooling masses:

• Wonderfully tender octopus (pulpo) with either smoked paprika and olive oil or salsa
• Slices of wild boar sausage topped with sweet grilled capsicum
• Plates of near-melting jamon that justify humans having a separate sense of taste just so it can be enjoyed
• Thick slices of a black pudding that's thoroughly speckled with soft rice
• Platters of mushrooms (girolles, cepes, etc) freshly fricasseed
• Little trumpets of either pastry or peppers, stuffed with a myriad of mousses and pastes
• Wonderfully succulent tripe (callos) in a spicy tomato/chorizo/chilli sauce
• Epic high-rise constructions around a toothpick - pastes, grilled vegetables, egg & prawns all assembled to a dizzying 20cm tall
• Sweet anchovies that adorn so many morsels. Anchovies in Australia are salty (and we love 'em) but these haven't seen a grain of salt since the moment they left the sea - and that seems a matter of minutes to us.
• Atlantic salmon that's actually from the Atlantic. We realised a few years ago in Boston that the genuine (ie not pellet-fed) article is so much more delicious. And what's more, the texture is voluptuous.
• Other exciting tastebud highlights have been the Bacalao (salted cod), Monkfish (done anyway), pastry cups of prawns, octopus, crab etc,

The Spanish are less lunatic drivers than the French and they've really got the pedestrian/public transport thing sorted out, but they compensate for it with some of the most appalling eyesores of roadworks you've ever seen. Bless 'em, they don't work weekends. Neither do they work between 2pm and 6pm. This results in desolate landscapes of earth-moving equipment and piles of gravel through you wend your GPS-befuddlingway interminably (or so it seems). It also reinforces the growing desire for siesta.

Oddly enough that for a land of pigs, cattle & goats all we've seen are two squirrels (red squirrels of course, which have greatly excited Tracey). And not only squirrels: these are hari-kiri dare squirrels that race out in front of the speeding Pedro (Pierre's alias in Spain) before pirouetting and leaping back into the green verge with much insouciance.

Barcelona clearly thinks of itself as a Big City and in a curious way is reminiscent of New York. OK the buildings are shorter, but the blocks are tiny and the heat is intense. Dotted everywhere are little food/bar enterprises that could only survive with hordes of people passing every day and popping in for a swift jamon and sangria.

One day we'd like to return and see the Sagrada Famillia completed - the design of Gaudi's seems to represent the first new ecclesiastical design on a grand scale since the Duomo was built in Florence. Furthermore his garden design further out of the city suggests a common aesthetic style to Hundertwasser (stay tuned for a report on him from Vienna in a couple of months).

San Sebastian is a dream if you like to spend the day ambling through a small old town, popping in to a new tapas bar every 30 metres for a little morsel. If you get a bit warm, the charming bay sports a picturesque beach - though siesta is always an option too :)

An unexpected picturesque highlight have been the lakes in the Pyrenean foothills. Being good Tasmanians we know a hydroelectric scheme when we see it, but these have in fact created beauty rather than trashing it. The lakes are a breathtaking azure, and starkly contrast otherwise-arid landscapes that surround them. Streams flowing into the lakes are sinuous rills of Circular Quay-green tumbling over pale gray-white stones. And always in the background are the Real Mountains....whence came the water. Craggy, eroded, towering blocks of pale rock, highlighted with sweeping seams that must be the legacy of millions of years of molten snow, every spring carving out the wondrous sights that we now behold.

And underpinning all of this: it's hot. And humid. The shade is your friend here, but the humidity will always track you down....thankfully an icy sangria or cerveza (beer) softens the blow.

Spain has proven itself to be a foodies paradise.  Other than tapas, we've discovered the luxury of sitting by the sea as the sun sets, eating Paella with such a silken texture that every mouthful has you mmmmming for more, barnacles that we've never seen the likes of and look like they've been taken straight from rocks, sorbets that taste of the succulent fruits from which they're derived, if fact some taste more of the fresh fruit that we find in the much of the fresh fruit itself.