You know we love a good drink. Combine that with our love for travel and you’ve got a recipe for fun. Today we share our favorite travel drinks, cocktail recipes, and travel drinking stories. Slainte! Chin Chin and Salud!
Our Favorite and Most Memorable Travel Drinks
- Ryan: Sangria (Spain), recipe from America’s Test Kitchen)
- Shayne: Tinto Verano, Spanish wine, and soda water on ice
- Ryan: Americano/Aperol Spritz (Italy, my recipe)
- Shayne: Absinthe, French Quarter, Pirate’s Alley Café and other bar
- Ryan: Ireland & Whiskey (Jameson, Teeling, Whiskey Museum, Night at the Pub)
- Shayne: Queimada at Tio Claudio’s house
Question: What is the best drink you’ve had while traveling?
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Episode 147 Transcripts
Episodes are transcribed with artificial intelligence, so some highly amusing translations are likely!
Hello and welcome to All Things Travel. You know that Ryan and I love a good drink. Combine that with our love for travel and you’ve got a recipe for fun. Today we share our favorite drinks, cocktail recipes, and travel drinking stories and salute.
so Shayne, you know that we love a good travel drink. Is that true?
Affirmative. That is quite true. Yes.
So the last time we were actually together, we were in Cancun and we had a tequila tasting that was actually scheduled right after our cocktail class. We had quite a recreational.
my kind of day right there. That was, that was a lot of fun.
But you know, the, the tequila tasting was a lot of fun cuz it was, it was learn how to appreciate tequila, not just drink tequila. There was the food pairing with it. There was the mezcal. I reali, I figured out that I liked mezcal, which I didn’t know that before. So, you know, you can always learn something from the drinks that people have from around the.
Whereas our first alcohol related activity that day was completely juvenile over the top and. Hilarious. The tequila tasting was we, we learned a little bit about the culture and some history and how mezcal is made. That was a very interesting and delicious activity.
So how do you think a drink helps you understand the culture of a people? That, that’s kind of a high brow question,
is very high
but you know, I’m
is like the finer Things Club from
Yeah, I know. So, so I’m thinking of my time in like Ireland and England, and I’m gonna talk about Ireland later today on the show. But you know, Kind of the whole pub culture really took me by surprise because especially when I would travel with college students, you know, they thought they were going to bars and they thought it was gonna be loud and crazy, and some were, but most were just chill and they were quiet and they were people having conversations and having a good time.
And there was music in the corner and it was just a laid back situation. I absolutely loved it. It was in no way what I.
from one aspect. You can learn a lot about a culture’s history, how it’s developed, and things like that, because, In a lot of cultures, the drinks are a very big part of it. They kind of go hand in hand with a lot of the rituals and, and ceremonies.
And on the other hand, like what you just said, just spending time with the people. And that’s kind of the, the international bond is you have a beer or a glass of wine or a drink with someone, and when you have their native drink, Builds that bond that much more. It shows that you are interested in them.
You’re not just there to check off some boxes, and it just, it creates a relationship that probably isn’t expected. Maybe not why you’re traveling, but definitely a nice perk.
Absolutely. So today what we thought we would do is share some of our favorite travel drinks. I know I’ve got a recipe or two, I’m not sure about you, Shayne.
Twist here.
Uh, But, you know, talk about some of our favorite places that we’ve experienced different types of drinks as well.
Yeah. Yeah. This is a really fun one.
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You can reach out to me atRyan@creatingmagicvacations.com. That’s R Y A n, at creating magic vacations.com. my first one, and I know we’ve both had this experience, I always liked Sangria, but my experience of having sangria in Spain. In 2020 when I was there. What? It just took it to a whole other level.
It was not the syrup sweet, you know, drink that you get here in the United States. It was flavorful. It had almost kind of a sour, bitter taste. The fruit was fresh. It was so good. I remember having it in Madrid at the Mercado, which is one of my favorite places ever that I’ve traveled. And I also remember having it on the beach in Barcelona and let me tell.
