15 days on the Iberian Peninsula

Planes, trains, and automobiles (and vermut, and wine, and jamón).

local scallops in Cudillero, Spain.

This past September, I spent two weeks in Spain and Portugal drinking a lot of delicious wine, speaking Spanish, becoming a vermut person, and consuming my body weight in jamón. I started the trip with one of my closest friends, Maggie, for our annual friendship trip. We flew into Barcelona, then took trains to Valencia and eventually Madrid. When she left, my boyfriend Andrew joined me in Madrid, and after a few days there, we drove north to Logroño and Bilbao, west to A Coruña, and south to Porto. I handled most of the driving — still not really a road trip person. 

paprika in Mercat Central de València.

We did a lot on this trip, and not everything is worth writing home about. Some places I found through research, but others were on-the-fly finds. Below are a few of my favorite things that I think are worth a visit. If you want to see more, my lists of Spain and Portugal have been updated. 

In the next issue, I’ve got a recipe for roasted chicken and potatoes inspired by this trip. It’s fairly easy and *very* good, but it’s for paid subscribers only. Subscribe to get the recipe!

dinner on the patio | a plate of jamón

Barcelona

Maggie and I found ourselves in Barcelona because she wanted to shop at Mercat de la Boqueria and cook at a cute Airbnb. But when we got to the Mercat, she was surprised to see it had become substantially more touristy since the last time she went. Instead, we stopped in Mercat de Sant Antoni which is outside the tourist core and feels much more like a place locals actually shop at. Plus, we were able to snag a seat at Pinotxo Bar, a local institution that’s been serving Catalan food since 1940.

walking wine | Dentro wine bar

Valencia

When I travel, I like to buy food souvenirs so we went to Mercat Central de València to look for spices and things to take home. There are stalls that sell everything you need to cook with, but also art and wine, which you can purchase to stroll the market with.

One of the days we were there, we took a paella cooking class with My First Paella and it was such a great time. They take you to a market to buy ingredients, you learn how to cook paella, then enjoy it all together with your fellow classmates. Highly recommend. 

Corral de la Morería | vermut

Madrid

I am not particularly interested in the Michelin star restaurant scene, but Spain has a lot of them. I came across the one star Corral de la Morería because it has an inexpensive tasting menu option and they also offer nightly flamenco shows. I cannot overstate how cool this was. If you’re traveling to Madrid, you should make this one of your reservations.

There is a lot of natural wine in Madrid and you’d need a lot of time to cover it all. I forget where I came across La Alquimia, but it’s a very cute wine bar slash shop with a really nice staff. We sat at the bar and the owner tasted us through a bunch of different wines from the region. There are also a lot of places to drink vermut, and I noted a few on my map.

shrimp and mushroom pinxto at Bar Ángel | select pinxtos

Logroño

Logroño is the capital of La Rioja, which means you’re drinking some of Spain’s best wine and its food culture benefits from its close proximity to the Basque Country. The move here is wandering the tight alleyways near the Paseo del Espolón to drink and eat pinxtos, the small, skewered snacks that are common in bars across Basque Country.

Every bar has a house specialty and it’s impossible to try them all, so just pick a direction, see what looks good, and go from there. I would say look for crowds of locals to help guide your search, but every place was so packed that I don’t think you could go wrong. My favorite bite was a toast with grilled garlicky mushrooms and shrimp at Bar Ángel, so I think that’s the one spot you can’t miss.

a perfect tortilla española at Loren Taberna in Bilbao.

Bilbao

Bilbao is divided into two parts: the extremely hilly Casco Viejo (old town) and the much more modern (and flat) city center. Bilbao is much larger than I realized so it took us a while to get our bearings, but both Casco Viejo and the city center have a lot of streets to for bar and snack hopping. 

Loren taberna has an insanely good tortilla española and it’s worth the hike up the stairs to get there. Café Bar Bilbao was packed with tourists and locals alike and had a lot of great seafood options, especially if you like octopus. Across town, both Ledesma Musikariaren Kalea and Poza Lizentziatuaren Kalea were streets that have so many bars, you could spend a whole night on one city block.

the view from the hills of Cudillero.

Cudillero

Andrew found this town because is was a logical halfway point on a long drive, and I am not sure he could have picked a more charming place for lunch. Tucked into the cliffs overlooking the ocean, this teeny tiny town seems to cater to day trippers unloading off tourist buses. But if you’re willing to wander up the hill a little or off the main street, you can likely avoid the tourists. We ate a lunch of local seafood, veal cutlet, and Asturian sidre at Sidrería El Remo and it was fantastic.

anchovy toast at 55 Pasos | ápero at GLUGLÚ

A Coruña 

On the far western coast of Spain, we picked A Coruña because it’s home to the Torre de Hércules, the oldest surviving Roman lighthouse, and I essentially did no other research ahead of time (I did make one reservation, but I am not sure it’s worth noting). A little Googling brought us to GLUGLÚ, seemingly the only dedicated natural wine bar in town, and they recommended 55 Pasos, a modern Galician restaurant that serves natural wine where we had an absolutely perfect anchovy on toast. We did a lot in the short time we had, and I was very sad to be moving on.

a view of Porto from across the Douro River.

Porto

If I am being honest, by the time we got to Porto, I was tired of being on the move. We were staying right in the middle of the old town which was very convenient but overwhelming with all the people. For the first time on the entire trip, I heard more American English than anything else, which made it feel like I was in a Disneyland simulation of Porto.

I’ve established that I love a good market, and Mercado do Bolhão covers all of my favorite bases: walking wine, snacks, and local ingredients. It’s touristy but worth a visit, and I bought a lot of tinned fish and like 4 bottles of olive oil. Later that evening, we went north from where we were staying and stopped into Torto, a very vibey cocktail bar. 

A reminder: In the next issue, I’ve got a recipe for roasted chicken and potatoes inspired by this trip. It’s fairly easy and *very* good, but it’s for paid subscribers only. Subscribe to get the recipe!