Friday 14th November – Sunday 23rd November

Hepcats and jazz fans in London will be spoiled for choice later this week, as the London Jazz Festival 2008 rolls out across the city.  A tradition in the Big Smoke since the early 1970’s, the London Jazz Festival showcases a broad range of jazz music, as well as classes ranging from vocal labs to jazz journalism. There’s also an excellent array of free events – music to both your ears and pocket. 


For more information, schedule and event prices, visit the London Jazz Festival’s website. Keep the weekend cheap and easy by using Transport for London to get from gig to gig, and rest your weary, be-bopped-filled head in a clean and comfy London hostel at the end of the night.

KW 

The first thing that every backpacker in Spain knows is that tapas (delectable little portions of Spanish food) comes free when you order a drink in Granada. This, in fact, (along with the host of other great free things to do) is practically the main reason that most go to the city!

The city, it’s claimed (largely by proud Granadinos who don’t care that Seville says something very similar) has more tapas bars per capita than anywhere else in Spain. But it goes without saying that there’s tapas, and then there’s tapas.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, one of the HostelBloggers crew has spent quite a bit of time in the city. So while this list of five tapas bars in Granada isn’t a definitive list, by any means, it’s a personal list, and some of the places below are like old friends…

1. Chopp; Calle Abenamar

When it comes to going for tapas in Granada, there are few better places to start than Chopp. A stone’s throw from the tourist traps on Plaza Nueva, Chopp is a tiny broom cupboard of a place that specializes in little grilled sandwiches. Plonk yourself at the bar, order your drink, and before you know it you’ll be staring at a very tasting looking (and very free) little sandwich.

They’re not grand, and they’re not exactly haute cuisine, but they really hit the spot and make it well worth staying for a couple… Which is precisely what HostelBloggers did, chasing a pair of grilled tuna affairs down with a few ice cold beers.

2. Bodegas la Mancha; Calle Joaquin Costa

Just around the corner is a real institution of a Granada tapas bar: Bodegas la Mancha. Much more of a typically old-fashioned Spanish place than Chopp, the crowd is often on the ‘mature’ – and male – side. During the day, especially, you usually can’t move for old men bellowing at each other over a glass or two of vermouth.

The food served is a selection of old Spanish favorites, from jamon serrano (as evidenced by the swinging pigs’ legs in the photo above) to manchego cheese. Elbowing our way to the bar, HostelBloggers, incidentally, ordered a large portion of morcilla (black pudding), before sidling on to the next place on our itinerary…

3. Bodegas Castañeda; Calle Almericeros

There’s no two ways about it: Bodegas Castañeda is a classic. Not to be confused with its sister restaurant on Calle Elvira (which isn’t terribly good), it’s noisy and crowded, the floor’s filled with crumpled up napkins, the wine’s excellent and the atmosphere’s unique… In short, it’s everything that’s so great about tapas in Granada!  At this point in proceedings, HostelBloggers switched from beer to calicasas (a potent house specialty that’s made up of vermouth and a couple of other local wines); then we wolfed down a couple of free tapas, before ordering a small tabla (board) of smoked fish and cheeses.

On this note: it’s a common mistake to think that all tapas in Granada is free. When you order a drink, it’s the custom to be given a small dish of food to go with it. This can be anything from ham, cheese or olives up to a full plate of stew, but it is (usually) quite small. As such, it’s often necessary to supplement what you’re given for free with some actual – shock horror! – paid for dishes.

4. Casa de Vinos; Calle Monjas del Carmen

Over on the other side of Plaza Nueva (tucked away into Calle Monjas del Carmen), Casa de Vinos is not exactly a tapas bar in the strictest sense of the word. It sells food – very nice food, in fact – but it is (as the name suggests) a wine bar, and the focus is firmly upon the wine. It’s also, incidentally, HostelBloggers’ favorite bar in Granada.

How to describe Casa de Vinos? A cozy, wood-paneled nook of a place; the sort of place where whole evenings can slip by without you noticing, in a haze of wine and conversation. The wines, by the way, are absolutely fantastic, and for the most part, pretty affordable.

After the calicasas in Castañeda, we were feeling a little bit too well lubricated for such an early point in the evening(!); so we sat at the back, (carefully) sipping a couple of glasses of rioja and munching some more cheese and paté.

5. Loop Bar; Calle San Matias

Having stayed a little too long at Casa de Vinos, we wound our way down to Calle San Matias. Now beginning to feel a little worse for wear (as given away by the blurry image), we bundled into a place we’d never been to before: the Loop Bar.

Totally different from the other places on the list, Loop is a seriously cool spot that doubles up as a record shop during the day. HostelBloggers gobbled down some delicious free tortilla (if memory serves…) and got stuck into a few beers.

So far, so good. The night had started in typical Granada tapas tour-style and we’d blazed a trail of eating and drinking through some great bars. But for now, it was about midnight, the music was cool, the bar was rammed and a long night lay in store… It was good to be back in Granada.

And lo and behold, the £2 pint is not just a myth – thanks to the (frankly marvelous) chain of pubs owned by the Samuel Smith’s brewery.

And they’re not just cheap and cheerful. Housed in a collection of attractive historic buildings, they offer a slice of traditional British pub life as well as bargain prices.

We started out in Holborn one fateful Friday night and staggered between the best of the Sammy Smith’s in the area. All in the name of research, of course!

