We are
met at the bus station in Gandia, a few hours up the coast, by Estaban, a
dapper gentleman with white hair and a pipe. We have a short ride through the
city with him and his wife, Francesca. Neither speaks much English, but we
manage. It’s Francesca who is in charge of the apartment, evidenced by the
assortment of brochures and instructions waiting for us, all very organized,
and which she talks us through with enthusiastic gestures and phrases. It’s a
very nice place, a real home, much like Alicante,
with heavy furniture and full sets of china and silverware.
Gandia is
two cities. We are in the old city, the commercial center where few tourists
venture. Then, the beach city, a collection of hotels and restaurants gathered
along a spectacular sandy beach. The two are connected by a strip of roadway
with a bike path and some neighborhoods of townhouse developments. We have a
bus stop right near the apartment, so we try out the bus ride to the beach. It turns out that they are red-flagged because of the waves, and
completely empty, which seems pretty strange. We’d expect to see people out on
the beach even if there’s no swimming. But the facilities are very nice, with
lounge rentals, snack stands, beach showers and restrooms. We stroll the
promenade a ways, passing a few packs of college kids coming in for a holiday.
All the girls are hauling gigantic suitcases. They’re also all wearing
flip-flops, tiny shorts and tank tops. They must also need a few hundred
outfits on hand. Farther along, we find a massive bonfire under construction.
There’s a festival Saturday, Solstice and all, so by then it should be really,
really big. Impressive.
Our
balcony overlooks a big city park with high trees and a water garden, and…a skateboard park! We can’t see anyone, but we can hear loud
smashing and banging noises, “like a construction site, where they throw boards around,” says Bob.
We take
an afternoon to visit the Ducal
Palace of the Borgias
(Yes, THEM), the city’s main tourist site - very elegant - but we spend most of
the week here at the beach. Conditions have improved and the water is lovely.
We see lots of very large fish swimming right at our feet. Bob can’t believe no
one is surf fishing here. The beach vendors tote bags of bikinis, cover-ups and sunglasses,
leather braided wrist bracelets and weird apple-shaped cutting boards that
splay into a basket, always handy to have at the beach. One young Spanish woman
has great success with a popular item, a silky, long vest-like garment that
comes in florescent rainbow of color choices. She’s wearing one, and
demonstrates for her customers the dozens of ways it can be worn with the use
of a little belt loop. “Like this, a halter dress! Like this, a wrap dress!
Like this, bandeau style!” She moves through several more styles, flipping the
fabric around, over her head, arms in, arms out, pulling it through the belt
loop. Her customers are mesmerized, and fork over the ten Euros, to spend the
rest of the day trying to figure out exactly how she did she do that???
We are
living the condo life in Benidorm, an odd city just a couple hours north of Alicante that seems to be
completely composed of high-rise apartment buildings. Some of them are
freakishly huge, sticking out of the landscape like a monstrous saguaro forest. We look for any signs of industry or business, but beyond the touristy shops and
restaurants along the main avenues, it seems that all the people here are on holiday.
Well then, when in Rome…
The city
is all about the beaches, and a grand promenade follows the coastline from one
end of the city to the other. The colorful bands of tiles are very attractive,
but there’s no shade on the walk and the middle of the day can be brutally hot.
As the bus passes along, we notice an awful lot of burnt-red pot-bellies tottering along the walkway. In bikinis.
We have a
great little condo on the seventh floor of a development, looking out over our
pool to a tree-covered mountain, with the city beach just down the street. Benidorm
is full of British and Russian vacationers, we hardly hear any Spanish being
spoken. There’s a lamb-roasting restaurant on the corner just like the ones we
saw in Bulgaria,
a Russian mini mart, and dozens of real-estate offices with Cyrillic signage.
On
Tuesdays and Saturdays, our street is closed off for about a mile for a street
market. Rows of vendor tents on both sides of the street pop up early in the
morning, selling everything from underwear to radios, with fruits and
vegetables, baked goods, olives, cheeses and hams thrown into the mix as well.
