Part of the attraction of visiting San Sebastián – apart from the fabulous dinner at Mugaritz, was the opportunity to visit the Guggenheim in Bilbao. After an abortive plan to spend Monday in Bilbao – fortunately this time discovered the museum was closed on Monday BEFORE we set out for the longish drive – we rescheduled this excursion for our last day, on the way (well, sort of) back to Barcelona.

Expectations were high ~ clearly too high. This museum of modern art has surprisingly little actual art on display, though the building itself is most definitely a work of art in its own right.

The main exhibition on display – with much breathless excitement apparent in the commentary – was room after room filled with the ‘cells’ of Louise Bourgeois – an artist who spent most of her 95 years of life re-living the terror of her childhood memories by building dozens of what are literally small rooms filled with seriously weird and warped stuff.

Far far too deep and meaningful for me… Though I’m sure Dali would have approved (and probably did).

So with two truly weird art experiences under our belt, it was with some trepidation that we set off on our one afternoon in Barcelona for the Picasso Museum, the one thing we missed off our must-see list last time we were in Barcelona.

And third time lucky it certainly was. This time the weird stuff – etchings bordering on offensive, though apparently there are even more offensive ones which were Norton display – was overtaken by the sheer beauty some of his other work, and what a prolific artist he was! I particularly loved his line drawings of bullfighting – not politically correct, I know, but I had to admire the visible movement that he managed to achieve with a few lines of black ink.

And so our Holiday in not-Spain came to an end.  We farewelled Rob, who was joining Jenna and a herd of friends for a music festival that weekend (coincidentally staying literally around the corner from our last night Barcelona hotel)!   Next stop Jordan….

The Spain that is not Spain has many attractions;  and the greatest of all is the food.  Somehow, this part of the world has encouraged, nurtured and perhaps bred a level of refined culinary exploration that may be unsurpassed globally.

So first Girona.  Amidst a plethora of tourist cafes, serving up perfectly good ham and cheese sandwiches and rolls, and moderately acceptable coffee, are many, many fabulous restaurants waiting to be discovered, if only one can stay awake long enough!

Our bunch of cyclists had some difficulty falling into the Spanish habit of eating dinner at 9pm, with most actual restaurants only opening their doors at 8.30pm.

In fact, the one that took our group booking for 8 people at 8.15pm, yay, actually turned us away because they were still mopping the floors when we arrived – come back in half an hour, they said.  The boys were not happy!

Nevertheless we managed to have several great restaurant experiences, both with the cyclists and with Rob when he arrived for the second part of our three-part holiday.  I’m not going to regale you with a blow by blow account of every meal…  though the 25 course degustation at Mugaritz, with 7 extra bites at the end was surely the crowning glory – more on that at the end.

But meanwhile back in Girona, a few learnings.

Lesson 1.  The discovery that ‘gazpacho’ does not need to be made with tomatoes!  Well, I guess in classical kitchens it does, but the strawberry & cherry gazpacho I had to start a meal in a restaurant we happened on by chance was a revelation, and something I will definitely be experimenting with when summer rolls around back home.  (Turns out this is a “thing” – recipe at http://www.thelastcookie.ca/cherry-strawberry-gazpacho/)

Lesson 2.  No matter how well you think you’ve trained your staff, you can’t build a fine dining experience with people who have themselves never dined finely!  A learning from our visit to L’Alqueria, currently rated the number 2 restaurant in Girona behind the acclaimed Cellar de Can Roca (with its 12 month waiting list, and the venue for our previous ‘best ever’ eating experience).

This incredibly difficult to find restaurant down a little alleyway was finally found, our booking for 10 acknowledged and the first 7 of us shown to our table two floors up.  But where are the 3 amigos?  Turns out Don and the boys were downstairs being refused entry, while upstairs we were being roundly ignored by the two staff, who were completely flummoxed by an incomplete table.  Eventually Don used his mobile phone to call down a rescue party!

Next Peter orders some cava to start the meal, and asks for a bottle of red wine to be opened in anticipation…  waiter rushes around apparently trying to find 10 flutes for the cava, then puts out the red wine glasses, asks Peter to taste the red and shares it out between the other 9 wine glasses – failing to top Peter’s glass up, or to pour the cava at all!

