And...we're back! i heart yummy (& friends) spent the last two weeks traveling and eating our way through Portugal and Spain. We whizzed through a number of different cities, spending enough time to only hit some of the must-dos and must-eats in each destination before moving on to the next. Countless hours were spent researching and consulting before settling on our itinerary. We will be sharing and highlighting our adventures in 6 installments:
- 12 hours in Lisbon, Portugal
- 96 hours in San Sebastian
- 72 hours in Barcelona
- 36 hours in Valencia
- 48 hours in Mallorca
- Another 36 hours in Barcelona
Planning
I can't promote Google Maps enough. I first discovered the "My Maps" feature when planning our trip to New York City. I realized that Google allows you to save different maps to your account and also all restaurants, hotels and landmarks you choose to add to the map. You can even assign icons to each item on your list to reflect the category it belongs to. My "Spain" map came in handy when deciding on which hotels to stay in that were close to key train stations, shops, and yummy food. It also helped us plan our itinerary, knowing which places were close in proximity and thus could be visited all in one outing. Here is what our Spain map looked like:
i heart yummy's Spain Google Map
Airlines and Transportation
In selecting airlines, my instinct has always been to go with the cheapest flights available. However, be forewarned about Vueling Airlines, a subsidiary of Iberia Airlines. This company will no doubt come up at the least expensive airline connecting various European cities on Kayak and Expedia. However, Vueling has a history of cancelling flights and their Customer Service number is INTERNATIONAL so any issues you need to resolve will require an international calling card. I would strongly recommend you avoid this airline if at all possible. If you must take it, make sure your itinerary is flexible to accomodate any flight changes - our Lisbon to Bilbao flight was cancelled 2 times before we even left! In the end, we still had to call Vueling via calling card because they put us on a flight that would require a 5-hour layover in Barcelona in the middle of the day (meaning we would spend a whole day traveling a flight that was normally only 2 hours long). We decided to take an earlier flight that would require us to spend that 5-hour layover at the Barcelona airport in from 1AM - 6AM in order to catch the 7AM flight to Bilbao. Also, another thing I learned is that the same Vueling flight can show up in Kayak/Expedia as either Vueling Airlines or Iberia airlines. Please be wary and double-check the details of the flight. You may THINK you are booking Iberia but really, you are booking Vueling. If you HAD to book a Vueling flight, at least try to purchase the ticket where Iberia is listed as the main carrier. This way you can take advantage of Iberia's toll-free number for US clients - no calling card necessary. It still doesn't solve Vueling's flight cancellation issue but at least you won't need to waste money calling the Vueling Customer Service to address an problems.
The only time we rented a car was in San Sebastian - for the sake of traveling to dine at Asador Extebarri - located midway between Bilbao and San Sebastian. Otherwise, we relied on the taxis, buses, metros, Aerobuses and trains to get us to our destinations. The hop-on-hop-off buses were a life-saver. We used this bus in Barcelona and Mallorca - it allowed us to catch all the must-sees in the city in one day. The bus also came with headphones, allowing us to listen to key facts about each destination (although we have to admit, some of the narration was unnecessary - "People come to this beach to swim, bathe and ride bikes").
Hotels
We aimed for 4-star accomodations in each city, searching for hotels that were located in convenient and fun neighborhoods. A majority of our research came from using popular sites such as Expedia and Kayak to find the best deals. We will be highlighing the hotels we stayed at in each city.
Food
This is where we spent the majority of our research. Many, many, MANY hours were dedicated to looking up different chefs, restaurants and food specialties each city has to offer. We relied heavily on:
- San Pellegrino 2011 - The World's 50 Best Restaurants
- Spain Michelin Guide
- http://www.chowhound.com/
- http://www.tripadvisor.com/
- Fellow foodie blogs and foodie friends
We came up with an extensive list of must-eats to fill our tummies with. Knowing that places like Arzak, El Celler de Can Roca and Mugaritz would fill up fast, we made our reservations 2-3 months in advance...even before we bought our plane tickets. Some might call it crazy and excessive but there was no way we wanted to risk the chance of not getting into these restaurants. One thing to note is that each restaurant has unique opening hours and reservation restrictions. For instance, Cinc Sentis in Barcelona only takes groups of 4 or less for dinner and any large groups must come for lunch only. They are also closed on Sundays and only take reservations 2 weeks in advance. I had to rework our itinerary multiple times because I failed to check for closing days and times with the different restaurants. We also found alot of hidden treasures at the recommendation of various hotel front desk staff.
iPhones, Google Maps and Data Plans
While we agree that half the fun of traveling is getting lost and finding hidden troves of shops and restaurants, getting lost is not quite as fun when you're hungry and grumpy. As such, we both opted to pay $59.99 for 50MB (AT&T) worth of data on each of our iPhones. This turned out to be a real life saver whenever we got lost and also to map subway and bus routes from one location to another. You can rely on the free wifi at select hotels and cafes but more often than not, we had to use our 3G during "emergency situations." It also came in handy because street signs in Spain are positioned on the walls of the buildings themselves rather than on traffic light poles like we are accustomed to in the US. We had to re-route ourselves on our iPhones many times because we kept missing key streets and turns. Another noteworthy thing is the difference in street naming conventions. I presume Google maps use the Spanish spelling of names while the actual street signs may be in Catalan or Basque. This added to our frustration - especially driving through San Sebastian. Being able to re-route via the iPhone/3G was extremely helpful.
Overall, we had a great time and can't wait to share our travel and food adventures with you. Stay tuned for our first installment: 12 hours in Lisbon, Portugal!
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