May 5, 2010
May Day came and went, as did most of our trip, and I’m having a difficult time focusing on the things I’m seeing and experiencing. As we approach our return home, my thoughts roam to family and friends whom we will be seeing soon. I wonder how the kittens are. They haven’t been left for five weeks before. They literally live on Carol’s lap and without her there as they have had their whole lives, I wonder how they handled the whole thing. Bella, our 140 pound monster dog will just sigh and say: “Oh, you’re back.” She’s been through this so many times. The same thing happened last year at the end of our Scandinavian trip and I never wrote the finishing letter. I now have nothing to go back to and rekindle memories and thoughts which have retreated to the recesses of my strange mind. I thought I’d finish it when I got home, but……………
So let me try to concentrate before the end of this trip. May Day was really very interesting. We were in Tangier, basically putzing around waiting for our 4 p.m. ferry. It was a holiday and the streets were unusually quiet. Shops were closed as was the Delacroix Museum which I wanted to see. We wandered around the streets just soaking up some last minute visuals when the auditory kicked in. First it was the taxi drivers. Hundreds of them formed a blockade of a certain street and honked their horns incessantly. Then came the pedestrian street demonstrations. We don’t “Celebrate” May Day as does much of the rest of the world. But it is considered the ‘Day of the workers,” and dozens of different groups representing who knows what, carried banners written in Arabic, of course, and chanted and shouted their way down one of the main streets of the city. It was an opportunity to openly film dozens of women in their jellabas, whereas I’d spent the last week trying not to seem: “Gee, you look really different. Can I take your picture so that I can show folks back home how different you look.”
We spent the night back in Algeciras as I mentioned in the last letter and got up early to head for Jerez de la Frontera, the sherry country. Clio was happy to be released from her week long stint in the dungeon beneath the hotel and she puttered her way up and through the hills taking on the head winds and seemed to have more vitality than I remembered. I told her I was sorry I had referred to her as a gutless wonder. Naturally we took the back roads and reacquainted ourselves with why we enjoy the Spanish country in general, and Andalucia in particular. Open fields gave us a broad vista. Agriculture hummed with machinery and mechanization, unlike what we had experienced in Morocco. A delightful town Vejer de la Frontera popped into view and we made a side trip for some fresh orange juice and a café con leche.
Upon our arrival in Jerez we found there was a week long celebration, the Feria del Caballo(horse festival), starting and wandered up to the carnival that evening. It was like several state fairs put together with some dizzying rides which I don’t think even I would have tried in my salad days. The best part of it was the little girls. Some still toddlers in strollers and others up to the age of 10-11 were all dressed up in flamenco dresses and looked sooooooooooooo precious. The pre-teens and teenagers seemed too cool to do this, but the little ones were in seventh heaven. The next day we went back to the main part of the festival which is a horse and buggy show. Dozens of them, with bells jingling around their necks beckoned to people to come take a ride. Turns out the Spaniards love buggy rides.
We discovered why the little girls love to dress in the flamenco dresses. Because this is what mom and grandma do for the festival. Literally thousands of women come out to see and be seen in their dresses. The festival grounds were about 20 acres of promenade area where people can stroll and show their stuff. Each side of the promenade is lined with restaurants and bars. It is a HUGE festival and the biggest thing of the year In Jerez. Now I need to be careful here, because I’m really trying to compliment the Spanish women and not seem the insensitive male fool. But these dresses are designed to look good on long, tall, svelte bodies who can move in ways that are considered alluring and attractive. However, when you have thousands of grandmas who, and this is Carol’s term, are “Matronly” in form wearing dresses which look like they were poured into, well the effect is not exactly alluring.
But the great thing about is that they don’t care. They just don’t give a damn how they look. This is the one time of the year they wear their dresses and it’s “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” We followed a group of about 40 women who had all taken a flamenco dance class together and came en masse to play their castenettes, and dance their way down the promenade, to the delight of all concerned. There were groups of a dozen or so women all wearing the same dress. Carol said either they bought a whole bunch of material and had them made or bought them at the same place.
They are amazingly colorful and a visual delight with the variety. Bellies bulged, bottoms protruded, and the rest of the body just kind of clung to the dresses. I told one woman she looked lovely, and I meant it. I asked her if she wore it at different times of the year and she said no, only to the Feria. So I said: “then you only have one dress.” She laughed and said, “No, I’ve got six, so I can wear a different one each night I come to the festival.” Another woman had five different dresses. This gives the idea of how ingrained this is to Andalucian culture.
There were families all dressed up as a unit. Mom and daughter had matching dresses. ( mom looked better than grandma) while dad and son had matching shirts and pants with a belt which matched mom’s dress. It was a wonderful day just people watching.
I told Carol I wanted a glass of sherry while watching, and so we went to a restaurant and sat outside for better viewing. The sherry was $6 dollars a glass. A little much I thought, but what the hell, I’m in Jerez, I’m drinking sherry. I ordered my glass and Carol said she’d have one too. The waiter shook his head and made a gesture with his hands to indicate something tall. Out he comes with a bottle of sherry. We ordered some lunch and sat there drinking and watching people. After we finished our food, Carol said she wanted to watch some more. Hey, that’s fine with me, I’ll just have another glass of sherry. Finally she said it was time to leave. I think she was afraid she’d have to roll me to the car. We walked around for a while. I think she wanted me to walk off the sherry before driving. I asked her if she wanted to stop for a drink. She just looked at me and rolled her eyes. I took that as a no.
We opted for a country stay on our first night back in Portugal. We found this country farm which is so quiet Carol and I speak in hushed tones so we don’t disturb anybody. It’s a tiny little burg called Terena and after going back and forth in this town of less than 1,000 people we finally got some coherent directions and found it. The problem is that it is shown incorrectly on the internet map and we were looking for it on the wrong side of the village. I told Carol, everybody knows everybody and everybody’s business in places like these. How come nobody knew where this was. But we’re here now, happily ensconced in our room.
We walked the mile or so to the village. Carol asked the man in the café if he had fresh orange juice. He said he did so we ordered two. Out came two bottles of fizzy orangish liquid. Oh well, there are too many things to get upset about. This was not one of them. Breakfast is not served until 9 in the morning, so we’ll take a walk down to the lake. Then tomorrow to Evora for two nights and after that back to Lisbon for some last minute things we didn’t do the first time. We’ll retire Clio and hope that her next driver treats her as well as we tried to, and come home on Sunday.
There’s no internet here in the farmhouse, so it acted as a good reason to write and now I’m glad I did. Hope you are all safe and happy, and we’ll be home soon.
Carol and Jim
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