All Entries Tagged With: "sherry and Serrano ham"
A Pinch of Spring – Andalusia in February
If you’re too cheap to turn on the heat then at least close the door. It was chilly here this morning but people are still sitting in the sun sipping coffee and yelling for no good reason. Quickly I discover a throng of old farts here in lovely Arcos de la Frontera methodically watching (as if surprised) the perpetual arrival of another workaday bus from Jerez. They gape in apparent wonder as if the proletariat chariot was a spaceship from Mars. Staring as one as if they have never seen a bus before (12 or more go through their village daily)…Are they expecting the Second Coming?
Spain makes about as much sense as anyhere else, which is not very much.
The day warms and a blend of southern Spain and Africa lies in ambush. Eggs the size of apples, Moorish towers, tiny, winding streets, olives and cheeses, Serrano ham, exceptional breads and deserts, generous pours of brandy and haunting Flamenco. Horse racing on the beach at Sanlucar, futbal and Moroccan hashish in the air all for the price of an typical lunch in any Colorado ski town (without tip).
All is not gold
When bathing in Cordoba, Spain “very be careful” since size is everything you know. Checking in to the exceptional Mezquita Hotel in Cordoba I surveyed a rare treat – a bathtub into which I ensconced my road weary presence. Yes, it was built for an epiphany of tiny kings, not 3 wise men, reveling, knees in the air, in multiple personalities. But after a luxurious soak and a struggle, I realized I was stuck in the tub. The bottom of this once-alluring fettered cistern was also slick as the devil so as to prohibit gravitational efforts at any blueprint for escape. I could not turn in such a way as to remove myself. It was also without politically correct hand rails to leverage an exit from the water. I simply could not eject myself from this tight porcelain cask. Did I feel stupid. No, I blamed the tub. What to do now? After few minutes in the now tepid water I began to yell for help.
After some time had passed the maid knocked on the door to clean the room. I told her to please close her eyes and enter the room. She did so and then called the desk clerk, the maintenance man, an EMP with ropes, two drunks from the bar that claimed to have experience with explosives, the local fire department, a priest and the Civil Guard. When they stopped laughing I was out of the lukewarm drink, wrapped in a sumptuous towel and given a glass of wine. No pictures please.
In the future if I am fortunate enough to find horizontal bathing facilities in my domaine I will bring a measuring tape into the tub with me. But then I will be faced with un-American meters, and maybe even kilos.
Easy Feet to meters conversion
Take # of grandmothers run over in crosswalks in Cadiz, Spain times the average weight of a wharf rat on the Nina and the Pinta in 1493 divided by the years it takes to ferment one barrel of Andalusian sherry, while curing Serrano ham in the window or above the bar. Shake, never stir.
On a sad note: In the interior of this land that so resembles Colorado, many beautiful pueblo blanco communities continue to lose viable population while a whore of mindless tourism wanders the beaches of Costa del Sol, like the ghost of dead kings that were never needed in the first place.