And oh my, when the next bottle of red was something different… clearly he knew he was meant to bring new glasses (but no one had told him to take the old ones away).

Eventually, you could barely see the table for the array of empty glassware!  At which point, we formed a chain-gang, passing empty glasses along to Peter who was sitting close enough to an empty side table to arrange them there!  The waiters watched us clear the table without intervening.

And inexplicably, having billed themselves as a restaurant specialising in rice dishes, and indeed, with a full page of different paellas and another of risottos on the menu…  Sorry, we can only do 2 rice dishes per table.  Those who want rice have to agree on two of the many options, which can be served in as many portions as required.  Weird!  Fortunately at that point most of our table opted for something else, while Kevin, Peter and I selected two different paellas, neither if which, I have to say, were particularly spectacular.

Lesson 3.  You should always make space for the degustation menu.  Sorry Rob, we really should have had that menu at Nu… Don’t know what I was thinking!  Thankfully the waiter persuaded us to order many dishes anyway for all to share, and it has to be said, the food was spectacular, and the service outstanding.  As it turned out we did try 6 of the 11 dishes on that night’s degustation – including the interesting guacamole with lime ice cream, and the outstanding salt baked foie gras with cookies and banana ice cream.  At Nu, ice cream is not (necessarily) a dessert (maybe that should be lesson 4).  Highlight of the night, I think we all agreed, was the scallops, Iberian pork and ham parmentier.  As I write this (sitting in Jordan) I’m tempted to head out into the hills to hunt down a wild pig!

Lesson 4.  It takes leadership to effect a group decision.  At the aforementioned LLevetaps, when we finally returned after they’d finished mopping the floors, I’m slightly embarrassed (but unrepentant) to say I may have forced the whole table into the degustation menu…

(Image from restaurant website)

On the basis that we could only do it if everyone did it, and the alternative, guys, is to wade your way through this Spanish menu and decide for yourself what you’re goin to eat (and by the way, if we take the matched wine options, we don’t even need to worry about what we’re going to drink either).  Billed as the best tapas restaurant in Girona, they did not disappoint, with amazing food and the equivalent of the “bottomless pot” when it came to the matched wines.  Highlights of the 8 course meal – the octopus?  the pork? the amazing lemon verbena dessert…  Too hard, I’ll let you peruse the menu and decide, though for me the octopus was a revelation – giant rounds of tentacle, akin to pork fillet, perfectly cooked with a richness of flavour that trumped all else.

And so to San Sebastián, with its amazing pintxos, its ancient cidery where we literally pigged out on a set end with a truly giant T-bone steak as one of several full meals on a plate all seven in succession, with encouragement to visit the barrel room frequently for a refill of cider – every barrel different, try them all!  (Not that we did!)

Mugaritz was, as I said, the crowing glory – the primary purpose of our 600km road trip across the top of Spain.  A half-hour taxi ride up into the hills delivered us to an airy room, minimally decorated tables set with white cloths and an artfully arranged broken white plate on each.  They checked (again) whether we had any food ‘issues’ … ‘Only one’, said Peter, ‘we don’t like bad food’.

Unlike our last “top restaurants of the world” adventure to Osteria Francescana in Modena, which was positively snooty, Mugaritz was friendly, welcoming – ‘we want you to have fun with the food’, out waiter encouraging us to eat with our fingers – cutlery only provided when absolutely necessary.

Over the next 3 1/2 hours, 25 small bites followed, each perfectly presented, almost too beautiful to eat.  Some were amazing, some interesting, and only one really weird – the final dessert course of a tiny Michelin Man marshmallow, which was deliciously light, floating in a white broth described as “oxidised wine” which was frankly an assault on the taste buds.  Top picks were hard to agree on…  For me, the scallops with veal tendon and lemon – the tendon thinly stretched over the scallop in its shell, adding riches which was beautifully cut by the lemon dressing.  I was pleased there were two each!  The roast garlic which concentrated lamb broth – lamb’y garlic rather than garlicky lamb was amazing…

And just when we thought it was over, the tower of the seven deadly sins arrived on the table.  Taking off the first lid, we found pride – three hollow shells of gold plated chocolate, followed by envy – one choc only, leaving the rest envious, and so it continued.