It’s fun enough, and we buy some unbelievably good olives.
We spend most
of the week here between the pool and the beach, enjoying the views from our
terrace in the evening. There’s not much sight-seeing to be done. Our big
entertainment is watching people walk their dogs on the street below us. People
in Spain
love their little dogs. Yorkies and Chihuahuas
are very popular. We watch the daily outings of one very old black and white Akita who shuffles along,
sniffing at every tree, totally enjoying his walk, while his owner leads him
along, slowly, slowly, slowly.
One
afternoon we talk a bus to the outskirts of the city and walk up the hills to a
water-park-zoo attraction. The hill walk seems to go on forever, but we have
great views of the city and the sea as we go. The sidewalk path is landscaped
with palm trees and flowering bushes, so it’s very pretty. It is really hot,
though. When we finally get to the park, it looks closed, there’s practically
no visitors. But it is open, and so we practically have the place to ourselves.
At first, it looks really lame, just a walk through fake rocks and shrubs with
some parrots and peacocks, but through the afternoon we find more animals and
we have a pretty nice time. There is an awesome tiger habitat with a glass wall
near the tiger swimming pool. The tigers are actually swimming and playing in
the pool, and put their faces right up to the glass in front of us. In another
exhibit, we see a king cobra – enormous – and he rises up and flares his hood.
We can actually go into the habitat with the llamas, goats, and deer,
which Bob absolutely loves, being allergic to everyting in sight. There is a monkey island, where the monkeys are
active and look pretty happy.
We stop
at the show arena for a performance of “horses and falcons” according to the
posters. There are no horses, probably too hot, but we have a ponytailed guy in
quasi-medieval leather dress who releases falcons and owls and other raptors
into the stands. We go in to take a seat, next to a barn owl. The guy brings a
falcon over and puts him on my arm. Pretty exciting.
We have a
long walk home, missing a couple connections for a tram and a bus, and walking
most of the way back. At nightfall, the moon is full and red, breathtaking.
We are
very excited to be at the Mediterranean shore, at last. Our bus ride was pleasant enough, taking us through landscape that reminded us very much of Nevada with olive
orchards.
Alicante is a mid-sized city, about
300,000 in population, with an important port that, this year, is the starting
point of the great Volvo Yacht Race. There is a medieval castle on the rock hill overlooking the
city and the bay that is its signature monument. Our hosts, Jose and his wife,
both professionals here, meet us and drive us through the city streets to our
apartment, which belonged to Jose’s parents, and where he actually grew up.
They are reluctant to sell it in the current market, so their teenage son
hooked them up with web rentals so they can pay the taxes with the rental income.
We have
an entire floor of the building to ourselves. The place is sprawling, four
bedrooms, two bathrooms, three balconies. There is real furniture, a marble
coffee table, mahogany armoires, built-in bookcases with books, a working
fireplace. It’s a real Spanish home. We wander around losing each other in the
space. Fortunately, there’s a little tea trolley in the pantry that we can use
to wheel our meals from the kitchen at the one end to the balcony on the other.
It’s a long, long walk.
About
this time, Bob has developed a persistent earache. He usually treats this with
a mixture of alcohol and white vinegar, but this time he has found a remedy on
the internet. A clove of garlic in the ear will act as an antibiotic. It can be
a little harsh on the skin, so rubbing a little olive oil with it will act as a
salve. So he’s sitting at the table, smelling like a salad himself. I say, “You
have garlic in your ear!” “What?” he says. “You have garlic in your ear,” I
repeat. “I can’t hear you,” he says. “I have garlic in my ear!”
We take a
walk to the harbor, enjoying the grand promenade, a colonnade of high palm
trees over a beautiful mosaic walkway of wavy stripes in black and almond and
terracotta stones. At the harborside, along with the restaurants, casino and
replica tall ship, we find the Volvo
Ocean Race
Museum. One of the actual
racing yachts stands on its keel at the entry. The museum is free, basically a
promotion for the race, but it’s still really interesting and well organized.
