Spain, the Beginning of it All

I’ve (Missy) always wanted to visit Spain. It seemed to have that charm like its Mediterranean neighbors, Italy and Greece, where the people truly enjoyed life and savored every aspect of it. When you have people that are that passionate about life, everything tends to be better, from the food to the drink, the people themselves and their customs. This trip allowed us to find out that Spain is beyond special, and one of our favorite destinations.

This was our first big trip together as a couple. We had ventured to Chicago for a weekend, but our trip to Spain was two weeks just us. It was a gamble as it could have ended one of two ways, good or bad. Luckily for the both of us, it ended well and ignited our passion for traveling together. Being our first trip together, we can look back and learn from our experiences and mistakes and have grown savvy in our approach.

It all began with Jack listening to me talk about how much I loved living in Italy during culinary school and how I was hoping to make it back to Europe, sooner than later, and that my dream trip at the time had been Spain. That Christmas, I was surprised with plane tickets to Spain. He told me he used credit card points so I wouldn’t feel bad about him spending so much money on me, but I later found out he lied and bought the flights with his own money. He used Scott’s Cheap Flights and found a deal, so I hopefully they weren’t that much. 😉

We were flying in and out of Barcelona, but besides that, we had zero itinerary. Through our research, watching travel shows, reading blogs and books, we decided that we would split up our time in Spain between four cities, Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla, Madrid. We also wanted to experience the big pieces we already knew about Spain, the Sagrada Familia, the Alhambra, tapas, flamenco dancing and a world-renowned wine culture. To be completely honest, the aspect of Spain that I was most looking forward to was their culinary scene. Being a culinary student and learning about El Bulli, gave me the bug to visit Spain. For those of you that haven’t heard about El Bulli before, it was a very creative and innovative restaurant in Spain and credited for really bringing molecular gastronomy (like creating your own caviar, cocktails in a sphere, transparent raviolis, that kind of stuff) to the culinary scene. It was also the number one restaurant in the world many times, had an expensive and extensive tasting menu and near impossible to get a reservation at. I knew I would never be able to dine at this restaurant, but I still wanted to visit Spain nonetheless to experience the cuisine and culture and inspired such an iconic restaurant.

Jack, as usual, had a handle on all the logistics, he booked Airbnb’s, had our flights taken care of, and booked the hotel we were staying at our last night. I was asked to fill in the blanks of what I wanted to do while we were there. We did more than eat and drink—here’s a small preview of some of the amazing things we experienced Sagrada Familia, Park Güell and the Mercat de La Boquería in Barcelona. In Granada we would see the Alhambra, a fantastic culmination of Arabic and Spanish cultures, as well as endless cheap eats and drinks experiencing how the locals lived. In Sevilla we would see the Seville Cathedral and explore a city we knew very little about. Madrid, I finally got to see a full flamenco dance show, Jack had to experience bull fighting and some amazing finds, including a Sherry Bar that Ernest Hemmingway frequented and wrote about. With tickets, lodging and excursions booked and our bags (overly) packed, were ready to go, hoping we would get along these next two weeks….See our Spanish blog series as we break down each of the cities we went to, our favorite bars and restaurants, top excursions as well as things we learned and learned from along the way.