Although recent years have seen the emergence of carefully crafted designer nightspots, the district still features a number of premium locales with a magnetic pull that makes them a meeting point de rigueur by night. The fact is that Malasaña, in the very heart of the capital, has always thronged with a broad array of leisure spaces. It peaked during the golden years of La Movida, when nightspots that triggered an epoch-making eighties’ scene started springing up along the calle Manuela Malasaña.

Here is a selection of five of the best places for having a drink in the old Maravillas quarter:

Madklyn

Hard by the Plaza 2 de Mayo square we find this musical haven with an aftertaste of times gone by. The Madklyn is not a particularly large space, so at night it can fill to bursting. Prominent is its glittering, silvery ceiling, which gives a nod to the metal of Brooklyn Bridge. The decor is retro, reminiscent of the golden age of bars with pinball machines. Saturdays see a special session at aperitif time. Gee! Don’t fail to try their bean tapas, the speciality of the house. And, don’t miss out on their “blackout” sessions delivered by the resident DJ, Mighty Caesar!

Picnic Bar

Picnic bar has been a hit for some time and this means that, every time you go there, it is like having to pick your way through a mass of dense marsh foliage. This is a meeting point for Madrid actors, comedians, musicians and hipsters. The service is excellent and their cocktails are among the best in town. It is distributed on two storeys – street level and basement – both of which have warm lighting and vintage decor, with red dominant. A classic feature is their fabulous armchairs, ideal for enjoying a comfortable chat.

1862 Dry Bar

This locale has just won the FIBAR award as Best Bar of 2014, and it is certainly one of the most exquisite spaces in the district. They specialise in classic cocktails, but also strike out into more contemporary offerings. Set on two floors, the main one, at street level, has very high ceilings and a well-balanced decor with touches of Art Deco, with the emphasis on the wine rack, of course. On the lower floor they have created a cosier atmosphere, with comfortable burgundy-coloured couches and a warmer lighting. It resembles a small boîte, with its own bar counter. One striking note is the caged and highly visible wine cellar, with an air resembling that of an old sailing vessel.

Juanita Banana

At number 3 Calle Estrella lies another of the must-see places in Malasaña. This is Juanita Banana, which belongs to the same group as Fabuloso, Coconot and Exótica. In common with these, its decor harks back to the nascent days of late-fifties rock, B movies and some of the clichés from early pop culture. The nice thing about this bar is that you can order apincho while you’re sipping at a cocktail. Or, if you prefer, you can taste a shake. They are really delicious!

Costello Club

Costello Club is unquestionably one of the most emblematic saloons in Malasaña. Reliable sources claim that this is the unofficial bar and dance-hall of the music industry – if you play in a band, you have to perform here if you want to get anywhere. Its siting, right near the Gran Vía metro stop, is also very handy. The lower floor, which houses the Costello Dance Floor, usually hosts good concerts and performances. Celebrities such as Vetusta Morla, Russian Red, Last Shadow Puppets, DePedro, Tequila, Amaral, Nada Surf, Quique González and many others have graced its premises. The upper floor consists of the Costello Gold Lounge and the  private Chill Garden, where the privileged can listen to jazz, pop, bunge, downtempo and bossa nova.

Getting Your Strength Back

After many a drink, you are advised to stop off on your itinerary to replenish your energy. Here are two terrific recommendations. During the day, drop in on Naif, at number 16 Calle San Joaquín. This lively spot has an ambience that grows as the day marches on, adapting to the rhythm of the neighbourhood. Here there is no dearth of coffee, cakes and pastries for afternoon tea, and drinks and cocktails for the evening. The service is exquisite. Their salads and hamburgers are highly recommended and wonderfully priced. With the onset of spring, it is worth choosing a table outside in the Plaza de San Ildefonso. The atmosphere at weekends is spectacular and lasts practically until closing time, at 2.30 a.m. For dinner, make sure you head for Home Burger Bar, one of the city’s hamburger cathedrals. In effect, it was cited among the 50 best hamburger bars in the world in December last year.

Hurry up and discover Madrid’s vibrant scene – Check out our flights here.