There are
displays telling the history of the race and the story of some of the notable
yachts and sailors. We enjoy a large-screen video game where we can pilot our
own yachts against each other. The actual racing control room is in the museum,
NASA-worthy technical stations follow every aspect of the race. The walls are
lined with amazing photos, showing some of the beauty, danger and drama
onboard. Then, we sit mesmerized and watch a film documenting the race
activities, interviewing the sailors and telling the story of the race - nine
months on a course that circumnavigates the earth. Boy, are we pissed when a
guide comes through and tells us that it’s closing time! We could spend several
more hours here.
There’s a
small island just beyond the harbor bay that makes for a popular day trip. We
get tickets and hop on the tour boat. It’s all looking very pleasant until a
couple of busloads of teenagers board with us, probably on an end-of-school
trip. They’re all very lively, running around punching at each other, hanging
off the railings in a death-defying way you would never get away with in the U.S. When we
reach the island, we find the beach area completely full of kids, mostly about
nine to twelve, in groups with one or two teen leaders, who have found that
screaming contests are a great way to dissipate excess energy. There’s a ring
of beachfront restaurants, but nothing too tempting, especially in the heat of
the afternoon sun. We walk on to the “old town,” a more residential
neighborhood with remnants of a fort and a stone church. Here we come upon a
not-so-authentic site: a giant tent full of people wearing bright blue polo
shirts, watching a big screen covered with pie charts, with the unmistakable
blaring crescendo music that accompanies a motivational sales presentation. So
we have the great good fortune to arrive at the confluence of Every School’s
Holiday Trip and the Annual Sales Awards Weekend. The island is quite small,
but we manage to find a nature trail along the perimeter that’s very enjoyable.
There is
a beach in the city of Alicante,
always crowded of course, but Jose has recommended that we take a 20 minute
tram ride to the beaches to the north of the city, and he is right on! The
beaches here are spectacular. Wide stretches of white powder sand, bright blue
waters and mountain views in the distance. There are not many shops or
restaurants, just a few snack shacks on the beach, But we can rent our chairs
and umbrellas and buy a couple beers, so we are good to go. The water is
beautiful and clear, a little calmer than I like, but just gorgeous.
We spend
one afternoon making a long walk for the obligatory visit to the castle, which
is fun enough, great views all around, but for the next three days, we are just
happy at the beach.
Adios,
Sebastian, as we head out to the train station. We have a pleasant journey
north, away from the coast and into the mountains. Granada is a well-kept, vibrant, elegant
city. We walk along a busy main avenue to our neighborhood, where our very
enthusiastic and friendly host brings us to the apartment. It’s on the fourth
floor, very clean and modern, with white marble tiles and a purple couch. We
are well located for walking everywhere, with parklike plazas, cafes and
shops all around us.
Everyone
comes to Granada, every tourist, that is, to see
the fabled Alhambra,
the 11th century castle of the Moorish king Mohammed ben Al-Ahmar. We’ve booked tickets
ahead, and not a day too soon because the only time open was for 6:30pm Sunday,
just before we have to leave. So the highlight of the week will be our last
event, leaving us free to explore the rest of the city until then.
Granada has a mix of urban, medieval,
modern and historical. There’s a major university near the city center, a
cathedral surrounded by a lively market, a Jewish quarter from the 6th century,
and a historical district in the shadow of the Alhambra. What we didn’t expect, though, was
a colony of troglodytes, with cave homes still in use. We found this area while
walking along the small river that flows below the Alhambra, a neighborhood of old stone walls
and historically quaint boutique hotels. The streets are lined
with souvenir shops and clogged with slow-moving tourists, but it's still very
pretty. We followed the street to the hillside opposite the Alhambra
and walked to the crest of that hill to find the Cultural Museum
and Troglodyte homes. The museum is beautifully set, with a wildflower garden
path to a small arrangement of traditional cave homes showing scenes of life in
the last century, where basket-making and ironwork were common. The caves are
small, clean and appealing. The views across the gorge to the Alhambra and the plains beyond the city are
stunning.
