Argentina

As mentioned in my previous post, Sandra's family has three restaurants: La Casa de las Pulgas, El Real, and La Marina. El Real and La Marina are in the Plaza Mayor (Main Square) of Salamanca, which is ground zero for tourism. Think the Union Square of San Francisco or Pike's Place of Seattle, except that it's a huge public square where everyone comes to eat, and it's the number one attraction. Having a restaurant on the Plaza Mayor is a big deal as there are only about 10 restaurants. Having 2 is an even bigger deal. Here's a briefing on the three restaurants. La Casa de las Pulgas: The first restaurant they had. It serves mostly locals and has very traditional Spanish food. I've come to learn that the Spanish palette is very traditional and most people don't like new exotic foods. Sandra's dad has never tried Chinese food for example. This restaurant easily has the best food of the three but is a little bit removed from the Plaza Mayor. For this r...

Guijuelo and Salamanca, Spain are known across the country and Europe for one thing: jamón ibérico, or iberian ham. Iberian is a race of pig that is much darker in color. Sandra's dad Luis owns a farm with about 3,000 iberian pigs so I thought I'd take a trip to see it. Within jamón ibérico there is further differentiation based on what the pigs eat. The best jamón ibérico is called "de bellota," which means that the pig was fed entirely of acorns. Less prestigious there are pigs that eat a mixture of bellotas and cereals, and then lastly there are just pigs that eat cereals.  The farm was about 20 minutes from Salamanca, and it was extremely rural, but quite beautiful.  The farm was divided into lots of pigs. The pigs are divided by age in order to keep track. There were about 400 females and 30 males. Apparently that is the correct ratio for pigs. Then each of the age groups are split into cohorts. When the pigs have about 4 months, they leave from insid...

Brazil's 7-1 semifinal loss to Germany on Tuesday will go down as the worst loss in Brazil's soccer history. Just take a look at the front pages of the national newspapers: "Massacre" "National Team suffers the worst loss in history" "The loss of losses'" "Humiliation at Home" But why is this the worst loss in history and what does it mean for Brazil? Prior to last Tuesday's game, the worst loss in Brazilian soccer history was the "Maracanazo" in 1950 (the game took place at Maracanã stadium in Rio). It was the World Cup Final and Brazil only needed a tie to win it all as it used to be a Round Robin format. Brazil went up early in the second half 1-0, but Uruguay came back to win 2-1 in front of  speechless 215,000 fans (still the World Record). The loss was compounded by the fact that Maracanã had been built by Brazil for the 1950 World Cup and was a symbol of Brazil's modernity and emergenc...