If you’re from Indiana in January and you’re on the beach in January in Spain drinking sangria, it feels pretty darn special.
no doubt.
Is that something that you’ve experienced while you’ve been in Spain?
Yes, definitely. And we’ve also used my father-in-law’s recipe for sangria here many times, and it is more focused on the fruit. and the herbs than it is on. Sweetening it up.
Yeah. And what I found interesting, especially at the market, is you would go around to to a lot of the places and they would have kind of different levels. It was kind of like, you know, you could get like, and the quality would go up with the price, right? And it was often the, the highest caliber, the highest price one was like kind of their homemade, their homemade sangria that they, that they really took pride in.
That was really cool.
And you can get some sangrias in bottles and cans and out of taps, but anytime you can get a homemade one, that’s the one you wanna go.
So I searched when I got home from Spain. I searched for a recipe that I really liked with Saint Korea and the closest one that I could come to, and I’m gonna share this today cuz again. I like to make drinks at home, so I wanna share the a couple cocktail recipes. This is from the America’s Test Kitchen recipe book Shayne.
And this is for their sangria, and it calls for two large oranges, one orange sliced the remaining orange juice, one large lemon sliced a quarter cup of super fine. One bottle of fruity medium red wine. We try to do a DR. Wine because you’re already put putting sugar in
Yep.
a quarter cup of triple sec, a half of a lime sliced, and half of lime juice.
So basically what you do is you add the sliced orange and lemon and the lime and the sugar to a large Pitcher, and you macerate that. You mash it up to get some kind of sugary fruit sourness there, you, you mash it up with the wooden spoon. , and then you, you do that for a minute until the sugar dissolves and the fruit starts to mash up.
Then you stir in the orange juice, the wine and the triple sec, and then you let that refrigerate for at least two hours or up to eight hours, and then you have glasses with ice in it. You mix up the pitcher to distribute the pulp and everything like that, and you drink it and it’s so.
Yeah. And you kind of let everything marinate together
Oh yeah, you, you let, you let it marinate together so you’ve got the orange and the lemon and the lime and the triple sec to make it a little stronger alcohol wise and the sugar in the wine. I really like this recipe. This is, this is something that we have a lot during the summer. Now you mentioned Herb Shayne.
How, what do you do there?
Well, the, the only really, the only one I can think of is a spice, and I was gonna mention that as perhaps a hack for, for your recipe. we have a little bit different recipe that we use, but add a stick of cinnamon and let that, the cinnamon gives it that extra flavor. And according to my father-in-law, it will also increase the alcoholic effect of the sangria.
All right. Well, I’m
know if that’s true or not, but yeah. As far as herbs, I I meant spices rather than herbs and yeah, because of the cinnamon and, and maybe a sugar, something like that.
Very good. So what’s your first drink to share?
I am calling an audible here because my wife was making up one of these right as I was getting ready and it, yeah, and it, it’s very similar to a sangria. It might even be what you’d call a quick sangria, but it’s called Tinto. Verano.
Okay. What is that?
Did you have, did you have any of that while you
I don’t think so.
Okay. Very similar. Basically what you do is super simple drink. You just take red wine and usually we, when we we’re gonna make it, we’ll get a wine from the region Yep.
Spanish red wine essentially.
Yeah. And basically you just add it to ice, which I otherwise never do with red wine.
Sure. Of course.
And then mix some, sparkling water in it. And this could be sparkling water. I recently made it with Topo Chico. And it was good. in Spain when we had it a lot, we would have it with the Fanta or the Schwepps Limone,
huh
Sure.
soda. They made it with that a lot.
My brother-in-law often made it with, he would get just the cheapest boxes of wine he could. and then he would find the cheapest soda water he could find. I mean, if you didn’t drink it in 10 minutes, it’s flat. This is some cheap soda water a lot of bars. We’ll garnish it, but it’s a pretty popular drink in bars and Madrid at least. And then And we’ll make it a lot here just because it’s quick and easy, and.