The
Cathedral in Granada
is tucked into the city blocks, not set on a grand plaza as in most cities
we’ve visited. We find our way there by working through the shopping district
and then through the Mercado section, both full of people shopping with great
enthusiasm. The Cathedral is grand, enormous, and notable for its collection of
medieval folios, of which more than a dozen are displayed in the corridors
behind the altar. They are massive books of heavy vellum, illustrated with gold
and red ink, meticulous script and intricate drawings.
Just
outside the cathedral is a 14th century Madrassa, now part of the University of Granada. Before we enter, we stop to
listen to a street musician playing a beautiful melody on a hang, a recently invented instrument
similar to a Jamaican steel drum. The Madrassa is a small building, and a
wonderful opportunity to see the traditional Islamic plasterwork decoration
very close up, accompanied by the explanations from a university student guide.
Our entry
ticket to the madrassa includes a visit to the Rodriguez-Acosta estate, a
great, modern villa located on the hill nearby. This is an unexpected treat.
Rodriguez-Acosta was the son of a wealthy banking family who became an artist.
He built this estate for himself as a source of inspiration and as a center for
his salons, gatherings of
intellectuals and high society types. Rodriguez-Acosta drove his architects
crazy getting every detail, nuance and element just right, his own Hertz
Castle. Now it is a
cultural center, artist retreat and visitor attraction. His
studio is still there, in use by his son, not available for tourists to see.
There are tiers of formal gardens, reflecting pools, groomed hedges, and
beneath the building, a maze of ancient cave passageways, not even fully
explored to this date. There is a small museum attached, built from a donated
private collection of Greek, Roman and Medieval pieces. Interestingly, none of
Rodriguez-Acosta’s own work is exhibited here at all.
Another
site worth seeing in Granada is the Science Park. We walk to it through the campus
of the University
of Granada, parklike but
overall unremarkable. The Science
Park occupies several
blocks just on the outskirts of the city. There’s a very large atrium leading
to exhibition spaces, auditoriums and an Imax theater, and outdoor exhibit
spaces as well. We see an unusual exhibition on a Spanish puppet theater group,
with some huge puppets, puppet making and performance techniques.We walk around the grounds to see some
displays on water behavior, olive making, raptors and satellites. It’s designed
for children, but the park is still interesting for adults.
Our
long-awaited visit to the Alhambra
comes on a very rainy Sunday. We arrive at the entry, where dozens of people
are waiting in line to buy tickets, just as a great downpour begins. No one
wants to lose their place, so they huddle under little travel umbrellas and
pray for it to stop. We have tickets, so we take refuge under the canopy of the
entry. After nearly and hour in the heavy rain, it slows and then stops so that
we can move out to the beautiful gardens of the Alhambra. The tree-lined paths weave along
the hilltop, showing off gorgeous views of the valley around us, along formal
rose gardens and terraced plantings. A second downpour blows through, forcing
us to take shelter in a very non-descript rest room café building, basically a
hall with vending machines. Then, finally, the rain is done and its time for
our entry to the actual Alhambra
castle.
The
elegant rooms are just beautiful. The palace is covered with delicate
plasterwork, carvings, painted tiles, with reflecting pools and columned
courtyards. It’s worth the wait to come to see this, one of the great sites of Spain. We
wonder, though, how much of Granada the other tourists have missed, coming here
to see the highlights and then moving on to the next city.
We wanted
to come to Jerez de Frontera because it is the home to the actual Royal Spanish
Riding Academy,
the original school of the Vienna Lipizzans. It’s about a three hour bus ride
south from Seville,
into the heart of Andalucía.
