Part II: This Is Where They Were Hiding the Free Luna de Miel Stuff

Even though there was a TV in the room, we decided that eating was important. We were wary of trusting our map-reading skills any more that day, so we went to the bar attached to the hotel. There was a long list of tapas, without any prices, and some expensive entrées. We ordered drinks and about eight of the tapas, along with one entrée, and got sort of a funny look from the waiter. The food was good and plentiful, and after a couple of glasses of vino, we were done with dinner.

Next, we began to steel ourselves for the argument over the bill. We were certain that the unpriced items would have come back to bite us, and that we would go to bed feeling like illiterates once again. These things have become important, things like being able to order exactly how we want, or to protest when we’ve been cheated. Now that we have the language skills to manage these situations, albeit with a lot of effort, messing them up hurts doubly: it means that not only are we suckers, but that we can’t speak as well as we think we can. In some ways, these things were easier when we knew we couldn’t talk. In many others, though, this is one of our biggest victories: we can talk our way into things that other people might not want us to do. And when the bill came, for more food than we could finish and a bunch of drinks, we were indeed shocked speechless. It read, “4 vino, 4 cerveza, 13 Euros.”

The next night, it began to happen again. We ordered things that we were sure would cost money: calamari, shrimp, bacalao, anchovies and fired almonds and pieces of manchego cheese with Jamón Serrano. It didn’t matter. With every drink – and the drinks were pretty small and cheap – one could order something off the tapas list for free. People seemed to be heading to one bar for, say, the grilled calamari, then to another for the bacalao with tomato, then to the one specializing in octopus roasted with paprika.
Back at the hotel bar, which seemed to serve better food than many of the others in town, we ordered the bacalao. They were out of it. We tried just about everything else, in an attempt to console ourselves. It couldn’t fill the void. We headed to dinner, where we had an interesting experience with what passes for a martini in Spain (a glass of warm vermouth, a splash of gin, and a wedge of lemon), then went to bed.

The next day, after lounging on the beach for a few hours, we returned to the hotel bar. Still no bacalao. But the waiter was beginning to recognize us. He chatted with us about where we were from, complementing our Spanish and lamenting the fact that so few of the English-speaking tourists that come to Almería to hit the beaches try to use any Spanish outside of “la cuenta, por favor.” Even though the Andalusian accent is a little tough for us to decipher – as in, people tend to leave off the endings of all words. Remember that in Spanish, the endings are where all the actual information is – we followed him and must have said the right thing. A few minutes later, he emerged from the kitchen with a grin, then presented us a plate on the house: the bacalao had materialized. Who needs France?