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! :-)