Monday 11.08.2010


Hill Country

It is going to be a little cooler today with some clouds this morning. We have a string of short drives so we have no need to leave Seville before noon. Jorge, our host in Tavira, told us that we could get Alhambra tickets for our later visit to Granada from the BBVA Bank in Seville and dodge the long lines when we get there. (He’s the one who spoke five words of English.) We had seen one of those banks yesterday so we walk past the Cathedral into the heart of the city to check it out. Mary finds out that all the ticket sales take place next door at the Caixa, and when we get there we see a sign that seems to indicate that the Alhambra tickets have to be purchased online.


Nothing left for us to do at this point but find one of the other Starbucks that is calling our names. It is a little cool and breezy on the patio so we take our coffees and walk back to the hotel to use their internet connection before we leave. On the way we see a poster for a big upcoming Flamenco show and the couple featuredon the poster is the same pair we saw last night. We thought they were good. We know the website for Alhambra tickets and try multiple credit cards to purchase tickets online but all are rejected. We just used one to check out at the hotel, which means the cards are working, but the ticket sellers must restrict foreign cards.

We drag the luggage (no hugs and kisses from the hotel staff--they must be employees) a couple blocks to our parking garage since John refuses to bring the car into the evil collection of back alleys, pay our fees and hit the road. We are taken through a long series of suburbs for about the first half-hour of our trip. The European inner cities we have visited are jam-packed hubs of activity with residents living in close quarters and spending a lot of time on the streets, which makes them inherently interesting. The burbs on the other hand tend to be a boxy industrial looking sprawl without character and missing the American-style trimmed yards, gardens and dressy shopping areas. Our exposure is usually along highways so that probably influences what we see.

The countryside doesn’t improve much for the first hour of our drive. There are scruffy commercial buildings, scruffier houses and unappealing low plants and cactus spread over arid ground. Gradually the terrain changes to rolling fields that have recently been planted with something, olive orchards, vineyards and citrus groves. That in turn gives way to the Spanish Hill Country and their dramatic white towns.

These hills are either very big hills or very small mountains. We saw the same type of “sierras” crossing northern Spain earlier in our trip as well as in west-central France. The elevation according to GPS chick Monique gets up over 3000 feet and the temperature has dropped at least ten degrees with rain moving in. Of late, Monique has been a less than reliable soldier for us and once again she lets us down. There is a lot of construction coming into Ronda, our home for the next three days, and Monique has us looping in circles around the town walls. We eventually get into the middle and see a sign for our hotel and after a couple u-turns we find it. Our discounted parking is a couple blocks away which seems to work fairly easily. We chat a bit with a nice older British couple who have retired in Scotland. The fellow asks John if it is raining out and John says, “if you’re from Scotland it is only high humidity.” He coordinated work between the British electrical authority and Control Data so has been in Minneapolis many times.

The hotel itself, the San Gabriel, is an old Spanish hacienda style with tons of fancy tile, heavy woodwork, chandeliers and pictures of ancestors. The public rooms are beautiful and so is our “suite.” We have a nice sitting area with a sofa, refrigerator and TV, with the sleeping area in an elevated alcove off one end. Our three third floor windows overlook orange trees, tiled roofs, a couple churches and miles of valleys beyond. Lovely. Former guests George Hamilton IV and Isabella Rosellini have their pictures on the wall downstairs so we won’t be the first beautiful people to have stayed here.

It is almost 5:00, cold, drizzling and we haven’t had a bite to eat since a muffin with our Starbucks this morning. We walk a block towards the center of town where we run into the first open café we see, order two beers and a very late lunch. We get a plate of albondigas, pale looking meatballs in a peppery oil sauce and a cold potato salad in vinegar and oil, seasoned nicely with herbs and onions. Our humanity has been restored.

