Weekend in Jerez de la Frontera - Part 3

These posts probably should have started with Part 1 - 3 instead of 3 - 1, live with it...

Sunday, sadly, time to return to Sevilla. We pack up by 11:30, leave our gear in the palace and go for tostada breakfast, still no churros but that’s okay. Sun is shining and it’s warm under the palm trees waving gently in the breeze, what could be better? 

Just lovely!

Go back to collect our gear, because cleaners are coming in for the next guests and have a drink at the first restaurant we were in on Friday, that fellow and wife are so friendly! Bruce wheels to the train station.

Such a beautiful train station! 

Bruce wheels to/from accommodations to the train stations when it is easier than finding a wheelchair equipped taxi. Freiburg, always if staying downtown with the change over, Ghent, with specific instructions from a taxi driver that took pity on us, Bruges, when he had an actual map, Jerez when the map provided didn’t work for him but his grandmother always said you have a mouth, use it, and ask, both ways he had to ask multiple times but arrived. Although I went to check for his arrival at the palace and saw him a block away and had to chase him to direct him to the right spot. Well this method is fraught with misguidance but he always seems to get there and that’s good! 

Amigos!

This is the building we were standing in front of.

Great night shot!

Train back to Sevilla an hour, under bright skies. Fields along the way are so very green right now, it’s a pretty trip. There is a taxi for wheelchairs at the train station! We grab it and we’re home in good time. 

Funny, interior of the cab is quite small and A & R had used Louis’s hard cover case as both a suitcase and his bed when in the flat. Angela carries him in a small bag, small dog, and he was wheezing in the cab. We get close to home and the cab driver can’t tell where the noise is coming from, thinking Louis is in the hard case, carefully steadying it around corners. Joke on him, we all laughed. 

Comparing Jerez to Sevilla, probably not fair, they are similar but also very different and I truly like both. Since we didn’t sample Jerez’s true specialties, as mentioned before, we may have missed out a bit but truly didn’t feel like it.

Thanks to Ryan and Angela for doing all the organization and the pictures!

All for now, Cheers Bx2 and Lexi Cat

Weekend in Jerez de la Frontera - Part 2

Very large and busy market.

Saturday morning we go out to visit a really large fresh food market. The fish hall was huge, crowded and smelly so we walked a bit through it and the rest of the market. 

I don't know what kind of fish these are but there were many.

Breakfast was going to be those churros and chocolate I mentioned in a previous post but they had run out so it was a tostada. Went on a wander through town to the Alcazar which is so very different from the one in Sevilla, (read less ornate, no visible moorish influence) we didn’t go in but walked around the square.

Alcazar Jerez

This large square had a small kid zooming around it in circles on a small motor cycle. Jerez is famous for the following: flamenco, sherry, horse shows and motor cycle racing, the kid was getting an early start on the latter for sure.

We went to a brewery making craft beer, called La Jerezana, the owner was very nice, knowledgeable and passionate about his beer of several different kinds. www.catarte.com He explained that his client base is used to drinking light beer from the large breweries here i.e Cruzcampo, because it is refreshing and can be drank in large quantities, especially in the heat, with fairly minimal effects. 

Angela is listening with interest.

Craft beer is different, more a matter of taste and higher quality, also read alcohol content, over quantity so a matter of educating his buyers, it is different with craft style beer. None of us was especially keen on the beers but admired his business sense in a relatively new market for Spain.

Example of architecture, there were quite a few rounded buildings, almost Art Deco.

Had a lunchtime tapa at a bodega that was supposed to sell beer from a brewery Ryan contacted in Sevilla but they’d run out. Here the parents sit their kids down at a table on their own, feed them and have a beer at a different table, keeping a watchful, but remote eye on the kids. Remember the “kids” table at family dinners? Mainly in our house it was a space issue but also allowed the parents to converse together with minimal interruption.

Heard singing and guitar coming out from the market and found these two.

Back to the palace and A & R do some work, we then lounge with drinks and order dinner for delivery, pizza and potatoes with cheese sauce, not as good as the other meals we'd had but hungry people will eat what’s available and we were that!

That was our full day in Jerez de la Frontera, one more post to give you more of Ryan's photos.

Cheers, Bx2 and Lexi Cat

Weekend in Jerez de la Frontera - Part 1

We went with Ryan and Angela to Jerez via train, an hour's journey or so. 

We stayed in a palace!! I am dividing this post into three parts per day that we were there because Ryan was our photographer and he has shared some wonderful pictures that won't fit on one post.

We cabbed, Bruce rolled to the accommodations, a palace! Imagine that! 

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4217631

Atrium, one of two! Other one is inside.

Crazy large in size, we get the whole bottom floor. They have a very heavy ramp to get Bruce’s chair inside over the 60 cm sill. 

Back story behind these accommodations, it has been in the family for generations. One room’s wall was part of the city’s fortress wall. The current family lives on the second floor (called first here) they rent out the main floor. It is old, ornate the bathrooms have been updated with crazy modern showers that honestly are not particularly wonderful to use. 

The antiques are mostly reproductions but have been done well. Beds are comfortable and the kitchen is a nook in a corner, very small but with fridge, probably not great to cook an entire meal at, but adequate for us and likely most of their clients. It’s walking distance to the downtown core but on a quiet street. Internet coverage is an act of exercising extreme patience, she wrote in the instructions, it is slow all through the downtown core.

Ryan and Louis

We settle our animals and go next door for a tapa or two or three for lunch at La Taberna de los 6. https://www.facebook.com/latabernadelos6/

Great homemade food and very personable fellow!

The friendly proprietor says my kitchen is open, my wife cooks all the food fresh, that sold me! It was very good food too! Especially the meat balls with cheese and a lovely tomato sauce. We all wondered how each bar survives in this plaza of four bodegas. I guess they all have their specialties and regular customers. This fellow had another bodega outside of town and his customers urged him to move into the centre, he’d only been there six months. If the food and service is anything to go by he’ll survive. 

We do a shop at a large department store for things like Coffee! and other bits. Then we move on for a pre-dinner drink because here the kitchens don’t open until 8 pm. 

We go to a modern restaurant Angela and Ryan had been to before called Albores http://www.restaurantealbores.com/  and food was good there too, just more modern and the wine was excellent.

So that was Day 1 in Jerez de la Frontera! Stay tuned for two more Parts...

Cheers, Bx2 and Lexi Cat