Yeah. Very good. Well, my second drink is kind of like that. Well, I, I have kind of two drinks in my next, in my next category here, and this is from our trip in Italy and I’ve been to Italy twice and on our last trip. Especially in Venice. My wife fell in love with Appall spritzes. So to me that’s kind of goes along the line with what you were just talking about.
It’s got the, the appall, but it’s also got the champagne, the Prosecco, and the club soda. It’s just a nice refreshing light drink. Great to have in the summertime overlooking the canals in Venice. You feel really cool when you drink that a drink, a drink that way. I’ll, I’ll tell you that.
I bet.
and you can get it everywhere.
But the first time I was in Italy, before I went, I looked up different cocktails to get while I was there, and I landed on one that I fell in love with while I was there and I continued to drink it here at home. And it’s called the Americano. It’s not the coffee drink, Americano, it’s the. Cocktail Americano.
And this has Campari, which is a cousin of Appall. It’s kind of a bitter fruit drink or fruit liquor. So it’s got an ounce and a half of, of Campari, it has an ounce and a half of driver moth. And then it is topped off with soda water. And so it’s got kind of a bitter taste to it. It’s got a, it’s got a really nice smooth cocktail taste.
The Americano, Campari it’s got Campari. It’s got vermouth and it’s got club soda.
Hmm. Sounds refreshing.
It’s very refreshing. It’s very refreshing. How about you or.
this is more of just a drink. Drink because there’s a couple of funny stories along with it. But have you ever had Absinthe?
I have, is that what’s in like, SARE,
you know what? I don’t know. I’d have to look that up cuz I, I’m not sure what is in Azek.
I believe that I’ve had it in, in a version. I either, I had it that in a cocktail at the same time I had a Sazerac, or the Sazerac has it in that, but
You know that could happen in New Orleans
my wife and I were in New Orleans in the French Quarter and we went to this place called the Pirates Alley Cafe, and. it’s fun because the staff dresses up like pirates. Go along with the pirates theme.
and I think I’ve talked about this before, the absent fountains where you just have a picture full
that. Yeah. Yeah.
cool. There are lights set into the bar, so they will set the glasses on top of the lights, and as the green absence blows into it and the light shines up through the green absence, it’s just a really cool effect.
So this one year we went on what we thought was gonna be a vampire tour, and the tour guide ended up giving us. Kind of a full ghost Vampire voodoo tour and it was so much better than we thought. Cuz he gave us a lot of history of the voodoo culture and it was just fascinating trip. my wife wanted to get some souvenir juju beads to take back to some friends at work.
So we asked him where would be the best place to get these juju beads? And he goes, well, a lot of the, a lot of the voodoo shops there now. Kind of touristy. You’re buying pretty much souvenirs, you’re not getting anything authentic. And he says, my wife is a wicked. And, and she makes them, she can make you some if you want.
And we thought, well, that, that’d be kind of cool, you know, hang out with someone local here and, and do that. So we said, yeah, sure. Where, you know, when, when can we make this happen? And he goes, well, she’s a bartender at the Valley Cafe and she’s gonna be getting off work here in a couple hours so we can hang out a bit after the tour and then we can go meet her after.
and she can make you some of these, some of the juju beads, . So I say, hold on a second. Are you inviting my wife and I to go drink Ansinthe? With a leprechaun while his pirate witch wife makes his juju beads. Yes, the answer is yes. another time we were there, we went to another bar and we were, it was burlesque bingo night in this bar.
And
Your stories are so much better than mine.
Most of the ones I’m willing to tell. The, the buy-in for the bingo cards was a drink. Buy a drink, you get two cards. And I had this one drink and it was, based with a red absent, which I had never seen before. This place with some strawberries and other stuff in it. And it was really, , but it was really sweet.
