September 5, 2023 Breakfast - BLT Sandwiches Lunch - Bocadillo in O Coruna Dinner - Yogurt and peaches

September 5, 2023 Breakfast - BLT Sandwiches  Lunch - Bocadillo in O Coruna  Dinner - Yogurt and peaches

We still do not have the dining worked out.

We are eating a large meal at breakfast, then eating the normal large Spanish meal for lunch (Comida del Dia) and finding ourselves unable to eat dinner, resulting in the lovely ingredients we buy for dinner going unused.

Today was a perfect example.

We woke up at 8:30 and made beautiful BLT sandwiches again with the second lovely tomato we bought in Padron, the wonderful bacon, and dark bread we bought at the Cambados market and lettuce.

                                Suzette likes sandwiches and I like open faced sandwiches 

We then drove to the fish market in Cambados and purchased a fresh hake that the fishmonger woman expertly filleted into two beautiful nearly boneless fillets.

We took the fish back to the apartment and then drove the 100 kilometers up the Atlantic coast to O Coruna, which turned out to be both a large modern city and a very old city.

We parked about two blocks from Picasso’s home Museum, where he lived from age 10 to 13 is a third floor apartment that has been preserved as it was in 1893, when his father took a three year teaching position at the art college in O Coruna.

Suzette liked the granite shelving and sink in the kitchen.

A picture of Picasso at the end of the table during a family summer vacation at age ten.

We inquired about the O Coruna Fine Arts Museum and the attendant said it was a fifteen minute walk. We decided to get the exercise so we started walking but I had to stop for a Coca Cola and Suzette drank a glass of Albariño. 

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that there is a bar o4 restaurant in almost every little square, so finding a drink is no problem.

The walk was 1/2 mile mostly uphill so it turned into quite a feat for me.

The fine arts building is beautiful, but most of the early works are second rate attributions to various schools, except for a lovely Ribera. Most of the. Post-world war II Art were O Coruna artists we did not know and there was one ugly Juan Luis Lopez.  No Picasso, Dali, or Sorolla like in the Orviedo Museum.

When we finished viewing the art collection we were tired and hungry.

We were recommended the name of a restaurant named De El Alfredo located near the parking lot where we parked so we walked to that restaurant only to find out that it was closed today.

We were tired so we walked across the street to a small cafe named Bocadilo that had three Comidas del Dia.  Suzette took the first one for €10.50 with Lentil soup, meatballs with French fries, bread and wine.

I took the second one which was Spaghetti with marinara sauce and beef fillet with rice.  We chose red wine and soon a bottle of Ribeiro red wine was served with a basket of dark bread.

Then I was served a plate of spaghetti with a thin red sauce and Suzette was served a large bowl of Lentil soup.  It was very simple food but remarkably it was not salted to excess.  What a pleasant surprise, that you had to get the least expensive, least elaborate food turned out to be the least offensive from the standpoint of over-salting.

Next Suzette was served three large meatballs made with both ground beef and pork that tasted like Swedish meatballs dressed with the simple tomato sauce that was probably from a can with a plate of crispy fried potatoes.

I was served a plate with a thin slab of probably sirloin, like what the Mexicans call Milanesa, cooked to medium rare with the rest of the plate filled with a pile of rice.  The steak tasted great and so did the rice.  I ate it all. Suzette did not finish her meatballs and fries, but seemed to enjoy them.

The wine was just okay, but the waiter offered us dessert, which was a slice of membrillo and a slice of what tasted like gelatinized cottage cheese. Pretty basic but flavorful.

All in all a lot of very average food that filled you up for not a lot of money, except for one very important factor; because of the huge quantity of carbohydrates (spaghetti and rice) and protein (steak), I felt great.

After lunch we returned to the car and drove to the Tower of Hercules, which was a light house built by the Romans that is still in use in the present. It is sited impressively on a high point near the bay.

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After viewing the tower we drove back to Cambados and stopped at the  supermarket again to buy a bottle of white wine to use to cook the hake we bought in the morning, eggs, a chocolate dessert, and ice.

When we arrived back at the apartment Suzette worked for a bit and I worked with Rahim on his transaction.

We were tired and not hungry, having eaten a large breakfast and a large lunch.

We decided to fix the Hake in tomato sauce for breakfast.

Suzette’s stomach was upset from the fried potatoes, so I made dinner by adding some Greek yogurt we bought yesterday to the peaches I had sliced several days ago.

The result was a delicious combination of fresh fruit and stomach calming yogurt.

We went to bed by 10:30 to rest up for our big day of traveling to Vigo, Spain and on to Braga, Portugal in the morning.

Bon Appetit