Text & images by ISABELYLUIS Comunicación

Who hasn’t spent hours enjoying the adventures of Tintin and his dog Snowy (Milhou in the original French)? Do you remember the lonesome cowboy Lucky Luke astride his horse Jolly Jumper, being pursued by the dreadful Dalton brothers? What about the office boy Spirou and his inseparable pals Fantasio and the squirrel Spip? And the little blue Smurfs in their mushroom houses, fleeing from the evil Gargamel and his cat Azrael? What do they all have in common? All their authors are from Belgium, which boasts its share of the Franco-Belgian comic publishing industry, the world’s biggest after those of the United States and Japan. Visitors to Brussels are soon aware of the importance of comics, dubbed “the ninth art” (the first eight, as everyone knows but forgets, are architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music, poetry, cinema, and television), since comics are all over the place, in museums, shops, outdoor murals, and festivals.

Museums

In the heart of Brussels (rue des Sables, 20), in the sumptuous Art Nouveau building designed by Victor Horta in 1906, is the Belgian Comic Strip Centre (popularly know as the CBBD, standing for Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée), with a steadily expanding permanent collection and numerous temporary exhibitions that draw thousands of people to this popular venue.

Just down the rueis the Marc Sleen Museum, with a permanent exhibition, a reading room, and a programme of temporary shows focusing on the work of the Flemish cartoonist Marc Sleen, best known for his series “The Adventures of Nero & Co.”

Some 30 km. distant, in Louvain-la-Neuve, we find the Mecca of all Tintin fans, the Hergé Museum, in a building designed by the French architect Christian de Portzamparc. The museum displays original drawings, photographs, objects, films and other documents having to do with Tintin and his creator Hergé, whose real name was Georges Remi (1907-1983), the most celebrated Belgian cartoonist of all time.

A more relaxing spot is the Moof Museum (“Museum Of Original Figurines” spells MOOF –get it?) with three-dimensional representations of a host of comic book figures, and well as other collectors’ items, original artwork, and prints.

Comic Strip Route

Thanks to an initiative of the Belgian Comic Strip Centre in the 1990s, you can also enjoy cartoons in Brussels’ streets, where some 50 painted murals on buildings depict scenes from Lucky Luke, Tintin, the Smurfs, Nero, Asterix, and many more comic book series.

Shopping for Comics

Understandably, Brussels is a must for collectors of original comic artwork and for published comics. To start with the biggest, there is Brüsel (Boulevard de Anspach 98), three whole floors of comics, objects, silkscreen prints, and original drawings. For something a little more special try the Maison de la Bande Dessinée (Boulevard de l’Impératrice, 1), a bookstore featuring an ample selection of old comics, special editions, reprints, a Manga departments, and Dutch- and English-language sections. Tintin fans will not want to miss La Boutique de Tintin, (rue de la Colline 13) for every sort of Tintin memorabilia. Lastly, we recommend the Huberty-Breyne Gallery (rue Bodenbroeck, 8ª Place du Grand Sablon), with exhibitions of illustrations, and where original drawing are on sale.

Fairs and Festivals

Devoted comic fans should schedule a visit to the bi-annual Brussels Comic Strip Festival and the Strip Turnhout, specialising in Dutch-language comic strips. There’s also the even merrier Belgium Comics Festival, with a varied activity programme ensuring fun for all, including the Balloons’ Day Parade, a procession of giant inflated cartoon characters.

If comics are your passion, Brussels is the place to be. Check out our fares today!

Text: Isabel y Luis Comunicación

Photos:
Wallonie-Bruxelles Tourisme
Bruxelles, parcours bande dessinée (Stéphane Colman, Billy the Cat)_© CBBD - Daniel Fouss
Bruxelles, parcours bande dessinée (Jacobs, Blake et Mortimer)_© WBT - J.P. Remy
Bruxelles, parcours bande dessinée (Hergé, Quick et Flupke)_© WBT - J.P. Remy
Hergé Museum
Hergé Museum frontage - Nicolas Borel

John Waters shot to fame by directing outlandish, low-budget movies such as Pink Flamingos (1972) which glorify violence, sexual perversion and bad taste. He uses provocation as a weapon targeting the good-mannered hypocrisy, iron-fisted morals and religious values of the American way of life. However, few realise that the American dandy with a pencil moustache has also designed large-format collages and photomontages. He has chosen 40 of these pieces – including storyboards from his movies – for the exhibition, How Much Can You Take?, which runs until 1 November at the acclaimed Kunsthaus Zürich, coinciding with the murals by Joan Miró on display there until the end of January.