So for the second round, I asked the bartender, cuz we just wanted to play, you know, play more bingo if she could make the same drink for me, but less of the sugar. Like anything that sugar or syrup, just leave that out. So she’s, yeah, fine, fine. She gives me this drink A little while later, she sets it on the bar and I noticed that it did look a little bit different.
So I took a drink. and she essentially gave me absent on ice. It was almost straight. And I looked at her and I went, are you trying to kill me? ? And she just smiled and winked and went on to help someone else.
Wow.
Well, hey, we’ve got some more drinks to share some more stories to share. But first Shayne, I wanna know where in the world does all things travel
We are going back down under
back down under
Sydney, new South Wales, Australia,
welcome Sydnee. We are so glad you’re here.
and I found a place called the Cruise Bar.
That sounds like us. Tell me about it.
It’s on a restaurant, it’s on a
Is on a rest. It’s at a
rest
it’s a rest home.
that does sound like us, but
The cruise bar is a rooftop bar right there on Circular Quay, circular key. We still don’t know if it’s key or
k right there on
don’t know. Amy, we, you need to come back
Yes, Amy. South Gate on Sydney Harbor and just right across the way is the Sydney Opera House. So it’s
Oh.
it looks like gorgeous views of the harbor and the opera house and cruise.
Come right by the restaurant. It looks like loads of bun.
I’m sure there’s a huge upcharge for the drinks at that place, and I’m willing to pay.
Just gonna have to, just gonna have to for
Man. Well, hey Sydnee, we are so glad that you’re listening to all Things Travel. It means so much to have listeners from all over the world. Do me a favor, reach out to me either through my email or on Facebook because I’ve got a nice little thank you gift for being featured on today’s show, and I would love to send it all the way to Australia.
And to make sure you hear where in the world is All Things Travel next week, be sure to follow the show so that you never miss any of our travel tips, travel ideas, or drink. or travel stories?
So my next one isn’t necessarily a specific drink, but it’s a type of drink. And this is really when I fell in love with whiskey. It’s when I started to go to Ireland.
I’ve been to Ireland twice and about a year before I went to Ireland I took a college class. We had two college classes that were traveling together, and the guy who created the trips who was gonna lead the trip, came to our college campus and we had a meeting with him to kind of get to know you and we were gonna talk to the students about it and everything.
And. and the other instructor and I, made a joke about well, we’ll have to, you know, we’ll have to figure out where Jameson is. and Craig, who, who led the trip kind of stopped and looked at us and he said, are, are you guys serious? And I said, and we said, yeah, we’re, we’re really interested.
He said, well, actually, the hostel that we usually stay at in Dublin shares a wall with the Jameson distill. And so we get to this place. It’s on, it’s in Smithfield, in Dublin, which is a beautiful area. And it literally shared a wall with the Jameson distillery. You walk into the hostel, and this is not like a hostel that you’re thinking of right now.
This place was immaculate, including a bar. In the lobby whose chandeliers were made with jamon bottles. It was awesome. And so over my time in Ireland, you know, obviously we went to Jamison teling is there too. We had the opportunity to go to the whiskey museum which was kind of an interactive thing where you learned about the history of whiskey and you tasted different whiskeys.
And then one night at the. I was sitting by myself at the bar and I was kind of chatting with the bartender, and I saw that he had some different whiskeys there in the back, and I said, you know what? I don’t know a lot about whiskey. How about you teach me something? Oh, Shayne,
You learned about whiskey in Dublin?
And he just, he pulled some out and he gave me some tastes and he talked about what he liked and what he didn’t like, and things that I liked.
He would pour for me and then if I didn’t like it, he’d try something else. Man. I came away with a knowledge of Irish whiskey. It was so good. Things like Bush Mills green Spot, the Irishmen, there’s some I just fell in love with, with Irish whiskey.
And that goes right along with what we talked about at the beginning. You learned a lot of history and culture there, and you made that bond with the local. Made a quick friend there. That’s, that’s a great story.
