Food for thought

A memory we will long cherish, is sitting in the open-air courtyard restaurant of El Picoteo in the El Convento Hotel, one of the Leading Hotels of the World chain, having mid-day tapas with a bottle of chilled Spanish white wine and a Margarita for dessert! They say traveling means expanding your horizons and that includes new foods. Well, here is where Ben and I found that sardines taste sublime when they are not in a can and that you would never say "hold the anchovies" if you ever tasted them in their natural state with rosemary olive oil. What a revelation and what a delicacy! Our tapeo waiter was a little shy until I tried my limited Spanish out on him, and then his smile was so endearing, he beamed from ear to ear. We whiled away the afternoon subliminally and I recounted to Ben the story of the first-ever tapas Sue and I ate in New York, in a restaurant my Air Canada forever friend Gary had recommended -- a far-away and frenzied yellow cab ride from downtown Manhattan, on the occasion of my 40th birthday -- another memory I will forever cherish.