Logroño

The “trenhotel” train tickets I had so proudly booked from Lisbon to Madrid turned out not to be much of a hotel at all, but two regular coach seats for the duration of the 11 to 12 hour ride. And so I at that moment realized the reason they had been only 24 euro. Gen and I’s mood however was too grand to squash, and we happily reclined our seats until they were almost completely flat and in bed position, and were without complaint. We had been drinking a bit at the bar across from the station, Santa Apolónia, in Lisbon while waiting, in which they had put up a giant “boas festas” sign with wreathes on the wall – a charming place, or at least as charming as you can get across from a major train station on the outskirts of town. Along with recommending the “trenhotel “ night train in general, I recommend having a couple drinks before boarding. I slept in peace as we clattered back to Spain, only being woken up a few times by commuters to Madrid and then falling right back into a dream.

In a whirlwind of metro metro rides, cigarettes and coffee we managed to run back to Heidi’s, freshen up and repack there, then catch our bus to Logroño with time to spare. Being trumped only by our train ride the next day from Logroño to Bilbao, the ride was gorgeous. At times the landscape was almost too reminiscent of the Midwest – brown, flat farming fields dusted with snow, endless grey highways and the occasional gas station, pit-stop or what have you. Then suddenly the land would shift, reminding us that we were in fact in Spain. Around a bend and suddenly below us the land would drop abruptly, into a deep valley, and then rise up again farther and farther until reaching cloud piercing peaks in the far distance.

We arrived in Logroño and were surprised to find that it was a much bigger and more charming than we had imagined. “Like the Spanish version of Peoria,” we kept saying in reference to our hometown in Illinois, which is roughly the same size. Upon entering Chris’s apartment, located comfortably in the middle of town, we were greeted by his tirelessly outgoing roommate, Caitlin. She was a talkative, very kind Australian Jew (half I think (Jewish that is)) who had assembled a sort of makeshift Menorah in the living room out of wine/beer bottles and candles. Caitlin ran a load of laundry for us, talked our ears off with her hilariously dirty mouth and even made us some tortilla española. For an Aussie, she had apparently mastered the whole Spanish hospitality thing pretty damn well.

By the time Chris arrived from work at his school, it was time to start drinking. We opened up the bottle of porto that Gen and I had graciously brought for him from Lisbon as thanks for letting us crash (or not so graciously, because we had every intention of drinking it with him). The porto finished, we headed out for tapas. A few days later in Madrid, after all of my travels were over and I was awaiting my flight back to the states the next morning, a man told me that Logroño is one of the best places to get tapas in the entire country, and judging from the night we had with Chris and Caitlin, I think this man was absolutely right. We feasted on chicken and avocado, vegetable and shrimp kebabs and calamari rings, each slightly larger than the one stacked on top of it and so thus making a delicious, greasy calamari pyramid. We did them in Chris’s systematic, no-time-for-lollygagging tapa eating style, meaning one bar after another, only stopping in shortly and then quickly moving on. “We have to try the chicken and avocado at this place,” he’ll say, and so we will, and then we’ll have to head a few blocks down after just one drink because “you guys have to try the number 3 at this other place.” This way of doing tapas, which is more like a strategic campaign than a dining experience, has its advantages in that you can get the best of each place and don’t have time to get too drunk.

Finally we did settle down at a bar, and spent the rest of the night with cheap cañas, some of Chris and Caitlin’s friends, and a good mix of rock and punk, highlighted for me by a few Hives tunes. I at some point attempted speaking Spanish with a Spanish looking girl, and was slightly embarrassed to find out that her Spanish was worse than mine (thus making conversation impossible) because she was not Spanish, and had been born in Germany.

A free place to stay with good people along with incredible food, Logroño had treated us well.