Spain Day 7: Jerez

I stumble out of sleep after having very normal dreams of space wars and Timothy Olyphant being a space sheriff and just being Too Old For This Shit, but I have to convince him that space needs him and his mustache to save all the worlds. Unfortunately, the sun shines in before I can get him to agree, so I have no idea if all the space worlds are saved, and instead have to wake up to a beautiful Jerez morning. Dan is typing away, blithely unaware that I have failed in my mission, and asks if I want to go to breakfast.

Obviously the answer is yes. If I can't save all the worlds, I can eat ham.

We get our hams, of which there are many, and notice that there is a distinct surplus of Very British People in our hotel. They are very old and very British, and have a lot of opinions about how good the tea is at the Hotel Soho Boutique (the answer: not very). I am too much lacking sherry and too much disturbed by the plight of the space world to sympathize with them, so I ask Dan to navigate the buffet for me today, and also make sure I don't have to talk to anyone the whole morning. As the master of buffering the world for me, he makes sure there is tea in my cup (bonus review from a non-English Person: it is just fine) and no one looks at me. Bless him, and anyone waffling over whether you should marry a man, if he actively prevents people from talking to you, he is the one. Don't fight it. Marry him, and then gradually sway him into stabbing people in the face for you, so you can visit him in jail in a romantic Americana version of Romeo and Juliet and write a book about it and cash in super hard and live the American dream of exploiting all of your innermost emotions for fame.

After breakfast, we decide doing things is for plebeians and go to the pool. 

The day is hot, and I go to get in the water, but the pool is cold, and so I stand there waiting for some signal from the universe that I should punish myself further with water. Dan says to just jump in, and for the life of me I wish I could remember what I said in reply, because it was so inane, so utterly stupid, that Dan, the king of ridiculously terrible puns, tells me, "That was awful," and I hang my head in shame because he is so very right. He recommends (re: tells me with no room for opposition) that I do a few laps to work off the sheer idiocy of whatever response I came up with so we do not have to marinate in it. I ask what it would be like if I didn't do that and he says, "Three laps. You owe the universe," and I cannot disagree.

I make it a game and we call it the Dunce Pool now and decide whoever says something stupid has to get in the water and swim some laps, which means I now live in the pool, which is unfortunate because I am neither an amphibious creature nor good at swimming in any form, so my laps look like I am a dog with no legs trying to retrieve a beach ball, only there is no beach ball, only sadness.

After I have done what I assume is at least 324908 laps and Dan maintains is maybe half of one at best, I decide staying by the pool is for plebeians and suggest we move on to walking around Jerez.

We've dubbed today Exploration Day, where we will make reservations for all the things that we were too lazy to figure out how to make reservations for before. Though our hotel has their own spa that we've yet to explore, I am interested in the fact that Jerez boasts an Arabic bath house. For the low low price of money, they will let you sit in giant mirror pools and look at tiled ceilings and give you tea and massage your body. All of this seems amazing to me, so we set off on a walk to find the place and tell them to let us do these things.

We find the place and I am supposed to check out the baths but instead I just get nervous and make an appointment because they are Arab baths, and anything that seems like it was torn from the pages of a history book makes me stutter like a 12-year-old boy about to talk to a girl for the first time, like please I would like this and I don't know how to properly communicate the pure and romantic nature of my yearning without the boner getting in the way. We make an appointment to come back on Friday and I tell Dan that we should look at the sights that are around, and that there is a very famous church that people go to called Iglesia de San Miguel and it is somewhere nearby the baths. As we leave we see the giant church, and I point to it and with all the wisdom of a person who knows churches I say "That's that church thing," and we wander over and stare at it in awe, because it is lovely, and we also stare in disgust, because there are pigeons flying around and we know what those pigeons get up to at midday now.

Basically a pigeon brothel.

I take many pictures of the beautiful church facade, and ask Dan if he would like to go inside. He says yes and we go inside, where a very bored man says, "5 euro para billette" and we turn right back around and head outside, because we are not Catholic enough to pay cash for our religious experiences. 

Unless it's in the form of a smart pantsuit.

We go back to admiring the church in a very free fashion, and Dan asks if I would like to stand on the selfie spot, and I tell him I'm not falling for that again because I know what that means now, and he says no, the actual selfie spot, and points to this:

"Stand on my face if you are bad at everything." 