It’s umbrellas up as we walk across the “new” bridge over the gorge into the main city. More about the gorge at a later date. We find the main shopping street/pedestrian area that we walk from top to bottom. With our late lunch and the cold rain, Mary suggests that we find a grocery store for a bottle of wine and some meats and cheeses to go with our supply of crackers for dinner in our room. That’s what a nice room should be for. Mary accosts some people carrying grocery bags asking for directions to the “Mercado.” Of course we don’t understand a word but try to follow the pointing without luck. We repeat the same process with another couple with different grocery bags who point us even further afield. Eventually we retrace our steps and find a good-enough place for an in-room picnic.


The front desk person, Hilda, had helped us earlier with a broken glass that flew out of our little refrigerator when we opened it, and now has a replacement glass, extra pillows and a bowl of ice for our party. Our entertainment for the evening is BBC News, the wine is good and our picnic is fine.


Today's Picture: An evening picnic in Ronda.

Sunday 11.07.2010


Worship Services


Yet another perfect morning when we get up and out today. We are taking a new route for our morning stroll that parallels the Murilla Gardens on our right and a few fountains and major government type buildings on our left. There is a light rail system that runs from the Plaza Espana on one end of “downtown” to Plaza Nueva on the other, a distance of about ¾ mile. It is a fancy looking operation that chugs along at walking speed, and outside of the disabled or decrepit, we can’t imagine who would ride it. Yet another example of spending money for the sake of spending money.

Speaking of which, we have discovered a trio of Starbucks along Avenida de la Constitution and settle in at the first we come to. Our European coffee experience has been mostly good with great flavors involved, but as Americans we will occasionally have a need for quantity, which we find here. We pull up a sidewalk table to watch the busy people come and go and the horse drawn carriages across the street from us as they get their morning tours started.


There is a mass at the Cathedral at noon to take place on the “Altar Mejor” so we’re anxious to see the big operation. The Seville Cathedral, officially Santa Maria del la Sede, is the third largest Church in Europe (St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London are one and two) and the largest in “volume.” We are allowed past the guards as mass attendees and find a smallish area with maybe 30 pews in front of the altar and another 15 on the sides. It seems odd but the configuration of the Cathedral includes dozens of chapels and areas of worship within the whole and they can probably reconfigure if they had huge crowds.


The altar itself is wrapped in a wrought iron floor-to-ceiling grille that limits visibility a bit and is backed by a carved piece that is 65 feet tall (the largest ever made) and took over 60 years to carve. The whole thing is covered in gold leaf and dust, an unusual decorative combination. There are 20 priests and 3 deacons celebrating the mass for about 200 attendees which would seem to be a bit of overkill to the lonely priest in Pine River covering 4 parishes.

We poke around the Cathedral for a while after mass and visit the tomb of Christopher Columbus (maybe). The remains have allegedly been confirmed by DNA testing, a claim that is disputed by some other tomb tenders around the world. It was here that Queen Isabella gave him his cash for the trip to America so that’s as good a reason as any.

As we roam the back streets we come across the museum of the history of Flamenco, the place of worship to this peculiarly Spanish dance. They are having a special 7:00 PM show this evening that is only 45 minutes long that seems just right to us. We pick up tickets and are told to arrive at 6:30 for good seats.


We then work our way back to the back of the cathedral and the sidewalk restaurants along Ave. Mateos Gago where we find a seat in the shade. We share a mixed salad plate (two potato salads, tuna in hard-boiled eggs, stuffed peppers, seafood) and a couple beers, which will be just right to hold us over until dinner. After walking for another hour after lunch (4:00 PM) John is done with postcard shopping and opts for a nap. Mary plugs away for a while before making it back.


We have a cocktail on our rooftop terrace before leaving for the flamenco show. The sun sets over the Cathedral at 6:00 PM sharp which is our cue to get moving. We dilly-dally and after a couple passes of the Theater we go in at about 6:35. It is a pretty small room with a substantial stage surrounded by rows of individual chairs, about 6 deep in front and 3 deep on the sides. We are in the second row on the side, but only a couple feet from the stage. A glass of red wine sets the tone nicely for the show.


