Each month, we bring you recommendations, odd notes, and useful tools to help you better navigate an interesting world.

EAT, DRINK, STAY

Ireland’s Unlikely Tapas Treasure

a taste of spain
A taste of Spain by way of Guatemala… located in the Irish city of Galway.
©SANGRIA TAPAS

Iregret to inform you that Irish cuisine lives up to its painful stereotypes…

We natives subsist on hearty stews, rakes of roast potatoes, and of course, glistening pints of dark, brooding Guinness.

So, when my girlfriend and I stumbled across a tapas bar nestled in the heart of Galway on Ireland’s west coast, my anticipation was soured by a twinge of cynicism. With a menu boasting an ambitious blend of the Spanish classics made with local Irish ingredients, I had my doubts. But Sangria Tapas was a very pleasant surprise.

The cozy, low-lit interior with tables packed tightly together created an intimate atmosphere without feeling claustrophobic. The waitstaff flitted through the narrow walkways between tables, offering recommendations to patrons, explaining menu items, and chatting amongst themselves— mostly in rapid-fire Spanish.

A smorgasbord of delectable tapas was quickly deposited on our table—fried ravioli packed with salted seaweed and a creamy goat cheese, tender duck and vegetable chipotle skewers, a zesty Peruvian ceviche with sweetcorn and tostones (fried plantains). My favorite dish was easily the tempura tacos—a delicate white fish battered in lager and rice flour, served with pico de gallo, pickled cabbage, and a cilantro yogurt sauce on a homemade, soft-shell corn tortilla.

And of course, we couldn’t resist ordering an enormous 50 oz. bottle of house sangria. Its vibrant citrus fruits blended perfectly with the red wine, creating a light, refreshing, yet deeply flavorful sangria that was sweet and spicy at the same time.

The tapas range from $6 to $16, and around six tapas would provide a full meal for a couple. The sangria will blow up your bill ($40 for 50 oz.), but it’s well worth it.

Head chef Byron Flores arrived in Ireland from his native Guatemala in 2014 and he’s combined his passion for Guatemalan delicacies with delicious local ingredients. The mussels and white fish are sourced directly from the ruggedly beautiful Connemara region on the Irish Atlantic coast, and the goat cheese in the stuffed ravioli hails from the Aran Islands.

Sangria Tapas is tucked away on Middle Street, off Shop Street, one of Galway’s largest tourist areas. It’s a great way to break from the tourist traps on the main drag, and taste the best tapas outside of Spain. —John Wallace

TRAVEL HACKS

Don’t Rent a Car in France—Do This

pick up car whenever
Pick up a car whenever you need it with the Citiz car-sharing app.
© MARIOGUTI/iSTOCK

Most French cities have excellent public transport and tend to be more walkable than the U.S. But what do you do on the odd occasion that you need a vehicle of your own? Maybe you need a van to move, or want to take an impromptu trip to a quirky food festival in another town.

Car-sharing network Citiz is a great option for longer-term visitors in France who don’t want the expense of owning a car, but do want the convenience of one from time to time.

The service allows users to access a wide range of cars—from compact sports coups to large vans—on a monthly membership program based on the type of vehicle and the number of hours you’ll need it.

Citiz is available 24/7. Call or book via the app/online, go to your local Citiz lot, and use your smartphone or membership card to unlock it. Drop it off (at the same place) when you’re done.

Fees depend on the region. Where I live in Provence, the monthly fee is €8 ($8.70) if you need a car for between five to 10 hours a month and €16 ($17.45) for more than 10 hours a month. On the €8 plan, a compact car will cost you €3.50 ($3.80) an hour, or €33 ($36) for a full day. Bigger cars cost a bit more, with the top fee at €5.50 ($6) per hour for an extra-large van. Standard car insurance is included in the fee.

The Citiz network is available in 190 cities in France. The full list of cities is available on its website. —Tuula Rampont

OPPORTUNITIES

Kickstart an International Career in the U.K.

