There are more than 220 million olive trees in Spain, giving it the largest surface area of olive production of any country. And those olives, and the all of their byproducts, are delicious.

Nearly every great landscape view in Andelucia was filled with rolling hills of olive trees. We drove through them on our way south from Madrid to Seville, and promptly started ordering a plate of olives with every meal. We drove by olive oil factories, learned how to order just about any type of olive product in Spanish, and after a little while it felt like my blood was turning into olive oil.

The climax of the olive experience came when we reached the small town of Ubeda, in Jaen province of Andelucia. Our first evening in town I wandered past the church in the middle of town and was rewarded with the view above. We headed back in the morning to see great views of the olive covered hills rolling off into the distance where they met the mountains, like you see below.

After a solid hour enjoying the views, I knew we had to chase down a closer encounter with olives, and started asking around to see if we could find an olive oil factory, or tour of any nature. One lady seemed to have an idea – a little place called La Laguna that wasn’t on any of our maps and received no mention in Lonely Planet. It look a good leap of faith, and a bit of hunting, but we eventually found it. As you can see on google maps, it’s not more than a compound out in a in a sea of olive trees. But that compound is fantastic, including a cheap hotel, bar, restaurant, and the Museo de la Cultura del Olivo. It’s build on an old olive processing site, so has giant vats for olive oil in the basement, as well as 24 types of olive trees from all over the Mediterranean and 3 different type of historic olive presses above ground. There are some signs in broken English, but if you love olives anywhere nearly as much as I do, they will be more than enough to keep you captivated for a long while as you explore the many uses and falvours of olives.

My travelling buddies in Spain loved pastries, so much so that we were in most every pastry shop that looked half decent. You can see the in the image above scoping out the options at one shop in Sevilla. Not that I’m complaining, I love a good pastry, but there are a very large number of pastry shops in Spain as it turns out. Out of all the shops in all the towns, there is one that you have to visit: Pan y Chocolate in Granada. Try anything they have with dulce de leche, you’ll be glad you did. You can find the place here:

The first week of our trip in Spain was cold, punctuated with snow at the very end of our stay in Madrid. Our fortunes changes on arrival in Seville, a chance punctuated with orange trees. They were everywhere, lining the streets, in courtyards, and arranged in parks. Every single one was laden with fruit, making me wonder if they were secretly poisoned or just taboo to eat. We refrained from picking them, but picked up sacks of them at markets for a penance. I also took as many pictures of the tress as I could, including the one above, shot from the Seville Cathedral minaret.

As the road trip took us into Valencia province we started seeing large scale orange farming for the first time, and decided that our reluctance to take the delicious looking fruit straight from the trees was a cruel abstinence. Driving through Deltebre (don’t go, it’s a large swamp) we pulled over to the side of road and stocked up on some succulent citrus hanging over the road. I won’t hesitate in the future.

Toledo is a wonderfully old town perched on top of a hill about 45 minutes bus from Madrid. The whole of the old town is a UNISCO world heritage site, and as you walk through the twisted streets loaded with history from the Romans, through Islamic rule, a large populations of Sephardi Jews, and eventually to Catholic conquest. It feels like a truly old city, in a way that you just can’t feel in bigger cities. It almost feels like they have more old buildings than they know what to do with. For example, we stayed on the hill across from the main town (view from our hotel is above) in an old castle. Rather than being refurbished as a tourist site, it had been converted into a youth hostel.

Among the twisted cobbled streets and buildings that have been a mosques, synagogue, and church at various points in history, there are two very popular items for sale:

The first are swords. Nearly every store had a sword display, even if it was primarily a bakery. Other than one antique shop we walked into, I don’t think I saw a single unique sword in the whole lot. Ever store had the same set of swords representing a variety of famous types of swords from different cultures throughout history. Even though they were generic, they were shiny, and there was a little bit of the boy in me that wanted one and contemplated the logistics of bringing a sword home.

The second item was marzipan. Crafted into any shape or size you could imagine: marzipan cakes, fruits, logs, flowers, sushi, and animals. You name it, they made it out of marzipan (yes they had marzipan swords). Slightly less expensive and less logistically difficult than a sword, we managed to tuck into a few of these little treats as we wandered around the town.

What startled me most about the proliferation of marzipan and sword shops was how they could stay in business. From the front window of most marzipan and sword stores, you could see another store selling the exact same set of goods. They were even more prolific than rubbish bins or benches to sit on. I would wager that there are most sword stores than traffic lights in Toledo. Maybe by as many as two-to-one. It’s staggering. But, somehow they do survive and thrive, becoming a tourist sight in their own right.

I love food, so it’s often a key part of my adventures. In Spain, before I even got to the food, I encountered the ingredients. Up front in most restaurants and in every market were proud displays of what would be going into your next meal. I really enjoyed this type of display as it insured me of the quality of the ingredients, and also let my cooking mind dream just I would make with the meats and other treats on display long before even looking at the menu.