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...of Tapas, Paellas, Sangria and Portuguese egg tarts! (Part II)

Right we are back in London now... seriously feeling very happy coz was beginning to miss home in London after a week. I thought after resting aka hibernating over winter of not travelling (last trip out was during Christmas), my overdose (or rather, our overdose) in travelling would recover.. alas.. I think we are all on an overdose still.  The way we sight-see is even more of a touch and go and in extreme cases like in Lisbon our last stop, we walked really slowly and lazily and did things like "eh zoom in on the monument can already lah, no need to walk so far just to see..." Can you imagine?! Yes very sheepishly must admit we were doing ultimate chilling out and being really lazy. LSC's fav word "Chill lah!" And the most scary thing was eating from place to place!! Alicia being the most petite among us, surprisingly has the biggest stomach among us!

Since I mentioned 40% of the time was spent eating, I think I shall start in the direction of food... spanish tapas, paellas (pronounced "pa-eh-ya" as we found out), sangria.. *slurrp* We all love love LOVE spanish food esp paellas - we attacked paellas from place to place. (god I make us sound like mosters) As much as we said to try other food we found ourselves drifting in search of even more paellas in our next meal. And then there are tapas bars.. we went back to the same place twice for lunch in Seville coz their tapas was just too good and so affordable.. ate till could eat no more, and it was only less than EUR10 each. So that was Spain.

Food in Lisbon was nice too. We found out they love lots of seafood esp fish and their fish is really fresh. Prices are affordable too- I had the biggest piece of cod fish in my life there (thick and long chunk of grilled cod) and it was only EUR12 while I think in Singapore we have to pay much more. And of coz, not forgetting our aim to visit Lisbon (well more of Alicia's aim) - Portuguese egg tarts! Seriously I don't even remember if I have tried that in Singapore before and even if I did, I have no recollection at all.. this Pasteis de Belem in the area of Belem is the original (since 1837 *gasp); everyday they sell about 16,000 egg tarts. We were so excited and happy that we each wolfed down 3 straight accompanied with a cup of coffee/tea. They were hot from the oven so it was really heavenly.. so doing our math, that was 18 egg tarts in all. On Day 1. Not only that, we were all keen to dabao some back to London for friends/ colleagues and so, the next day, we went back again! For more egg tarts after lunch as well as to buy back.. guess how many we bought in total on Day 2? hahaha 54!! So in total, 72 egg tarts among 6 of us. Equals a dozen each. And spent like 70EUR just on egg tarts! okok redeeming fact is that we didn't wolf down a dozen each since we were buying for other people.. cannot imagine the calories but yes we couldn't stop laughing at ourselves coz we realised we spent 50% of our time in Lisbon in Balem. All because of egg tarts. oh no I think I just painted a very ugly picture of us.. like we are always hungry and on the prowl for more food.

Pictures of our foodie trail below. Whilst I sort out the scenic photos coz there are so many of them. Spain is a really nice country; we drove past the Andalucia mountains and along Costa del Sol where the beach is. Always read of the Andalucian mountains and somehow I always imagined the place to be yellowy and dusty which in actual fact, doesn't drift too far from my imagination.. it was sunny and dusty coz it's always windy. So sadly we couldn't just walk around in tees/ tank tops and shorts like we wanted to. Anyhow, happy for some sunshine for a week!

be prepared for a mini gastronomic eye feast ;)

Clockwise: My grilled cod, a typical fish dish in Portugal with rice tasting like asamm fish, us during lunch

Egg tarts madness

Love these tarts

Clockwise: Dinner at an Italian restaurant; tapas galore; advertising for Mango hehe

Paella mixta and Paella Valencia for dinner

Our first visit to this tapas bar as recommended by our hostel

I ordered a spanish stew for lunch at Rhonda and it had a very home cooked feel.

This dinner was overeating cos they didn't warn us how huge the paella was.  We had a difficult time ordering cos they didn't speak much English.  We ordered a salad, calamari, fried squid and mussels for appetiser thinking two "small paellas" would be enough.  They had to add an extra table so we could have enough space!

Breakfast DIY at a Moroccan inspired hostel located in a UNESCO Heritage site in Granada;
Waited long enough to open our Easter egg, only to realise it is hollow inside!

There is a rich Moroccan influence Southern Spain due to their history.  We had dinner but was disappointing - the paella tasted more like Chinese fried rice.

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