Good news for Anglophiles…

The United Kingdom is offering “High Potential Individual” (HPI) visas to college graduates of countries including the U.S., Canada, and China within the last five years. The HPI is designed to bolster the British labor market by attracting the best and brightest international students. It allows them to stay in the U.K for two years, or three if they’ve obtained a doctorate.

A number of U.S. universities, like Yale, Stanford, and MIT are currently eligible. You can view the full list here. Note that university eligibility changes on an annual basis, so if your alma mater isn’t on the list now, check back after October 31, 2023 to see the new additions.

To apply, you’ll need to verify your qualification through Ecctis, submit a copy of a valid passport, and prove you’ve got a good grasp of the English language.

Here are some other criteria to be aware of before applying:

• Your qualification must be equivalent to a U.K. bachelor’s degree or above. (You can check equivalencies here.)

• You’ll have to pay both the application fee of £925 ($1,170) and the healthcare surcharge of £624 ($790) for each year you’re planning to spend there.

While you don’t need a job to apply, you’ll need to prove you have enough savings to support yourself for the first month while finding a job. This means having £1270 ($1,600) in your bank account to cover a month of food and rent.

You can begin your application here. Once you’ve submitted all the necessary documentation, it will take approximately three weeks to hear whether you’ve been accepted.

While the HPI can’t be extended, you can apply for the Skilled Worker visa to continue to live and work in the U.K. —John Wallace

CURIOSITIES

Dating apps are all the rage these days—Tinder, Bumble, Hinge. But I’m willing to bet you’ve never heard of one called ÍslendingaAPP.

But ÍslendingaAPP wasn’t designed as a dating app per se.

It all started in 2003 with the creation of the genealogy website Íslendingabók (the Book of the Icelanders) that allows Icelanders to trace family connections.

So how does that apply to the modern dating world?

Iceland’s population has historically been low. The latest census reported a population of 388,000. Roughly twothirds live in and around the capital, Reykjavík. With the bulk of Iceland’s citizens living within a relatively small area and drawing from a small gene pool, the chances of intermingling with a distant (or not-so-distant) cousin is precariously high.

The Icelandic practice of naming your children doesn’t help, either. Icelanders generally don’t do surnames. Instead, the mother or father’s first name, along with an attached suffix—either “son” or “dottir”—make up the child’s second name.

For example, if Magnus Gunnarson had two children, Jon and Helga, they’d be named Jon Magnusson and Helga Magnusdottir. You could theoretically have a four-person family with different “surnames”, causing massive confusion in the dating pool.

In 2013 the creators of Íslendingabók held an app-creation competition and the winning app gained international attention for an ingenious addition— the “Incest Spoiler.”

If two users bumped their phones together, a discreet alarm would sound to warn them if they were related. Young people started to use the app as a way to make sure it was safe to pursue a relationship. —John Wallace

CAN’T GET A TAXI? “MOOVIT” INSTEAD

figuring out the transport
Figuring out the transport system in cities like Tel Aviv is easy with the Moovit app.
©RUDYBALASKO/iSTOCK

If there’s a worse place in the world for taxi service than Tel Aviv, Israel, I’ve yet to find it across the 77 countries I’ve visited.

I recently spent a week in the Israeli city and I struggled daily with the local Gett taxi app. Traffic in Tel Aviv is hideous, streets are narrow, and taxi drivers want nothing to do with fares that require driving more than about two miles. On multiple occasions, I waited 50 minutes to see if a driver would respond to my request on the app (none did). And on three occasions drivers agreed, but then canceled the request moments later.

Eventually, a hotel receptionist told me: “Good luck—taxis here are terrible. Better to use Moovit.”

Moovit is a smartphone app that connects you to local mass-transit options. Enter your destination and Moovit finds the best buses, trams, or subways—in real time—to get you there from wherever you happen to be standing at that moment.