Paradoxically, the multifaceted filmmaker has other traits in common with Zürich, such as class, a sense of order and extreme cleanliness. Deep down, Waters also has a tenderness and fetishism that suggests he would delight in the bric-a-brac on sale in downtown Teddy’s Souvenir Shop, offering the music boxes, Swiss army knives, cowbells and cuckoo clocks so typical of Switzerland’s bucolic image. That same cliché embodied by Heidi, the children’s character created by the writer, Johanna Spyri who, like the poet, Gottfried Keller, is buried in the leafy park of Sihlfeld Cemetery, the first in Europe to incorporate a crematory. Waters would surely relish a visit there, both for his fascination for the macabre and his professed love of literature, which of late he is more engaged in than cinema. Hence, we might also recommend he visit Fluntern Cemetery, site of the beautiful tomb of James Joyce, who in Zürich gave himself over to a licentious alcoholism while writing much of Ulysses, a diatribe against Church and State. Another writer who also passed away in this city was the German author of The Magic Mountain, immortalised in the Thomas Mann Archives, a small museum housed in the ETH Zürich. This State university has also been graced by no fewer than twenty Nobel prizewinners, notably the scientist Albert Einstein, as much a rebel against conventional mores as Waters. Located in the same university is the spectacular Law Faculty Library, designed by the architect, Santiago Calatrava. However, the maker of morbid films would probably prefer to read in the old abbey housing the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, the city’s main library.

The filmmaker’s more iconoclastic side would relish the recollection that Zürich was the cradle of Dadaism, the anarchic “anti-art” so critical of middle-class society in World War I. That was when the artistic couple, Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball, founded the celebrated Cabaret Voltaire in Niederdorf’s Old Town. Together with Tristan Tzara, the locale broke with all established canons. The building gradually became derelict until it was occupied in 2001 by a group of artivists and used to stage neo-Dadaist-style performances before vast crowds of Zurichers. After their eviction, the City Council overturned its original plan to demolish the building, which was then refurbished as an alternative cultural centre. Also located in the Old Town is the unusual Musée Visionnaire, where visitors choose what they want to see – and are encouraged to critique it – from a catalogue of Art Brut, a movement also known as Outsider Art – the work of amateurs, the mentally disabled and any creator alien to institutions and the boundaries set by official culture. In short, characters who would not be out of place among the Dreamlanders, counter-culture misfits and such regular collaborators of Waters as Mink Stole or Divine.

The young Waters who was so enthralled by gruesome accidents and bloodthirsty tales would also take a fancy to the Moulangenmuseum, a museum featuring wax representations of body parts twisted by disfiguring diseases, including exhibits in the University Hospital’s medical teaching collection dating from 1917. And, lured by the repulsive, he might also look up the dark oeuvre, biomechanical aesthetic and highly charged erotic sense of another illustrious native of Zürich who designed the visual effects for the movie, Alien – the recently deceased H.R. Giger. Although fans of the illustrator and sculptor have to choose between a visit to his comprehensive museum in the walled town of Gruyères (nearly two hours south of Zürich), and the stunning Giger Bar in his native Chur (about an hour’s drive from Zürich), situated, strangely enough, in the same land that inspired the pastoral Heidi.

To wind up this walk on the dark side, nothing better than supper at Blindekuh Zurich, the world’s first restaurant where diners eat in the pitch black. Fortunately, Waters is not the chef, so you needn’t worry about being served what Divine ate in Pink Flamingos. I assume you get my drift but, just to make sure, before you take the plunge you should go to a quality chocolaterie like Sprüngli.

In any event, remember that the Waters exhibition only lasts for a few more weeks, so get your tickets here!

