BLOGG # 32 TAPAS I HAVE EATEN IN SPAIN

Well dear readers, the time has come when my three month excursion to this wonderful country is ending.  I am travelling by fast train from Madrid to Barcelona.  The trip will take three hours and the travelling speed of this super train is 300 kliks per hour.  I have decided to stay in the "Bar car" clinging to the bar as I eat a tapa of Iberian ham and drink my usual tinta wine. I want to enjoy the landscape speeding by while I ruminate on my time here. As I list the high times I have had ,I speculate on which ones have affected me most.  Of course the art treaures I have seen are at the top of the list, but I am sorry to say what kept returning to my mind is the tapas I have eaten.  Rather than fight my plebian mind I have decided to encourage it and will now list my favourite ones. The first tapa we ate as soon as we arrived was hot potatoes-cubed fried potatoes with a pink hot sauce, called Brava potatoes-a favourite with tourists. By the next occassion to eat tapas I was more savvy and ordered crayfish and a dish of mussels on toast and red wine- this  was very satisfactory and for quite a while I only ordered anchovies on toast.  Each bar had a different version of anchovies, sometimes a tiny version and sometimes quite hearty. Eventually I stopped ordering two or three tapas at a time as I never knew the portions and found it was better to order one at a time.  One of my favourites was at an elegant bar  at the  "musicalle" -salmon mayonaise with a tiny half egg.  Another high spot was in an obscure square- never found again- "garlic mushrooms stuffed with Iberian ham.  One day we went to the "Orwell placca"- a square named after the well known auther George Orwell who is famous here as a hero in the Spanish resistance movement. We brought the book he wrote  about his experiences and we planned to read a chapter as a tribute to him. Well we managed to read one paragraph before we began to feel ridiculous. Then we ordered tapas and tinta wine for me and "cava"- Spanish champagne- for my friends. Here I had the lowly tapa- olive oil drizzled on crisp bread with crushed fresh tomato- very hearty and delicious. Another delicious tapa was near the Prado in Madrid, a very expensive bar.  We ordered fois gras and pig's trotter- my suggestion. the fois gras was on two slivers of toast with an ambrosial sauce-which we shared, the pig trotter was the size of a quarter- the hide of a pig's foot surounding a jelly-like substance,and covered with the same ambrosial sauce. Was it good?  Frankly I don't know as it was too small a portion and too expensive. The wine was superb. The most unusual tapas we had was on the last night in Madrid.  I had toast with  roquefort cheese?spelling? with anchovies on top.  Was it delicious?  Yes!. Well dear reader, I can see the outskirts of Barcelona and so most prepare to depart. Adios for now from your well-fed blogger.