1. The Cittie Of Yorke, 22 High Holborn. 5.30pm. This lovely little pub is a bit of a hotspot after work and typically crowded with lawyer types from nearby offices. The medieval wood interior is pleasantly gloomy and there’s a surprising amount of space when the large cellar is open downstairs. Intimate booths line the edge of the main bar and so many cases are discussed in there at lunchtimes that it’s rumored they’re soundproof…

2. The Princess Louise, 208 High Holborn. 6.30pm. Further along the same road lies the next on our list, the beautifully restored Princess Louise. Although relatively unremarkable from the outside, the interior is a sumptuous feast of Victorian design, with carved wood detail and smoky mirrors. The main floor is split into tiny private bars accessed by doors the approximate size of a hobbit which become something of a challenge after a couple of pints.

3. The Crown, 51 New Oxford Street. 7.45pm. Situated right in the middle of Bloomsbury, The Crown is just as traditional and attractive but has the added benefit of a large, shady outdoor seating area. It shares the lively space with neighboring cafes, creating continental-style al fresco drinking during the summer months. Well, sort of. Yes, it was raining when we were there. And yes, we still sat outside…

4. The Angel, 61 St Giles High Street. 8.30pm. By this point things had begun to get a little bit messy… But even our blurry eyes could appreciate The Angel’s simple charm with its little coal fire for the winter and an old-fashioned feel. The crowd are mostly dedicated regulars, making this the quietest pub on our list and perfect for a peaceful pint or two in this bustling part of London.

5. The John Snow, 39 Broadwick Street. 9.15pm. Progressing past a handful of sex shops and through increasingly kitsch, sleazy streets into the heart of Soho (and past a policeman or two) brought us to The John Snow. Named for the renowned Victorian doctor and public health pioneer of the same name, it stands on the site of a water pump which the good Doctor once identified as the source of a cholera outbreak in London. Nowadays, it’s rather less of a health hazard and, due to its great central location, is often packed with patrons spilling out onto the surrounding streets during the summer.

6. The Glasshouse Stores, 55 Brewer Street. 10.30pm. We made it to the final stop fairly successfully (although one of our number had to make a quick dash back to The John Snow to rescue his bag). The Glasshouse Stores is at the other end of Soho, near Piccadilly Circus. It may look tiny from the street but inside there are actually three floors and a billiards table… With buckets of ‘olde worlde’ charm and a handful of ale-drinking regulars, it’s the perfect antidote to the busy (and expensive) tourist bars that surround it.

So there you have it – a bar crawl that’ll get you quite a bit of change from a £20 note! If that sounds appealing (and really, it should!), then here’s an interactive map of the route we took.

And this is only scratching the surface, for there are actually a total of 32 Sam Smith’s pubs in central London. All of them are good old-fashioned English pubs with no unnecessary gimmicks, and, far more importantly, all of them serve cheap and tasty beer!

The night market: it’s hard to think of a more budget travel-friendly institution for the backpacker in Asia. And few are as rich in sights, sounds and smells as those you get in Beijing.

Turning to Hobotraveler.com (a glorious mess of a budget travel storehouse) to elaborate the point, we stumbled on this Beijing Night Markets post. There are some great images of what is, when you get down to it, a pretty unique sensory phenomenon.

The silkworm, the starfish, the scorpions - it brought it all back… And, just as when HostelBloggers were actually there, we tried to be interested and consider it a unique cultural experience and blah, blah, blah… we really did. After a while of gazing at these increasingly weird and wonderful foodstuffs, though, we were driven into fits of immature giggling by one thing: goat cock (see below).

But ’political correctness’ aside, when we thought about it, it struck us that perhaps the right response to anything you experience on your travels is normally always the natural response – even if it is a childish one!

After all, it’s essentially the differences between cultures that make travel so worthwhile. And if you stifle your response to something then, well, what’s the point? You can take it as a given that Chinese travelers in London have been bemused and amused in equal measure by elements of British cuisine. (Like, say, a tasteless, dry ‘traditional roast dinner’…)

Who’s to say that amusement isn’t a perfectly reasonable and healthy cultural response?

Along with some generally brilliant travel writing, HostelBloggers can testify that writer Lara is right on at least two counts in her latest Milan post: a) Navigli is very cool and b) It is the place to go for aperitivi.

The last time we were in Milan, we made a beeline for the canal district. It was a warm spring evening, and we were keen to get to the bottom of the far-fetched sounding tales of free buffets.

Sure enough, though, the tales were true. All the bars in the neighborhood (down to the southwest of the city center) allow you free (FREE!) access to aperitivi – essentially a series of delicious Italian dishes laid out in a lavish buffet - for as long as you keep getting the drinks in. On week nights, this budget travel gem of a custom runs from 18.00 to about 21.00. Over the weekend, on the other hand, it becomes more of a lunchtime thing.

Despite being a Milanese institution it seemed oddly out of sync with the rest of the city: all these super chic fashionista types elbowing their way in to get another helping of roast pepper…

That night in Navigli also introduced HostelBloggers to an exciting new drink: the Negroni.

One part campari, one part vermouth, one part gin, and a lot of parts drunkenness - suffice to say it all got pretty messy.

Over at the intoxicatingly titled sloshspot.com, this post leapt to HB’s attention: The 10 Oldest Bars in the United States.

Having said that, you’d almost be hard-pressed to find a pub in London that was built after1880 (like the White Horse Tavern in New York).

That doesn’t mean we’re trying to suggest London’s better. Just older, that’s all.

Incidentally, watch out for a similar post here on London. The pubs featured will be much better older.