We’ve
booked an apartment in a traditional Andalucían home, in a quiet neighborhood
close to the city center. The two-story, stucco home is a collection of
apartments where an extended family would typically live, around a pretty
interior courtyard. Instead of the relentless IKEA, we have a cozy décor with
Moroccan pillows, dark wood tables and heavy shutters. It looks very old world
and traditional. The listing notes “No practicing Flamenco in the apartment,”
which we thought was a joke, until we were walking through the streets and
actually heard someone practicing Flamenco in their apartment. Not something
you’d want to hear upstairs.
Our host,
Sebastian, grew up in Colorado and works
arranging vacations for a boutique travel agency, where his territory is Portugal, Spain
and Morocco.
It was fun to talk with him, and he had some wonderful suggestions for the best
experiences in Jerez.
His wife, Carmen, was shyer and quieter, while her Pomeranian, Poncho, was not.
As we
walked out through the city in the afternoon, we had our first real experience
of the dreaded Dead Zone. The city is vewy, vewy quiet. All the shops are shut
down and boarded up. Pretty much everything in the city closes down between 2pm
and 5pm, which, unfortunately, is prime time for us. We make our way around the
city, trying to get tickets for a horse show, a bodega tour, flamenco show, but
anything we try is closed. We’ll need to make some adjustments to accommodate
the local customs.
The city
is charming and attractive, full of parks and public squares and quiet
neighborhoods, with orange trees lining the streets. The orange trees tempt us
with heavy fruit hanging just out of reach. We spend a good twenty minutes
circling one tree, like feral animals on a stakeout, trying our reach on every
low branch, hopping up, shaking the limbs, poking with sticks, maddeningly
futile attempts to get ourselves an orange. We move on. They’re probably sour
anyways.
By the
second day, we’re in the groove and out early. Now the streets are humming with
life. The old Mercado is packed with shoppers, and surrounded by street-vendor
tents. All through the courtyard are tables set up to sell garlics and
caracoles, bags and bags of the little snails. Inside, the Mercado of Jerez is
famous for the fish market, and it is one of the best we’ve seen. We stand
mesmerized watching one merchant carve up huge fishes for the customers, while others
show off some flair as they fillet merluza, or hake, waving the knife with a
flourish. There are over thirty stands, selling every kind of fish and
shellfish from tiny baby eels to massive tunas.
We’re not
going to carry a bag of fish around all day, so we move on and head to the
equestrian center. When we arrive, tour buses are dropping off piles of
tourists for the noon performance. We’re planning on just getting tickets for a
training session, but as the show is about to begin, we decide to go along. We
are delighted to find that, despite the many groups attending, we have superb
seats at the center of the ring – the fifty yard line, as it were. The arena is
not as glamorous as Vienna
(what is?) but it’s a very attractive place, not too large, and all the seats
are close to the ring.
The
Andalucían horses are smaller and lighter boned than the Lipizzans, with their
Arabian heritage fully evident. The breed’s signature extravagant mane is
beautifully thick, long and wavy. Fun for the grooms, I think. The horses
execute dressage movements to music, making complicated team maneuvers. Next, a
performance of carriage teams, and finally some “airs above the ground,” always
a crowd-pleaser. The arena is located on parklike grounds, with a mansion and
small museum. There are several Przewalski's horses kept here also, a few of
the mere 1500 said to exist. They are beautiful! It’s very exciting to pet a
Przewalski’s snout.
As it
turns out, the Sandeman Sherry bodega is just next door, so after our horse
show, we take a tour. It’s terribly overpriced, we think, since most of it
consists of a mediocre video and some wall murals of peasants, vineyards and
barrels, but we enjoy seeing the rooms full of sherry barrels and learning
something about the production. We have a tasting, sharing our table with a
gruff Italian man on a business trip, and three American men on a road trip.
It’s fun to chat in English for a bit.
The city
is full of these sherry bodegas, as they are called, essentially blocks-long,
low warehouses full of barrels of aging sherry. They fill the air with a
fruity-oaky aroma. Some are only known in Spain,
others are major brands: Harvey’s
Bristol Cream, Sandeman, Tio Pepe. They don’t look like much from the street,
but once inside, there’s usually an elegant courtyard and garden.
