So this was gonna be an exciting month because for the first time, I would be taking a trip to Europe! It’s a business trip and that’s always fun, not just because you get to meet people you have conference calls all the time, the air-ticket, hotel and most meals are paid for, but also because you get to travel to another country!

It’ll be easy to consider the trip as my Feb ONA, but then again, going on a business trip isn’t exactly something I can say Yes or No to, so that would be cheating.  Oddly, going on this trip didn’t excite me that much to scour the internet for places to go, food to eat, things to do. Maybe because I knew this was mostly gonna be serious business’and only some fun. Luckily for me, a couple of my travel mates were more savvy travellers than I am, and didn’t mind doing the ‘heavy lifting’ of checking places to go, where we would stay at, and where we could possibly be shopping.

For the most part, I enjoyed the fun part of the trip – port wine tasting, road trips, visiting palaces and gardens, soaking in of the history and culture of Lisbon, Portugal.  I’ve always thought Paris, France would be my first European city I’d visit, but I’ll remember fondly the memories of Lisbon.

The most interesting, though, has to be one of the company dinners. After a long day of presentations and discussions, the entire contingent of us were brought to a local restaurant.  I should have taken note of the restaurant name, but by the time we got there, most of us were tired and hungry.  Before food was served, there was already wine and beer to kick off the meal.  It wasn’t till at least 30mins after we sat down, that the staff brought us our starters, which I cannot recall what we ate.  But the main dish of seafood is what I sticks in my mind.  We were served a large platter of seafood – prawns, mussels, lobster, crabs.  In Asia where I come from, seafood is mostly served cooked with sauce and as a hot dish.  In Lisbon, the seafood platter was almost icy cold. Again, because most of us were hungry, we didn’t really hesitate to dig in.

And then when we got to the bottom of the platter, thats when we stopped. (see featured image) We couldn’t wrap our head around what this ‘claw like’ looking thing was.  Our first thought – Isn’t this a seafood platter? What’s claws/feet doing here?  Because of the way it looked, none of us dared to try it initially. One of my co-worker tried to ask the restaurant staff what it was, but the few he approached didn’t understand nor speak English. When we finally found someone who could translate for us, we learnt that the dish is actually Rock Barnacles:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanus

For something that looks like the paws/claws of a baby bear, it was intriguing to learn that it is actually seafood.  Most of my co-workers still refused to try it, but I decided that I should try something that the locals enjoy. They seemed so proud of their dish, I almost felt it was insulting or rude to their culture if I didn’t give it a try.  The way to it eat it, is to pull out one ‘finger’, and then suck out what little ‘meat’ there is.

For the most part, it reminded me a little of eating the claws of a crab.  Very little meat but chewy.  However, I think they way the dish was served cold and had very little seasoning except a heavy ‘sea salt’ taste, I think the experience wasn’t pleasant.  It wasn’t horrible and I might just give it a try again in future.  But for now, that one piece was enough.  And luckily, there was enough wine to wash it down with.