There are only four performers, a guitarist, a singer and two dancers, one male and one female. We don’t have much to go by, but we think they are fabulous. The guy on the guitar seems perfect, the singer looks like Tiny Tim but has a haunting vocal quality that fits the genre, and the dancers couldn’t be more dramatic. They do a brief encore after the 45-minute show and leave us wanting more.


We get to the restaurant, Robles, shortly after 8:00 for our 8:30 reservation, and at about 8:15 we are reluctantly led upstairs to the dining room. We are the only ones there and will be for another half hour while the staff stares at us. This is the white tablecloth place that Mary has nixed for the weekend and we have erred dramatically. We get a nice appetizer of ham croquettes, John has a leg of lamb that is so anatomically explicit that we imagine a three-legged lamb hopping around outside, and Mary suffers through one of her egg-cod dishes. Good dinner—wrong place.

We take another long walk after dinner down to and along the river, working our way back to our hotel in a big circle. It was a mostly good day in Seville that would be considered a great day at home.

Today’s Picture: The Seville Cathedral

Saturday 11.06.2010



Civil Seville

Aaahhh Se-BEE-yah. Seville has been described as the soul of Spain. It is bullfighting, flamenco, ladies with flowered hats and fancy fans, and gentlemen with sweaters draped over shoulders and the occasional fedora. It is fish and ham, cerveza and sangria, Moors and Christians and people out and about.

Another spectacular day this morning when we roll out, and Mary has taken Seville as her own. John does most of the pre-planning and so generally has an idea of what will happen in each destination, but this time Mary takes charge of the weekend.


There is a little café down the street from our hotel where we sit under orange trees with a croissant and coffee. John brought the laptop to catch up on some work and Mary wanders the neighborhood finding post cards and stamps and then flitting back to our table for a sip of coffee and then gone again. This is her element.

Next is the Rick Steves walking tour of the interesting part of the city that just happens to be our neighborhood. It is really a lily pad hop from one scenic square to the next with fountains, tile benches and a church around every corner. And orange trees. There are orange trees, loaded with fruit, along every sidewalk and shading every square and wide spot in the road. There are probably tens of thousands of them in this part of the city alone. The buildings are mostly white, trimmed in shades of mustard yellow and accessorized with jewelry of wrought iron and red flowering bougainvilleas.

The big sights along this route are the Cathedral and the Alkazar, a Moorish castle that has held various big shots since it was built more than a thousand years ago. With Mary in charge, there will be none of that. Instead we opt for a shady table in a sunny square where we spend an hour or two with a couple omelets and sharing a “jarra” of Sangria. There are tourists around, but mostly Spanish speaking, and the majority of the folks who are the subject of our people watching are locals enjoying a lovely Saturday afternoon. There are also weddings all over town so there is the occasional parade of people wearing their fancy finest moving from one event to another.


The rest of the afternoon was a lazy stroll through the busier “shopping” part of town, around the Plaza de Toros and on to the Guadalquiver River beyond. We tried to find as many different streets as we could, but we kept recognizing things we had seen before so we don’t actually have our directions down pat quite yet. We pass a recommended restaurant that Mary approves for tomorrow night (No white tablecloths or uppity waiters!) and start to squirm our way back to our hotel.


When we turn the TV on in our room we see the Pope speaking to the faithful in Santiago de Compostelo where we were ten days ago. He is standing in the facility they were hustling to complete when we were there, and the crowds are seated where we were standing. It’s fun for us to see. John has spent the last six weeks with Charles Dickens on his Kindle so he downloads the latest Lee Child novel for some entertainment.


Dinner tonight is going to be tapas and wine wherever we see fit (remember who is in charge). The process isn’t quite as easy as it was in San Sebastian, but we manage to get a variety of things to eat and some nice red wine to wash it all down at a couple places up the street from our hotel. There is still a learning curve because everyplace does things just a little differently and the language tends to get in the way of asking for detailed instructions. We have our customer words and the waiters have their waiter words, but once either of us strays too far we just get into head shaking. We’ll survive.


We stop for one last beer at the little bar right around the corner from our hotel and it is packed with 20-year-olds. There are a hundred kids inside and spilling onto the street and our presence raises the average age by at least a year. We have one beer on the outside of the open door where it is less smoky and make our escape.