Yeah, absolutely. Alright, finish us up here. What’s your last drink to share?
Alright, this one’s kind of a two-parter because the, you need this one drink for the other one and it’s a, it’s a drink called and it’s kind of like, I think it’s kinda like Gupa if you had that in Italy.
Okay. So, so it’s like that where I guess they take what’s left. From wine, and then they distill the, those parts of the grapes and they make this
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a distilled alcohol.
And my uncle or my wife’s uncle made his own and he had a wall full of bottles of different ODU that he’s made. So that was, that’s the setup for Arujo to make this other drink, which is the topic here, which is called. which the literal translation of that is burned. So,
Burn going down or burned in the making
you’ll see it’s also called a Galatian fire drink. And kind of a mixture maybe of And then this because they’ll pour the into a cauld. and sometime I, I read when I was looking at, I was looking it up a bit today, some used to make it in a pumpkin instead of in a cauldron.
interest.
They’ll pour the into this cauldron or pot, and they’ll add, I think, some brandy to it, and they’ll add pieces of fruit and even the peels. And then at some point when they’ve got some ingredients and got stirred up, they’ll set the top of it on fire.
So I guess they’re burning. And so they have this fiery cauldron. And then when my wife’s cousin was making it, there’s this chant that they also chant that kind.
Purifies the drink and it’s supposedly wards up evil spirit. So it was pretty funny. It was, this was my, her uncle’s birthday party and at the end of the day, later on that night, we’re all out in his yard and her cousin’s out there mixing up this drink with the fiery cauldron, yelling these chants and it was just, A great time.
And the drink, the drink itself, the keana, it tasted terrible. I would not recommend it, but just the whole experience of being out there and, and this thing that, that they do in this country that’s come down from, from ages, I think it originated as a, as a Celtic ritual and a Celtic drink. It was just a lot of fun.
That’s really neat. That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, hey, as we wrap up here today, I’ve got a question for you. Where would you travel to try a local drinker? A cocktail?
I would like to go to a few distilleries in Scotland and try some Scottish whiskeys there where they’re made.
Nice. Kind
of, kind of overlooking the, the fog and the green and fresh air smell.
the greener and foggy are the better. You know, and I won’t mind if a Loch Nest monster shows up
Exactly, exactly. So I’ve got two that came to mind with me. The first is my college buddies and I are finally getting a bourbon trail trip put together. So shout out to Josh who I know listens recently. Or sorry, shout out to Josh, who I know listens regularly. Shout out to Dan who says he does, but I don’t really think he does.
to give him quizzes.
Yes. And my roommate Dustin, I don’t even think knows I do a podcast. But anyway, we’re gonna go down to Louisville. We’re gonna go to some different distilleries. We’re gonna learn about bourbon. We’re gonna drink bourbon. I’m super excited about that. But the first thing that came to mind, Shayne.
I absolutely love Belgian beers. I love the flavors, I love the varieties. And any country that specializes in beer, french fries and waffles is a place that I need to go visit. So you’re gonna find me in the abbeys with the monks that make the beer. I’m
chocolate. Don’t forget Belgian chocolate
I mean, seriously, this is, this country was made for me.
But no, seriously, I love the, I love Belgian beers triples and doubles and sours and whatnot, and so the, I, I could totally see doing a pilgrimage there to try the different beers.
Sounds like it’d be a nice part of a river cruise.
Boom.
Yeah. If I wasn’t so partial to my mics, I would drop it right now. But I don’t wanna damage it. Well, we would love to help you plan your next amazing vacation.
Reach out to me atRyan@creatingmagicvacations.com. That’s R Y A n, at creating magic vacations.com.
Most families are confused and overwhelmed when planning a vacation. We work with you to plan a trip perfect for your interests, saving you time, money, and stress.
I hope I didn’t make the recipe for fun, too subtle.
I still think we should have weekly Disney travel. Dad jokes,
Ah.
If you don’t, I will.