It provides walking directions to the nearest stop, tells you when the next bus/tram/subway will arrive, and gives you an arrival time at your destination. And the app works in cities across more than 100 countries, including Mexico, Panama, France, Vietnam, and Portugal.

Be warned, you’ll see annoying ads pop up. But the cost savings of mass transit versus a taxi (if you can get one to respond) more than makes up for the annoyance. —Jeff D. Opdyke

TRAVEL HACKS

Freeze the Price of That Budget Flight

Hopper is a free travel agency app that allows you to find and book flights, hotels, and vehicle rentals around the globe.

There are an abundance of travel apps these days, but only Hopper has a “price freeze” option. It allows you to pay a holding fee on a per-night basis, which locks in the original price of the flight for up to seven days. Should the price rise while you’re deliberating, Hopper will cover up to $300 in increased fees.

The fee to hold the price can vary, from just $1 to about $40, depending on the initial cost of the flight and the distance to be traveled.

Hopper constantly has cheap flights for sale, so if you find a bargain you’d love to take advantage of, but need time to figure out your plans, it’s well worth a couple of dollars to lock that price down. And if the price drops—you pay the lower rate.

If you prefer to book with the airline directly, you can still use Hopper to find flights—and even predict if prices will rise or fall in the future. —John Wallace

EXPERIENCES

Green Cider in Green Spain—A Local Tipple in Europe’s Undiscovered Eden

asturians take their cider
Asturians take their cider drinking very seriously… even the pour (seen here) is an art form.
©GUSS95/iSTOCK

Apple cider is the undisputed expression of Green Spain’s rugged otherness. Spaniards have been producing sun-drenched red wines since the Phoenicians settled there in 1100 B.C. Not in Green Spain, though. Here, locals proudly explain that their climate is better suited to the humble apple than to the “highfalutin” prissiness of the grape.

Green Spain encompasses much of northern Spain, particularly the stretch of coast between the Basque city of Bilbao in the east and the Belle Epoque resort of Ribadesella in the west—a breathtaking vista of lush woodland, high mountain peaks, genteel fishing villages, hidden sea coves, and sophisticated international cities.

Naturally, there are rivalries even among the regional cider drinkers of Green Spain. Most notably, between Asturias and Cantabria, two neighboring provinces in central Green Spain. Asturians consider the cider of neighboring Cantabria to be too sweet (and evidence, surely, of innate moral weakness). Cantabrians look upon the sharper Asturian brew as the primitive barnyard hooch of yokels.

Wherever you choose to indulge, Spanish cider is a semi-sparkling brew, fermented until it’s bone dry. (Even the Cantabrian version is puckery-sharp.) To serve, a 24-ounce bottle is held overhead, then directed at a tumbler at hip level. The flamboyant pour agitates the liquid and froths it up, but only for a little while. That’s why your cider waiter will fill the glass only an inch deep.

Sidrerías are a specialist sort of bar devoted to the ritual, with a food selection to accompany. They range from spit n’ sawdust dives to high-end emporia with 12-course tasting menus. You’ll find them in any sizable settlement in the region between the port city of Santander and Ribadesella.

For my money, though, the nicest spot is Llanes, a stately harbor town in the lush farming province of Asturias. Its walled medieval center opens onto one of the town’s five ocean-carved coves, the harborside walkway is overhung with 19th century wood-framed loggias, and a Victorian-era lighthouse stands guard between the sea cliffs and the crenelated skyline of the Picos de Europa range 12 miles inland.

Of all the sidrerías in Llanes, and there are many, I was seduced by El Antoju. It’s a simple place on the main walking street above the harbor, with wooden benches and just a few plank tables, but it has a lengthy board of food options to go with your bottle of hand-poured cider. House cider goes for $4 a bottle, and the Santoña anchovy filets on Cabrales cheese with grilled red pepper complements the brew per-fectly. —Seán Keenan

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