Spains and the Giant Peach

Teruel, Spain

Teruel is the capital of the Teruel province in Spain. It is known for its mudéjar style of buildings. A mudéjar tower can be seen above - the style is influenced by Moorish taste due to the Muslim occupation of Spain from the 8th century. I really liked the intricacy of it: though not visible in the photo, when you stood closer you could see that the reddish building was studded with turquoise.

Spain, and in particular Teruel, is known for its jamón, which is a type of ham. In every supermarket you could see fat legs of the stuff hung up by the hoof, and it gave off a musty smell. I bought a packet of jamón flavoured crisps, and they were quite good. I would describe the taste as bacony.

The cathedral of Teruel is also in the mudéjar style. 

A niño wanted in on our photograph.

The most well known symbol of Teruel is the little bull statue, called "El Torico". While this square is officially called the Plaza Carlos Castell, it is more commonly known as the Plaza del Torico. I'm not sure who had the idea of creating such a tiny bull statue, but it is amusing at the least, especially as it's very high up at the top of quite a thick pillar.

On our drive down from the mountainous Teruel, we pulled over by the side of the road for a snack. Yannick has always liked coke bottle sweets, but we found these monstrous ones in a lolly stall in a mall somewhere in the north of Spain. (After this, we did lose them in the car for a while, and found them again in Italy. By then, they were covered in sand, but Yannick tried to dust them off and eat them. He gave up pretty quickly.)

While we had the doors open for our snack and rest from driving, a cricket got trapped in our car without us realising. On the drive, he made quite a racket and we had to stop again to try to get him out. Thinking we had succeeded, we drove on, but he started up again and we repeated the effort.

Another interesting food item we found was a custard that came in a terracotta pottle. Very Spanish.

We greatly enjoyed all the fresh fruit we could get our hands on, including this giant peach! Maybe a gang of anthropomorphic insects and a boy wouldn't be able to fit in it, but it's the largest I've seen (and eaten).