Hasta la Vista Espana!

​Norma and I are now sitting in the Malaga airport, as we sadly close our current chapter in Spain… It has been a great trip, with recent travels to Jerez de la Frontera and Arcos de la Frontera this last week, so before we close up, I’ll share the highlights of our wandering;-)

Our “main” reason for visiting Jerez was to try some Spanish Sherry, the industry for which has been centered in and around Jerez for at least the last 400 years. Like Port fromPorto in Portugal, Sherry is a “fortified” wine with about 18-20% alcohol, and it is aged in oak barrels for at least 3 years, and in the better versions, up to 20 years and more! …and as we learned on Portugal several years ago, aging of sherry makes a HUGE difference! 

We also can to see the Andalusian “dancing horses” at the Royal School of Equestrian Arts.  Horses and horsemanship are a very big deal in Spain, and Jerez is the center of it all. So… we found a hotel that was next door to the Equestrian Center, and next door to that was the Sandeman Sherry complex :-)

After arriving in Jerez in the late afternoon, we walked all over the city in the rain taking in the usual sites, including the Alcazar (Morrish palace and citadel) and cathedral, and then finding a tapas place for dinner to do some Sherry “reconnaissance” before visiting the winery.

 The weather was atrocious, but the city was still a really interesting place architecturally, so searching for a restaurant was still lots of fun.   The place we found had tapas that was great, but the “off-the-shelf” Sherry was not really to either of our taste!  

The following day we started out with a visit to the Equestrian School. We got there plenty early to wander around the extensive grounds and got to see some of the warm ups for an ongoing dressage competition. The we really enjoyed the main event, the exhibition of “dancing Andalusian horses!”  It’s pretty amazing the things that they have taught the horses to do:-)

After the horses, we headed down the block to our tasting at the Sandeman winery. We booked a tasting with a group of about a dozen English speakers (almost all from the UK), and after a really interesting tour of the 200 year old facilities for pressing, fermenting and aging Sherry, we settled in to try a half dozen well aged Sherry’s.

 …and what a difference a little aging makes!  We also discovered that unlike regular red or white wines, dry Sherry (fino) is not really our favorite-  the darker, slightly sweeter “olorosos” were much more interesting, and also went really well with the Serrano Jamon tapas that we got with the tasting— yum!

So… after leaving the Sandeman compound, we wandered around the city again until finding a great place for “take-out” Serrano Jamon, sheep & goat cheese, and baguettes for dinner back at our hotel where we collapsed after a day we’ll spent indulging!

The following day, we headed back toward Estepona by way of a quick stop at the beach in nearby San Lucar de Barremeda, and then lunch in Arcos de la Frontera. San Lucar is located on the Atlantic “Costa de Luz” with a long sandy beach at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River.

With the weather expected to deteriorate in the afternoon, we got a nice walk in along the beac with hopes of getting to Arcos before things got too wet! Fortunately, the sun persisted through a nice walk into the center of Arcos and one of the nicest meals we had in our whole visit! We’ve been briefly to Arcos before in 1999, and we’re happy to return to see this quintessential Pueblo Blanco in more detail.

Finally, we headed home to Estepona through the mountains of the Parque natural de Alcornocales. This proved to be one of the most beautiful mountain roads we’ve driven in all our time in Spain.  

Unfortunately, about 2/3 of the way through the parque, the sky’s opened up and it poured the rest of the way back. Our last month in Spain has been among the wettest months of March on record here, so it’s been a challenge to enjoy our last month as much as we might have hoped… still, it was 20F yesterday in Cazenovia, so we’re not complaining!

Alas, that about wraps everything up for our Spanish travels. Hopefully we’ll return in the not too distant future, and perhaps try out a different part of Spain to base ourselves in ;-)

For now though, we are sitting on the tarmac waiting to leave the gate to fly to London and 6 weeks of touring parks and gardens all across the sounds of England… tally ho! :-)

 

Cordoba and more…

 With our guests on their way back to the US, and spring breaking out here in southern Spain, our time here is dwindling, so Norma and I have been trying to check a few last boxes here along the Costa del Sol & Andalusia. Last weekend we drove down the coast to Mijas, which we’ve been meaning to visit for some time, but had never gotten it onto our schedule… Mijas is a small "Pueblo Blanco" (white town) directly Up into the mountains above Fuengirola, not too far from Malaga.  It’s best known for its narrow streets that are still served by burros carrying all manner of loads from luggage to acting as “burro taxis.” So, with Norma’s donkey connection, we had to visit!  

