Day 86, 28 September 2012, Jerez de la Frontera - What a day. Having brought winter to Spain and with rain pattering down and the air quite cold we bundled up for an adventure to the next town, Jerez (pronounced "Hea-reth"). Huge day - memory notes - imagine a gorgeous white horse pulling an antique carriage. After his dance show he gets hungry and pulls up at a tapas bar in the flamenco district. Has a few glasses of Manzanilla at a mere €1 per glass and some fritata. Horse looks at the leg of pork (including hoof) sitting on the bar and thinks "lucky I´m a horse". Horse tires of flamenco music and goes window shopping at Zara (that´s "Thara"). Nothing fits. Horse prances on via a Pharmacy that´s also a small museum and visits the Church of Santa Maria of the Asuncion and then the Cathedral of Jerez and oogles the treasure. The horse has a quick trot around the Castle/Alcazar, thankfully closed before dropping in on an old friend called Gloria who essentially lives in an antique shop. They partake together of a sherry bottled in the time of King George the 5th before the horse finally gallops back to Arcos by the light of the full moon against a magnificent sunset. Phew - lucky I got that down!
The highlight of the day as far as we knew was going to the exhibition performance at Fundación Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Ecuestre (www.realescuela.org) - How the Andalusian Horses Dance (http://www.realescuela.org/ing/exhibiciones.htm). I thoroughly demonstrated my ignorance of horses generally, as I expected more, (flying through hoops perhaps?), but it was beautiful and when we went to the Equestrian Arts Museum in the Palace building afterwards I realised how much skill and training was involved. We visited the Carriage & Harness museum and now both know far more than we ever realised there was to know about such things - highlight here of course was heading out to the stalls and having a nose scratch and a chat to the resident horses - absolutely the best of breed and as I told many of them - they should be grateful they are horses in Spain and not in Egypt - or¨"horse hell" as it should be known. Mind you, it was in Morocco that we saw hachee cheval on the menu at our local greasy spoon... that´s minced horse meat. Anyway - back to the massive day in Jerez. Now after the horse experiences it was about 2 pm and most definitely coming up to siesta time, but we hadn´t counted on our wonderful hostess Carmen who had a full day out planned for us. Next stop was the San Miguel area known for it´s flamenco bars. We found ourselves shouldered through hordes of Spanish men (at first count, including Carmen and I, only 6 women in the bar). The flamenco music quartet were getting warmed up, the noise was intense and we needed a little something to pep us up.... yee-ha! €1 Manzanilla. One of those strange wines where the first glass smells fabulous, tastes disappointing but takes the edge off all sorts of things.... they just keep tasting better! Got stuck in to some fritata (spanish or potato omelette) and some cheesy-hammy deep fried morsels. The music kept sounding better and better. Eventually it was time to move on so we headed towards the Cathedral. Via the shops. Utter luxury to look around Zara and Mango and see clothing different from what we´ve been wearing to death for months. No actual room or necessity for anything new... so kept moving. Needed to stop at a small pharmacy which actually did have a museum space and was in a building that was around when Australia wasn´t. Fascinating to look at the old pill presses and mercury thermometers with actual glass balls full of mercury ball bearings in the end! We ended up at the Cathedral - It was gorgeous and full of the sound of medieval chanting. It was built with the intention of being a Cathedral, but was knocked back a couple of times 500 and 300 years ago, finally making the grade in 1980 by order of Pope John Paul the II (pretty big man around Jerez parts). The horse (sorry, James and I) were well and truly flagging by now, it being 6 pm and "unfortunately" the Alcazar Castle had just closed, so we settled for a walk around it´s walls before dropping in on Carmen´s friend Gloria - who lives amongst amazing oil paintings on every wall, porcelein and antique furniture. She opened a special bottle of sherry that came from a maker still in business today - but the label had them down as winemakers by royal warrant to King George the 5th. Hmmm.... pretty good stuff indeed. Quite enough to see us home via a cracking pink sunset and a huge full moon. Our day trip to Jerez completed by 9 pm, it was an early night indeed for the Hardie horses.... off to Seville tomorrow!