Text by Carlos G. Vela para ISABELYLUIS Comunicación

Images by David Shankbone, Roland zh, Juerg Peter Hug, Absinthe, Edsel Little

Two clichés about Santander. One is 100% true. The other is gradually becoming less so. The first (true) one – you simply have to visit Santander, as it is one of the most beautiful cities in Spain. The second (dispensable) one – you have to eatrabas(deep-fried squid rings). Well, no, you don’t need to because the Cantabrian capital’s culinary offerings have grown in quality and diversity, something we went to try out on our palate.

Umma

Modern, informal cuisine tends to be a ploy. On the pretext of being modern and informal – wham! – they pull a fast one on you. This is not so with Umma. On the contrary. The dishes are recognisable, the produce good and, above all, the sense of taste is above average. Well above average. Miguel Ángel Rodríguez has turned an erstwhile family restaurant into one of the must-visit eateries of Santander. His flair for toying with new ingredients in the same dish, balancing them and bringing out the best in each recipe is prodigious. He takes it in his stride, and it stands to reason, as he has done it all at Noma (Copenhagen), Mugaritz (Rentería) and Cenador de Amós (Villaverde de Pontones, Cantabria), all distinguished by the Michelin Guide and the magazine, Restaurant.

Star dishes; each better, tastier and more dazzling than the next, refining and updating the flavours of Cantabria. Starting with the scrumptious croquettes – round, crisp on the outside, and creamy, almost liquid, on the inside. Then the Santoña anchovy pizza, pork jowl, Gomber cheese, black olives, rocket and dried tomatoes, and ending with two symphonic dishes – beef tongue, mushroom and hazelnut carpaccio and organic eggs with jerky and mushrooms. Take note of the home-brewed beer and the wines, far removed from the wine-cellar establishment. Noteworthy, too, are the exhibits gracing the walls, and the jazz and soul concerts held on Thursday nights.

Umma is what the Japanese exclaim when they like something a lot, and umma is what you’ll say on leaving the establishment after lunching or dining there.

Average price: €35-40 (lunch menu, €18; fast-good menu from Tuesday to Friday, €14, and tasting menu, €39).

Mexsia

When you enter Mexsia and catch sight of the glasses placed any old how, teetering on the edge of the table, you think, “This must be a special place”. Well, yes, because, as you came in, you noticed the background music and the lighting that made you think you were in a pub, rather than a restaurant. Maybe, no… well, yes – this is a gastropub. It is the brainchild of Óscar Calleja, holder of a Michelin star at Annua (in San Vicente de la Barquera). Mixture, fusion, delight. Mexico and Asia – “Mexsia”. Pungent, spicy sauce, like serrano-chile green gazpacho and charcoaled scallop, shrimpaguachile with Chamoy sauce – a fine dish with citrus accompanying excellent produce; exciting like fried maki in tempura with spider crab, masera and avocado pear, or like singed salmon nigiri with crisp nori algae. Sharp, like the homemade nachos served with three, likewise homemade sauces…

Average price: €25-30 (fast-good lunch menu from Tuesday to Friday, €15, and tasting menus for €25 and €30).

El Remedio

They might as well have called it El Paraíso, because the spot where the restaurant is located is paradisiacal, dream-like, marvellous, beautiful… A 19th-century hermitage, a deep green meadow, a cliff, with the sea in the background – unsurpassable! Here, you can live out the Stendhal syndrome for yourself. But, El Remedio is also a good name because, while you are there, you forget about all your concerns; so, it is a remedy for all ailments, albeit a temporary one.

While splendid when the sun shines, in a storm it must be spectacular. A gift on the eyes and the soul, bolstered by the cuisine of Samuel Fernández, attached to the land and sea seen from his restaurant. You must order the megano (a tiny squid done on the griddle) with potato in squid ink, scallop with boletus sauce and cured bellota ham (with a long, intense flavour), dried beans with field mushrooms, a finger-licking, long-simmered stew, fried bull’s tail with beetroot mustard and barbecue sauce. And, all this eaten while gazing out over the horizon. And dreaming away…

Average price: €40.

Goodness me – what gastronomic diversity! Why wait to relish it all? Check out our flights here.

Text and photos: Ferran Imedio (Gastronomistas.com)