While a bit on the cute “touristy” side, Mijas proved to be remarkably nice, with both great walking and lots of interesting things to see and visit, including a great local museum (that cost a whole euro to enter!).  We had a great meal here too, and found that Spain's always reasonable prices were true even at a nice restaurant with spectacular views!

On the down side here, the weather has been quite cool and wet this month, and while the region is in drought and really needs to get the rain, it has proven to be a bit of a pain for us to plan our outings or even get some exercise.  Early this week week we got almost 2” of rain in just a couple of hours, and parts of the south coast of Spain got sand storms as well, as sand and dust from the Sahara were swept up and carried over the Mediterranean and dropped here! Some places reported that the rain appeared almost as “falling mud!” Fortunately, here in Estepona, it was pretty much just water ;-)

Most recently, we’ve just returned from two days in Cordoba, where we had a fantastic visit.  We made a very brief day trip here in 1999 with Niall as a toddler in his stroller, so this time we really got some additional time to poke around the old city and the fabulous Mezquita - Catedral de Cordoba. Cordoba was home to the early Arabic rulers of Spain from roughly 750AD to the middle of the 12th century, when  the Moors retreated to Granada in the last years before the Catholic reconquista in 1492. The former grand mosque in Cordoba was then converted into a Catholic cathedral during 16th century in one of the most unique and wonderfully creative architectural adaptations and stylistic juxtapositions I’ve ever visited— it’s simply extraordinary.  In all of the various cathedrals Norma and I have visited over the past 30 odd years (probably approaching 100), Cordoba’s is probably my favorite!  There will definitely be a sketch or two that gets generated from all the photos that I took during this visit :-)

On the way back to Estepona from Cordoba, we managed to take a bit of a “long cut” through the mountains to visit another spot that has been on my list of Pueblos Blancos for settings and just to see and wander around - Sentenil de las Bodegas.  Unlike most of the Pueblos Blancos, (which are almost universally located up on the sides or tops of steep hills or mountainous plateaus for defensive purposes during the Middle Ages and the wars along the “frontier” between Moorish and Catholic kingdoms of southern Spain during the  reconquista period), Sentenil is tucked deep into a gorge, with many of the homes extending into caves in the walls of the gorge.  Many of the dwellings have been inhabited in one form or another for thousands of years! Absolutely well worth the visit :-)

Next week we are planning one last outing to Jerez de la Frontera for several days to take in some wine tasting and see yet another place that has been “on our list,” but never really had the opportunity to get there yet. So, until then, that’s all from here until next weekend or so when we will be getting ready to head onward to the UK and I’ll be wrapping up the Spain portion of this blog…

Cheers!

Visitors... :-)

 So... it's been a while since my last post, so time to bring everyone up to date!  The last week+ has been really busy as we've first gotten ready for, and then bagan recieving visitors!  First, our friends Julie & Darell from California arrived last week.  We did the typical local walks around Estepona, visited the orchid garden, etc, and then drove over hill & dale into the mountains to Ronda.

When we got to Ronda, we realised there was some kind of holiday going on (it was "Andalucia Day," celebrating the formation of the semi-autonomous state in 1980--- who knew??!), so everything was much busier than we've ever seen it before... but we still found a cute little cafe for coffee & pastries a bit off the beaten track.  We then headed out into the countryside to a spot that I've ridden my bike by several times, but never gotten the chance to stop for a hike at-- a deep gorge near Montejaque out to an early 20th century flood-control dam and the Cueva Hundidero, an impressive cave that drains the valley and the river passes under a mountain to re-emerge about 2 miles away to the south.  The river was dry while we were there, but it's pretty impressive even when dry!

We didn't actually go into the cave very far (that required permission from the local parks department, plus proper spelunking gear ;-), but it was still impressive!!

After Darrell & Julie headed off to Granada, our friends Tosca and Jim from Cazenovia arrived the next day :-)  They are here now, enjoying some nice weather after leaving central New York with about a foot of snow on the ground.  We went out for tapas downtown last night, and are looking forward to making some local fish for dinner tonight!

Finally, I'm making good progress with my sketching as Norma continues to work 20 hours+ per week making phone calls etc. for her ongoing development work for SU.  Here's another example of my latest work with digital sketching using "Sketchable" on my SurfacePro...

That's all for now...

Salud! :-)