4th Chapter - Sirens and Phonetics

Tuesday, 17 November 2015, h 21:30
Calle de la Pelota

This short episode features a special guest star from Italy: Serena, who happens to be Bea's aunt, visiting Bilbao for a few days of chitchat, shopping and art museums. So classy! 
Being a midweek bar incursion, we only go to one bar: LAMIAK, very spacious, nicely arranged with block coloured walls and solid wooden interiors, and at this moment quiet. We order a caña of San Miguel and Serena tastes a crema de orujo, a Northern Spanish creamy liquor. 
We unfortunately forgot to take pics of the place, so we make up by putting images of: 
a) the Lamia, plur. Lamiak, a siren in Basque mythology after which the bar is named;

b) "Whale oil beef hooked", a tongue twister worth trying with your Norn Iron friends if you have any. We do.

Say it very fast and see what happens.

You know, being the learned scholars that we are, we choose to converse over phonetics differences and British accents...
...Before the barmaid starts cleaning up and rolling down the shutters.
So, cheers!

3rd Chapter - Of Spoons and Forks

A brief note.
This post should have been published yesterday, but its light tones did not seem to go too well with the mood of the day. We spent last Friday night with two friends from France, and our sympathy goes to them and their compatriots.
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Friday, 13 November 2015, h 21:30
Calle de la Torre; Barrenkale

Although it technically was not part of tonight, KUKUSOAK taberna deserves to be mentioned here. We went there last week and Alex put his karaoke skills to the test with a rendition of "Video Killed the Radio Star". We might have been, well, quite tipsy by then, so there is no trace of the beer that was drunk there. But it still counts.

Our Friday night out begins at BIZITZA where Alex is waiting for us with some friends. While Ivan and Alex have a couple of Heineken, we reflect that our evenings out resemble more and more a UN session, or one of those jokes that start with: "A French, an American, an Englishman, a Croatian, a Spanish, a German, a Lithuanian, a Welshman and two Basques [etc.] walk into a bar...". And we are quite proud to spread the BBQuest word internationally! 
EDIT: The picture wouldn't be complete without mentioning one of the local drunkards, sitting at the table next to us, who for his part is mumbling some sort of Spanish-Basque-Wino dialect; it is hard to fully capture the essence of his broken speech, which - Alex informs us - is usually accompanied by a distinct swaying walk.

A disneyan representation of the local drunkard.

Just a couple of steps away lies our second destination, ORMAETXE, where we have a Mahou Classic. This bar is known for its juego de la rana (Frog Game, or Toad in the Hole), which consists in throwing brass disks into the mouth of a metal frog - see here for some history. 

Unfortunately it has started to rain - not just the light sirimiri of Bilbao, but a regular full shower. We seek shelter in the nearby ZAZPI BIDE, notable for a nice selection of bottle beers and a varied offer of food. A mention of honor goes to Bea's Napar Porter, rich and toasted; the guys go for a caña of Heineken, but Alex is surprised to be served an Amstel instead. Well, the place is very crowded, and he decides to forgive without forgetting.

So what about the spoons and forks? 

It was an inside joke and the evening leitmotiv: it started with a friend misunderstanding the acronym BBQ for a fork-and-knives meat barbecue, and his bitter disappointment at finding out the plain alcoholic truth of our quest; it continued with the same friend misspelling "fork" with "dork", followed by requests of "bring your own dork out tonight"; it reached its culmination with Alex being presented with a set of IKEA spoons, leading to endless "spooning" puns throughout the evening.

Our last beer is again a Mahou Classic from ZULO TABERNA. Since lots of people crowd the bars of the area trying to find a dry spot, we barely manage to have a look inside. The evening will continue some more, but with no more cerveza and the mood slighlty dampened by the first news regarding the attacks in Paris.

Till the next chapter, cheers.