It was also fascinating to watch the other tables having not quite the same things – perhaps they had specified food foibles – and to visit the kitchen to see the lists for each table being efficiently crossed off as courses were delivered one by one.  A truly extravagant indulgence, a real foodie experience, and yes, we definitely had fun!  Even the slightly hair raising ride back down to the coast in a taxi with limited braking function was part of the adventure!

A week later, as I faced yet another blander than bland meal of “Jordanian specialty”, I thought it was probably just as well that we ended our holiday with lots of exercise and less tempting food.  After all, life’s all about balance – and I can’t wait to start experimenting with more not-Spanish flavours when we get home!

What has been billed in my mind throughout the planning process as “our trip to Spain” turns out to not have been to Spain at all.

While not overt, it was clear in our first two weeks in Catalonia that this is a region, and a people, in the midst of a ‘self-determination’ debate.  The Catalonian flag of independence flew from every other balcony, though interestingly, not always in exactly the same colour.

Our questions about the differences between the red star vs the blue starred ones were mostly met with shrugs – reminiscent of that inimitable French shrug with which I am so familiar. The anti-independence cafe owner we asked about it, somewhat disparagingly explained that the ‘official’ flag of Catalonia is the striped red and yellow one – apparently created by a French general at some stage in the past when the Catalonyan armies came to his rescue, and lost their leader in the process.  It is said he dipped his fingers in the Catalonyan blood and drew the four red stripes across a golden shield.  This is the official flag of Catalonia, a province of Spain.

But in a quite recent unauthorised referendum, supported by the provincial politicians, but not endorsed by the Spanish government, the population apparently voted to secede… with the forces for independence apparently agreeing on their new flag construct – a triangle with a star superimposed on the stripes, but not on its colour.  All this reminding me of the ridiculous flag referendum in NZ where two of the choices were simply different colours of the same design, which split the vote, and arguably resulted in the old flag being retained for now.

But I digress…

So Catalonia remains very much part of Spain for now – apparently, according to a tour guide we spoke to, having rejected the halfway house of devolved government in a semi-federal arrangement as has been implemented in other northern provinces.  The Catalonian language is visible in the bilingual signage, and I guess audible for those with an ear for these things.  But it was, as I said, not overt… maybe there are so many tourists from the rest of Spain that it’s all blending in….

In contrast, heading west through the Pyrenees to Basque Country, the divide became much clearer.  Bilingual street signs gave way to separate signs – sometimes one on each side of the road, leading to massive confusion for map readers… and reflecting what we discovered to be an aggressively separate-from-Spain people and culture.  Human remains discovered recently date the Basque people to being in the region more than 5000 years ago, with evidence of their seafaring forebears having reached the ‘new world’ across the Atlantic, along with the Vikings, centuries before Columbus.

In San Sebastián, the language of choice is Uscera, a language completely unrecognisable from Spanish, since it predates Latin.  With roots apparently in Ethiopia, it is one of the oldest languages still in use on the planet (though Rob informs me, courtesy of Dr Google, that the actual oldest language in Europe is actually Lithuanian).  In the Basque region, schools use Usecera as the mother-tongue.  As the kids get to 7 or 8 years, we were told, they start doing one day a week in English.  Eventually Spanish is introduced, but only for a couple of hours a week.  An interesting message, there.

We did a fascinating tour with a retired US serviceman, married into a Basque family.  A couple of hours trawling an edited history of the region, including the impact of Franco – most visible in the one ugly building blotting the skyline…  Looks like a prison, said one of our fellow tourists, mirroring my thought that it looked like John Foster Square (police HQ) in Johannesburg!  But no, apparently it’s residential – “just like Soviet Russia” said another.

