December 13....Sunday's in Spain

Today we learned what Sunday’s are all about…..taking it slow, bar hopping and tapas!
This morning I slept until 11am! I have not done that ever. I know it had a lot to do with the jet lag and being sick as well as the late nights (evening get-togethers start at 9 with beers, then progress to dinner before moving to a new venue for cocktails and breaking up very late…in the early am hours of your choosing..1, 2, 3 or later). I’m not sure how I’m going to adjust to Spanish time…..

Tom and Carlos took us for a walk-about in town this morning, showing us the beachfront, scuba shop, promenade and little hole-in-the-wall bars where you get your Sunday beers and tapas. The great thing about tapas is they’re free! (and tasty!) Basically you order a caña of beer (a caña is the size of the beer-about a half pint or less) and ask the bar-keep what they are offering for tapas. Each establishment has their specialty.
Traditional tapas were had at our first venue…slices of bread topped with wedges of cheese, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with oregano; salty, golden potato chips dressed with oily anchovy fillets (excellent with beer!), etc. And here’s the thing that has Christopher most excited thus far….Just about every bar will have an entire leg of Serrano ham leaning on a special rack from where they’ll shave off a few pieces to serve with bread, olives and olive oil. It’s really fantastic!
For every beer you order (about 1.5 Euros each or $2.25) you get a free tapa. You can sit and have 4 beers and go through the better part of the bar’s tapas menu and be completely stuffed for $10! However, you tend to bar hop, having one beer per stop…not only for the change of scenery but for the variety and a chance to run into your friends.
This is a very small town and since Carlos was once the mayor we ran into many of their friends...or Carlos just popped his head in their open kitchen door or window to shout hello at them!

Today, the four of us discovered there was a tapa contest for restaurants/bars that are located in the natural park of Cabo de Gata (where we’re located). A few of the restaurants/bars from Las Negras were participating and we got to rate their tapas on a scale of 1-10.
The second place we encountered today was participating in this contest, their tapas where very neuvo in style. They were good but tended to be rather sculptural (stacked food) and each had the same sweet salsa (a kind of tomato chutney that actually tasted like duck sauce). Although we thought they were a 10 for presentation the flavor was a bit odd to serve with your beer. Overall they were just ok.
The next bar we went to (which was the third of the afternoon) was also participating in the contest and they served a more traditional style in terms of presentation and flavor. One tapa was almost like a chicken stew while the other was squid in a tomato based sauce. Both were very good, BUT! here was the trouble…..we had three tapas to try at each participating restaurant/bar! With each tapa comes a beer! We’d already had one beer at bar number one, three at bar number two and we were headed toward the third beer at bar number three when we had to call Uncle! Even though the beers where light and almost pilsner in style, we were stuffed and pretty tipsy. As the day went on we kept trying to get our caña of beer to be served to us smaller and smaller just so we could finish judging the contest but it was of no use. We were done. We’re not talking a lot of beer here but when you add that many together…ay, dios mio!
We headed home for siestas (at 5:30pm!) and other then a little social time late into the evening (and I think we had a very late dinner too) we were done for the day.
Once again I did not have my camera. So sorry! I KNOW we will head out for tapas again and I’ll be sure to bring it along.