Currently Browsing: Caroline J. Beck 223 articles
We’ve Finally Made It Official
We want to announce that we have finally taken the big step and have made it official. Yesterday, after three months of occasionally-challenging visits to City Hall, la Estacion de Policia and la Oficina de Extranjeros, we are holding our Tarjeta de Residencia cards in our happy little hands. While we are good to go […]
Merry-Go-Round of Tapas at Tickets
Have you ever had trouble remembering what you did last night? Our memory loss was not due to over imbibing, but it’s fair to say we might have overindulged just a tiny bit. We spent a really long evening at Albert Adria’s tapas restaurant, Tickets, in Barcelona. It may take six months planning to reserve […]
Tiny Tabarca’s Secret Season
For an islet known to offer hospitality to 2,000 visitors a day during the summer months, things are different just beyond the high season’s fringe in Tabarca, Spain. We were two of about 30 ferry passengers reaching port as another tour boat dropped off a few more. Despite perfectly sunny, warm weather, not many sightseers […]
Bodegas Castaño’s Casa de Cera
The final wine that accompanied our family-style farmhouse dinner in Yecla, Spain was Bodegas Castaño‘s Casa de Cera 2011. The intense fruit flavor of the family’s crown jewel was enough to win us over to a new grape varietal, monastrell. Wine aficionados might know it by its French or California moniker, Mourvedre, but it’s Spanish […]
Alicante’s Indigenous Grape: Monastrell
The first time I came across Monastrell, I only knew it as Chef María José San Román’s Michelin-starred restaurant in Alicante. Now, I realize that she was simply celebrating the best known local wine varietal by paying homage to the grape with that moniker. And if we had to find a way to learn about the grape […]
Enric Rosich’s Marvelous Macarons
Sometimes I think there must be a beacon on my head that guides me to amazing food finds when I least expect it. Like stumbling onto Enric Rosich‘s amazing, colorful, flavor-packed macaron shop in a shopping mall food court in Barcelona. Macarons? Spain? Yes to both. And I can attest that they are every bit as […]
Barcelona’s Welcome Mat
There was no specific name for the liquid that my Ecuadorian waiter, Señor Gonzalo Bravo, poured from an old nondescript bottle retrieved from the back of the restaurant at the end of my dinner. It tasted a bit like limoncello with a mysterious earthy twist. It was not a menu item, but a handcrafted after dinner drink […]
Room With a View
There are moments in life that are magical. A night sky scan of Alicante, overlooking the bay to the Castillo de Santa Barbara and the harbor below, is one such slice. And it appears every night from our balcony. Life here begins when the sun goes down and the town lights up with music, evening […]
Sending 2015 Up In Flames
Spain likes to set things aflame. The Las Fallas celebration in Valencia is probably the best known example when world-famous parade floats go up in flames every March. But our late December lunch at Paco Gandia Restaurante in Pinoso, Spain was a real demonstration of holding your hand to the fire the likes of which I had […]
Can I Go Too?
Wanna-be competitors followed the Volvo Ocean race contenders as they turned into tiny specks on the horizon and sailed out of view. I doubt there will be many that stay the course on its first leg of the competition through the Strait of Gibraltar and down to Cap Horn. But luckily, it looks like they […]
