I set off on Monday afternoon to meet up with my friend Anna Mayer for a tapita. She had just arrived in town for a short stay and I hadn’t seen her in ages. So we started off with a vermouth cocktail at Palabra de Bar, near my house. But I should have known by that mischievous look on Anna’s face that the day would take a turn or three.
After our lovely vermouth cocktails we were walking towards the centre of town and the skies suddenly opened. We ended up taking shelter at Casa Antonio Los Caracoles. As Anna pointed out – it was destiny! Snails are now in season and there is no better place in town to try them.
But since women can’t live on snails alone, we ordered a few other tapitas. Which we needed to fortify ourselves because…
…just before we met up, Anna had been invited to a Rías Baixas wine tasting event at the Hotel Alfonso XIII and this ended up including me. Thrilled! So after our hearty tapas lunch we headed over to the event.
Here’s Anna and I seriously tasting seriously lovely wines. But I should’ve either sat closer or brought my glasses because I couldn’t read the powerpoint thingy.
Long story short…. after the wine tasting there was a “salon de vinos” with I don’t remember how many bodegas offering their delicious wines and then one thing led to another. By this time Anna had gone home, and I stayed on with other friends, going out for tapas later on, and even later rolling home around 1 am (!!), about twelve hours after I’d left the house. I blame Anna. 😉
It was Saturday morning, a rare weekend day off, and so I posted on Twitter… “what to do today…?” About an hour later I got a text from the most wonderful 
José called to say they’d be arriving at their hotel around 2 pm, so I met them there and we embarked on a Tapeo Extremo, starting off at Bodeguita Romero, where José and Peter had their first ever pringá. We had a lot more than that, actually, with José saying I should order the food and then he would order the sherry to go with it. Talk about matches made in heaven.
It must be said that Bodeguita Romero has a new – and amazing – sherry list. We finished off with a 20 year old VOR Cream from Bodegas Traditción, and even though I’m not crazy about creams I totally fell in love with this one, perfectly paired with aged manchego in manteca.
Then it was time to wander a bit. So we wandered into Barrio Santa Cruz and I showed José and Peter where I used to live, and P snapped this photo of us outside my old house. I think this set a personal record for the number of photos ever posted of me on the internet… EVER. This one and the one above. But somehow Peter has a very gentle eye and a knack for catching the spirit of the moment, not just faces. Love this pic of me and José. 
During our stroll around Barrio Santa Cruz we stopped into another of my favourite places, Las Teresas. And I got a pic of these gorgeous guys “hamming it up”. Then it was off to Gourmet Experience atop the central Corte Inglés in Plaza del Duque. I can’t actually remember why we did this, but we ended up eating oysters and drinking pink champagne.
The Crackburger™
casa azahar 