Keith, our guide, regaled us with tales of the past and the present… Franco, he said, was on a mission to “make Spain great again”.  I really wanted to ask if, as a US citizen, he was concerned about the parallels with Trump’s rhetoric, but in the interests of group harmony, I refrained (out fellow groupees being “official barbecue judges” from Kentucky – I kid you not!).  He talked about ETA, and the parallels with the IRA …  I wondered if Keith himself might be what is euphemistically called a “government employee”?  This tour guide gig would be the perfect cover, and he talked at length about doing drug-enforcement duties in South America…  Another thought I kept to myself.

According to Keith, and indeed similar to what our grumpy Girona cafe owner had said, a lot of the tension is economic.  Here in the north, people work (well, not that hard – see later comments) but they do work.  The people in the south are lazy (or appear to be, it’s often 40 degrees in the shade after all) and the money from the north goes to fund the less-productive (shall we say) people in the south.

Mind you, Keith did go on to explain that the average working person doesn’t actually work all that much either.  Explaining how pintxos (Basque tapas) works, and how to eat like a local, he told us that a typical working day starts at 10am (after you’ve walked the dog – everyone seems to have a dog, despite living in tiny apartments – had your swim in the sea, and picked up a coffee and a pastry, to get you through till morning tea time, at about 11.45am, when you pop out for your first pintxos and a glass of wine or cider.

Then it’s back to work for an hour or two, while you make plans to meet your friends for lunch.  Around 1.45pm you might meet some friends in a pintxos bar, for one or two drinks and bites to eat in anticipation of your menu of the day, three course lunch which starts around 2pm, with half a bottle of wine per person included (though it has to be said, if you are a real wine drinker, you will want to select – and pay for – your wine separately rather than drink the Ribena-like stuff included in the menu price!).  Around 4pm you will return to work until about 8pm – this is when any ‘real’ work gets done, though one has to wonder about the possibility of doing your best work on what could easily by now be your first bottle of wine for the day!  And that also explains why restaurants don’t open until 8.30pm in the main…  People are at work!

If one is to believe Keith, most people don’t take work all the seriously anyway – they’re just working to get through to the retirement cheque, when they can spend their days at the beach or the park, eating and drinking on the government.  The fact that these cheques come from Madrid – central government – is a significant deterrent to the population voting to completely break away from Spain.

The second part of what turned out to be a nearly 6 hour tour was basically a pub crawl – visiting 5 different traditional pintxos bars, for a carefully well-matched drink and “snack” at each…  foodie heaven!  Showing us how to eat like a local – claim your ‘real estate’ when you walk in (a patch of counter or bar space – these are stand-up eating experiences);   don’t take a plate or cutlery (unless what you’re eating really needs it), especially don’t treat the array of food like a buffet!

We quickly started ‘judging’ people with a large plate, loading up, as being seriously culturally unaware!  Lean forward and bite… The lean needs to be far enough that any drips fall on the floor, not your front – and then drop your toothpick and napkin on the floor to follow.  Don’t have more than one, or maybe two if you must, at any place before moving on to the next.  You can tell where the locals eat – the floor is covered in napkins and debris, and the place is empty by about 2.30pm when they head onwards to their real lunch.

Apparently on the weekend, the process repeats – only at a much more leisurely pace, and in much larger groups, as whole families roam the streets grazing on this and that before somehow miraculously agreeing on where to lunch.  Keith talked about his Basque family of maybe 15 or 16 people visiting 3 or 4 pintxos bars on the way to lunch… Kids, oldies all in tow!  Having experienced first hand the difficulty of getting a small group of cyclists to agree where to eat, I marvelled at the fact that 16 people could visit not one, but 4 or 5 bars and restaurants in a single day, and apparently all hang together doing so.

They then stay out -kids and all – often until the early hours of the morning, socialising, snacking…  ‘Back home’, said Keith, ‘I’d get a visit from child protection services’, but here the kids are included in everything.  Especially, it seems, the eating and drinking that is so very much part of this amazing part of the world.

If there is a single item of food that I wish I could smuggle back home, it would be a large hind leg ham of black-hoofed Iberian pig – a taste beyond description, sold on the streets as a paper cone filled with ham slices – heaven!

Instead, I’m bringing back a pintxos recipe book, planning that pintxos party in the not too distant future.

And determined to henceforth refer to this holiday as the one when we were not in Spain!