Rute: a Foodie’s Museum Heaven

Saturday we met Lourdes, David and Ana and went on a mini-road trip. First we went to see some really large tree called an encina. Apparently it’s the second-largest of its kind in Andalucía. I was in the car with Ana (the others were in David’s car). Lourdes was acting as the guide because she had been there before (her dad used to take his students there). The problem was that she was talking so much that she kept forgetting where we should turn. So we kept turning off the road and winding up on dirt roads where it was really difficult to turn around. We finally found the tree (it was big, but not that impressive). It was also freezing because we were up high in the hills. It had been cold and rainy in Priego, but this was much worse. We snapped a couple of pictures and then rushed back to the car.



Next stop was a candy store and museum in Rute. They had a cheesy display of plastic figures making the candy. The smiles on these figures were absolutely hilarious and cartoonish.



The back room of the shop/museum had sculptures made entirely out of sugar. They were mostly replicas of buildings from different parts of Andalucía (some of which we had seen on our previous day trips). They were really impressive to look at because of the amount of details that had gone into putting them together.

After the candy store we went to the center of Rute, which was decked out for Christmas (and filled with tour buses). We went first to a candy store and tried some sweets. Next we walked through the plaza and went to the Museo de Anís (anis is anise in English; it’s a spice kind of like licorice. The museum was all about anis alcohol. We saw really old bottles and got to try tons of different types of liquors (both alcoholic and non). Our favorite was the blackberry-flavored non-alcoholic liquor.

Next stop was the Museo/Casa de Jamón (the ham museum) where we saw different tools used in the process of slaughtering pigs and preparing ham. We tasted some kinds of chorizo (like sausage), which were pretty gross. I tried them because I try to keep an open mind about foods and I do like to try different things. However, I don’t think I could make myself like ham no matter how long I live in Spain. It’s probably more of a national food than paella, but I still think it’s disgusting.



After this, I went back to the candy/sweets store and bought some anis cookies (I needed to get the ham taste out of my mouth). Then, we drove outside the city to go for lunch at a barbeque place that was recommended by the people who work at the Casa de Jamón. Everyone else had a mixed meat parrilla (aka grilled meat…brought me right back to my days in Argentina). I had grilled calamari which was delicious.

After eating a huge lunch, we returned to Rute to see the Bélen de Chocolate, the world’s largest chocolate nativity scene. Chocolate artisans took four months and 3,000 pounds of chocolate to construct a small nativity in the middle of a large Middle Eastern market. It was almost all made of dark chocolate and smelled excellent. We also saw some life-size chocolate statues of people and we got to see into the factory.





There were tons of tourists in all of these museums: they had arrived on big tour buses from all parts of Andalucía. It’s like an equivalent of going to see the tree in Rockefeller center…