One of the many joys of travelling in Spain is the food. Spanish regions jealously guard their gastronomic identity and sampling local specialities – food or wine – is something to savour. The city of Murcia has a reputation for having a rich culinary history, famed for the quality and variety of its fruit and vegetables. These travel the short distance from the market gardens, La Huerta, that surround the city and which date to when Murcia was at the heart of Moorish Spain.
It would be fair to say we ate very well. That said, unless you have a specialised food vocabulary, this culinary diversity is not without its perils. Memories of fish roe pate ordered by mistake in Valencia, and the extraordinarily greasy pig’s ear dish that was presented to us at a bar in Madrid, live long in the memory. These are errors you quickly learn from as a form of basic survival.
I was keen to try paparajotes, a Murcia delicacy of deep-fried battered lemon leaves. Delicious but, note to self, eat only the batter and under no circumstances try to eat the actual lemon leaf. So far so inoffensive. The other local speciality everyone tells you to try is pastel de carne. Basically it’s a meat pie – a must for any Brit. What they fail to tell you is that a key ingredient in one version of the pie, ironically known as ‘especial’, is calf brains.
I have our landlady to thank for the pastel de carne especial not making it onto the list of failed Spanish culinary experiences alongside those oreja a la plancha from that Madrid bar. These trials and tribulations aside, Murcia was a fascinating city to visit, the tapas and bar scene was just an added bonus. We had a couple of days to explore, it’s enough to see most of everything but spending longer here would be no hardship.
It is a relaxed and easy going provincial capital a long way physically and psychologically from the fleshpots of the coast. It is literally divided from the Mediterranean by the Sierra de Carrascoy, and sits on the slow moving River Segura in a valley of prime agricultural land. Which makes it all the stranger that Murcia is twinned with no less a megapolis than Miami. The two cities could not be further apart in style or spirit.
The immediate thing that struck us was how few other tourists there were. There is definitely a trickle of visitors but after Palma de Mallorca and Alicante, Murcia felt like a sleepy backwater. All the more surprising because this is Spain’s seventh largest city and a thriving economic centre. We arrived late-morning and after a long walk from the train station we found our apartment in the historic centre.
We saw plenty of tapas bars and restaurants but very little was open yet, a lesson that there are still some Spanish towns where opening times are like clockwork. If you miss the action, so be it. Luckily, next door to the apartment was a great little tapas place called Los Navarros with a friendly owner. It was open when we re-emerged onto the streets and it didn’t take much convincing for them to rustle up a fabulous rice dish for us.
Hunger well and truly banished, it was time to explore the historic centre. In this part of town, Murcia is filled with attractive and largely pedestrianised streets and squares. Walking around the Old Town was calm and relaxed. Even in the main square, Plaza del Cardenal Belluga, in front of the impressive cathedral, there were few people and the pace of life was unnervingly but wonderfully tranquil for someone coming from Brussels.
I like all the photos and especially the balcony with the flags…