Differences: Eating Out

Water: As we’ve mentioned before, when one chooses the menu del día, either water or wine is included. Actually, if one of us chooses water and the other wine, we can have both. We tried the wine a few times and it was good as far as we could tell but we found that drinking wine at lunch makes us draggy for the rest of the day so we mostly have stayed with water. If you don’t get the menu del día, you have to order water separately and it is never tap water. I guess you could order tap water but it would be embarrassing. The thing is, the tap water here tastes wonderful. We use it in our hiking water bottles and everywhere it is excellent. It seems such a shame to use bottled water in the restaurants. All that plastic. And it doesn’t taste nearly as good as the tap water. I’m sure the tap water is safe or safer than the bottled water.

The Bill: I don’t think any waiter has ever offered us the check. You have to ask. I think the idea is they want you to feel welcome to hang out as long as you wish. I think even if the restaurant were very crowded they wouldn’t rush you off. But we don’t tend to stay terribly long so maybe they would eventually gently nudge us out the door.

Tipping: We’ve read and have been told that tipping is not expected here. If you have a little change left over after you pay your bill you might leave it behind. (This is not about eating out but, we’ve had a couple of taxi rides that we thought were way too inexpensive and were glad when it was easy to round up to leave a bit of a tip. They seem to appreciate it.)

Rare to pay up front: When you order coffee at a bar, they never ask for money up front or tell you the price. Prices for things like coffee are never posted so you never know what you’ll end up paying. But as we’ve mentioned before, it’s never very much. And, often they’ll give you a cookie or piece of cake or a tortilla (piece of Spanish omelette) or other little tapa with your coffee. There is never any additional charge. Even if the bar is mobbed with people, they won’t ask for money up front. It would be very easy for people to leave without paying their bill. I don’t know if it happens very often. Probably not. People here are very trusting and that is probably because people here are, in general, honest.

Breakfast: As in many parts of Europe (UK excepted) breakfast here is typically small: coffee and a pastry, for example. I’m sure they think we are strange when we come in and ask for fried eggs and toast.

First Course and Second Course: We’ve ordered a few meals a la carte, meaning we didn’t order a menu del día. We just pick out a few things that look good, not thinking about what course they go with. But the waiter always discusses with us which course we want the dishes to go in, especially if, say, we’ve ordered 3 things that are all typical first courses such as salads and stews.