My First Experience with Civil Disobedience...Kind Of

I love Spain, I truly do, but the lack of food that I want to eat is starting to become an issue.

My boyfriend and I decided to go to lunch one day at a bar that serves a "menú del día" for 3 Euros. This means that there are 3 plates selected for you, one after another, and you eat what you get and pay 3 Euros. Each day the food that is served is different; the day we went, the first plate was salad, the second pork, and the third, pudding. I had a feeling that this lunch was not going to go as smoothly as one might hope.

You can't beat these prices with a stick

We arrive to the restaurant and I see that pork is the middle plate that is offered as part of the meal, and of course I cannot eat this, what with the whole vegetarianism thing. The salad looks edible, so I ask the bartender if I can just have the salad for half the price. Nope. I can pay the full 3 Euros for a wilted salad, so I decide it's not worth it. My boyfriend orders all 3 plates and I decide just to sit with him at the restaurant, as I'm not very hungry anyway. The bartender sends us to the back of the bar, where there are tables with just one place mat, and one chair. My boyfriend looks puzzled and pulls up a chair for me. I am mid-sit when I hear the bartender angrily state that I cannot sit down if I am not ordering anything. My boyfriend suggests that I order a drink, and the bartender replies that it will cost 3 Euros, which in Granada, is an absurd price for a glass of Coke.

We leave. Angrily. This has never happened to me before, and this is in no way representative of Spanish bars, or bars in Granada. This bar was...different. The owner of this bar wanted to make sure that every chair in his bar was filled by a person who paid 3 Euros for something, even if it isn't the 3 course meal. Many manual labor workers go to bars like that for lunch. It's a good, quick, cheap lunch break, and it fills their stomachs. Well, I'm not a bricklayer, and I don't eat like one, so I guess that it's not the best locale for me to search for nourishment.

Lesson learned! In English we have the saying, "You get what you pay for." I've now learned that this sometimes also applies to the service you receive.