Today’s Picture: Sunny Saturday with Sangria in Sevilla, Spain

Friday 11.05.2010


Espana Redux

Our weather has become a blessing rather than a curse. It is a beautiful morning with deep blue skies and temps in the mid sixties. Adriana has told us the breakfast is from 8:30 til 10:00 and we make our way past the pool, orchards, hillsides, etc. at 9:30. Insensitive slugs that we are we could have told her last night that we wouldn’t be there at 8:30 but didn’t. She had a lovely table set for us by a window overlooking the terrace with fruits, cereal, meats, cheeses, jams, yogurt and a couple pint glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice and we dig in.

After disappearing for a few minutes, Adriana comes back toting a pot of coffee and plates of eggs, bacon and a dish that a “local guy” makes of beans, sausages, onions and garlic. Unbelievable. If we thought last night’s steak was a highlight, this matched it.


Tonight we are crossing back into Spain and staying for three days in Seville, about an hour and a half away by motorway. Even if we go the slow way it won’t take much more than three, so we make the very rational decision to take our coffee to the veranda and park ourselves there until noon. We tell Adriana to forget about us and go about her business but she continues to make sure we’re happy. When we load up to leave, Jorge and Adriana both appear for the hugs and kisses all around. We agree that we could stay here for days if not weeks.

We start by driving into the town of Tavira, right on the water, and then continue to follow the coast until we reach the Spanish border. We kick onto the motorway to get across the river and then back off into some small commercial towns heading east. We lose an hour when we cross the border so after a bit of poking around we get back on the big road to carry us into Seville at a reasonable time.


Monique takes us along a couple nice city boulevards as she ticks down our time of arrival at our hotel. With about a kilometer to go we need to get off the boulevard and into a warren of back streets that is the old ancient Jewish quarter of Seville. Pretty soon she is screaming, “turn right, turn left, make a u-turn” and we think smoke is coming from the screen. She does not do well in these tight quarters, but then again neither do we.

We are now in a position where we can only go a certain way through streets that are a couple inches wider than the car and dodging cars that are somehow parked fractions of inches from stone buildings. Mary is out guiding John a few inches at a time with the side mirrors tucked in as tight as possible. Finally we reach a left turn from one alleyway to another with every corner a three story stone building. No “blanking” way. Monique tells us that we are now 200 meters from our hotel so Mary decides to abandon this sinking ship to walk ahead and get advice IF she can find the hotel.

Meanwhile John makes about six passes at the turn and every attempt ends in the car being wedged into the corner. Finally a local fellow comes out of one of the buildings shaking his head and surveying the predicament. He starts the guiding process forward a quarter inch and then back a half. Cut and turn, and now straight an inch. It takes fifteen minutes but the deed is done and John continues down the same streets with inches to spare and a new sense of confidence. Mary is walking back by this time (now that the ship is safe) with hotel and real parking info.

The hotel is actually tucked into one of these alleys so we’re back to a public ramp again tonight but less than half the price of Lisbon. We get checked in and go out in search of a beer. About a block from the hotel we start bumping into Seville’s famous sidewalk scene with cafes, bars and restaurants all spilling out into squares and streets. We pull up a chair and tell our waiter “Dos cervesas por favor. Grande!” Mary is immediately in love with the energy and spirit of the city. John is in love with his beer. We make reservations for 8:00 at Tres de Oros on one of the squares and take a break.

The restaurant has saved a table on the sidewalk and also inside so we pick outside. It is still warm from a day that reached eighty degrees. We share an Andalusian Gazpacho soup and the Paella for two. The paella is loaded with fish and shrimp and the rice is tasty, but we both think we have had better. Maybe next time.

 

After dinner we take a long walk through our neighborhood with little bars and cafes around every corner and people milling around everywhere. It’s only the crack of eleven so these Spaniards are just getting started. Off to bed for us.

Today’s Picture: That is Mary on the corner of the veranda at our great Hacienda in Tavira. This is the way to kill a morning.