Sebastian
has told us about a small bar that has Flamenco performances, so we hunt
through the streets to find it. When we do, it’s closed for the afternoon,
naturally. However, we hear music and singing down the alley. There’s a tiny
bar, a bodega selling sherry for a local producer, with a lively crew of
certified local barflies having a fine time. One woman calls us in,
enthusiastically giving up her barstool for me. We order the special, a half
bottle of sherry with four appetizers of Spanish prosciutto, for all of 3 Euros.
The singing and dancing erupts through the group, they all know the songs. As
we pour our glasses of sherry, a third glass slowly slides over to us, as our
neighbor begs a small taste for himself, which we happily share. We’re treated
to more impromptu performances of singing and dancing as a result. They’re all our
brothers now, chatting and laughing, not a dozen teeth among them all.
The next
day, Sebastian helps us out and makes an appointment for a tour at the Bodega
Tradicíon, a family-owned sherry company. The visit includes a bonus tour of
their private art collection, including Goya, El Greco and Picasso. We learn
more about the sherry-making process, which is essentially all about aging. The
bodegas rarely make their own wine, they purchase it from nearby wineries. It’s
blended with alcohol, brandy, and sugars, and sorted out by the sherry master
who decides which wines will become which type of sherry: fino, amontillado, cream
or Pedro Ximenes, a very sweet style sherry. The sherries are barreled for
several years. Every year, portions are drawn off the oldest barrels to bottle,
and replaced with portions from newer barrels, mixed to refill the older barrels
for a continuous blend of old and new, creating flavor consistency rather than
differences in vintage as is done with wines. At the end of our tour we enjoy a
tasting that includes some 50 year old sherry that sells for more than $300 a
bottle. We’ll not see the likes of this stuff any time soon.
Cádiz, “the
oldest continuously-inhabited city in Spain
and one of the oldest in southwestern Europe”
is a mere 40 minute train ride away, so it makes for a perfect day trip. The
city was founded by the Phoenicians, and pokes out from the Iberian Peninsula
into the Atlantic like a little thumb. The old
city itself, surprisingly, is isolated from the ocean by a great sea wall that
wraps around the city. We can walk along it, and look down over the high stone
wall to the water, but it’s impossible to get close to the water, except for at
the small public beach. We see lots of local guys fishing off the wall, using
big chucks of stale bread as bait. There are big fish in the water, although we
couldn’t tell if they were more like sea trout or like carp. Overall, though,
the city is interesting, historical and charming. There are color-coded paths
painted on the sidewalks, with informative brochures from the Tourist Office
tofollow each path, green, purple,
orange or blue. A fun idea. We walk through the Medieval district, find a
pedestrian only street full of cafes, and enjoy a lunch of fresh grilled fish,
before hopping back on our train home.
The next
day, we need to have a Flamenco experience in this Flamenco Trail city. Sebastian
has recommended a small bar, El Pasaje, for an authentic, non-touristy show. We
find the place, and are just in time for the afternoon performance. It’s a very
small joint, a standing-only rough wooden bar, barrels of sherry filling the
wall behind it, and a room big enough for three or so barrels to stand against,
and maybe five small sturdy wooden tables before a little stage platform. We
grab a table right in front of the stage, for which we pay 20 Euros, including
sherries and tapas: fine Iberian ham and Spanish cheese. As the customers start
jostling in, the bartenders pour out sherry as fast as they can into small
non-stemmed glasses, filled to the brim. The performers are a short, robustly
stout, elegant woman and her guitarist accompanist, a sensitive, angular,
stringy man. As he waits to perform, he files his long fingernails, getting
them just right for the guitar. They begin, both sitting. She performs her
songs with a loud, fierce, rough passion, songs of lost love, pain and anguish.
She sits until the last song of her set when she explodes onto her feet
stamping and waving her arms, bringing the song to a grand crescendo finale.
It’s a great show.
