Life: Idiotropic

We left Valencia at noon today or may be close to one and now it's nearly 8 as we arrive in Albacete, but hills take a while to climb and we'd already explored two castle villages today:  Montesa and Chinchilla.

Hot, sticky, tired, and hungry.  We washed our feet and faces, dropped our bags in our rooms at the TLP dorms, then headed into town with Kirk to catch a bit of the Albacete nightlife.

Monday is the quietest night here.  It's the night when Kirk's favorite two restaurants are closed:  El Callejon and La Taperia.  Sad.

But we managed to find a tapas place open in one of the busier eating districts, positioned ourselves on one of the outer corner patio tables so the girls could run a bit between bites (which is very common and accepted here), then perused our menu and ordered.  Scampi, bacon wrapped dates, deep fried goat cheese with jam, chicken wings for the girls, bread.

I asked the waitress about the "oreja a la plancha."  I know it means grilled ear, but who's ear are they grilling?  Or is it a local term meaning something totally different like "ear of corn?"  She laughed and wiggled her ear.  "De cerdo," she said, "Muy rico".  I looked at Kirk.  "Pig ear."  His head was already signally a firm "absolutely not," so we left it at that and ordered no more. 

But the later we wanted to try one more thing.  How bad can pig ear be?  Let's be adventurous.  So we ordered it and it came.

Hmm.  I've seen pig ears in the grocery stores all white in the packages.  This was cut into bite sized pieces and had large clumps of pink tinged fat stuck to it, but there was no getting away from the fact that this was a pig's ear.  I took the first bite.  Fatty.  The flavor was that of pig fat.  Not good, not bad, just pork fat.  But the globs of fat were squishy and coated the tongue with oil.  It didn't feel nice to eat.  So I pulled off the fat and crunched down on a piece of ear.  Again, the flavor wasn't bad, but the texture was what you'd expect from an ear.  A bit firm with that small crunch of cartilage.  Not nice.

Kirk didn't like it.  The waitress shamed him into trying it.  Luci and Arianna each took a bit.  Arianna actually took two or three.  I probably ate about 15 before I was done.  No, I didn't like it, but I sat there and listened to our Romanian waitress tell us how they cook them in Romania and how good they are.  She agreed the fat was too much.  "Look at this one.  See, this is a nice one.  Choose one with no fat."  I didn't want to offend her.  And it's better than snail.

It was 2330 before we left and the streets were still full.

It may not be a great tourist destination, but the nightlife is good.  And the food, if chosen carefully, can be delicious!