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS. Someone, somewhere, felt the need to help people figure out where to stand to take pictures at this monument. Because operating a camera already wasn't easy enough ("Can you take a picture of us? You just click here..." Yes, lady, I operate your camera the way all cameras are operated THANK YOU GO STAND BY YOUR FAT CHILD AND ENJOY THIS MEMORY), somehow they needed to make it easier by creating a standard metric for all the photos of the church. 

"Do I point the camera at my feet or...?"

I question the selfie point so vehemently that Dan drags me away, sans selfie, to continue exploring the city.

I tell him this is also the day I'd like to return to the place we visited the last time we were in Jerez (not the churro shop) that has lived on in my memory. It was a beautiful park full of jacaranda trees that was so purple I was certain it was a lie, and a gazebo that seemed ripped from the pages of a novel, where you can stand and stare at a castle that has stood for thousands of years, and the heat presses on your skin like the touch of a lover and you feel like the air is getting pretty handsy and maybe it should calm the hell down and let you stare at your purple trees on your own for a minute and it can think about what its done.

Keep your touches to yourself, air.

We enjoy the promenade for a while and then decide to press on to see more sights that we've done no planning on seeing. After a minute, we come upon something we haven't seen before.

What the shit is this.

I look at the map because I am as thrilled to see another church as Dan is not, and I see that we are standing at the steps of the Iglesia de San Miguel.

GODDAMMIT. 

I immediately rescind my swearing in the presence of God's house and realize I just haven't really bothered to read maps (or signs, or menus) for the duration of this trip. The Iglesia de San Miguel stands in front of us, and the other Iglesia de San Miguel is actually Iglesia de San Salvador, even though THEY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE IN THE SAME SPOT ON THE MAP. 

I decide that churches are dumb and I don't want to see any more.

We return to the hotel and get ready for dinner (i.e. pass out until it is dark) and when we have readied ourselves we head over to Restaurante Albores, which we have heard is quite good in Jerez. 

So fancy.

They recommend that we eat prawns and I am enamored of this idea because I always love the idea of breaking open seafood creatures and eating their insides but I am generally quite bad at it, as anyone who has seen me try to open a crab can attest, because what are you supposed to do, just break them open and eat their insides?!

Dan tries to instruct me on the art of eating a prawn, and shows me how to take them apart and suck the head out. I am about as good at it as I am at swimming.

WHY IS NOTHING COMING OUT

He says if I'm having trouble to just suck harder and I tell him I refuse to cast my pearls before swine and we continue on with the dinner. I find it to be as delicious as things we have eaten for half the price, but every other restaurant didn't have THIS THING:

LOOK AT WHAT MAN CAN ACHIEVE

This is a small little button that you press and an ENTIRE NAPKIN COMES OUT.

IT IS FOR CLEANING THINGS

This napkin smells like a summer's day where you fall in love instead of the weird lemon death smell that precedes entering hell that American towelettes have and I am completely enamored with it. Dan tells me to stop getting weird about the napkin because it is making the other guests uncomfortable so I stop rubbing it on my face and making cooing noises and we pay the check and head on our way.

When I had been consulting Google Maps earlier making very accurate assertions about where the churches were, I had noticed a weird denomination labeled "Museo de Ron" and also the word "cocteles" which I had not seen attached to any restaurant before. I tell Dan since it is near our hotel, it is important that we finish the evening by drinking cocktails at whatever a Museum of Rum in Spain might be. He asks if I said "cocktails" and I say yes and he asks me why I bothered to add anymore information after that word, and I have no answer to that, so we start walking.

Because the little pin is relatively close to our hotel on the map, I am sure this will be an easy walk, but as we pass our hotel and go more outside the city, I find that we are in a random quiet neighborhood and there is absolutely no one here and nothing going on, and I am wondering where I am taking us until we happen upon the pin on the map, which denotes a very tiny, very neighborhoody bar. Only two people are sitting inside, and I recall Dan's and my very awkward journey into a local Irish bar in Portugal, where an old lady stood in the kitchen hammering some meat and staring at us with a beady eye until we left, and I wonder if I am about to have the same experience.

We walk in and the two people at the bar look at us, and then a nice lady comes over and asks us something in rapid Spanish, and I utter a small 'lo siento' and she smiles and points to a table. We sit down, and then we just kind of stare.

At the walls. At the menu. At the two people sitting at the bar who are staring at us, but in a friendly way, not in a by-the-time-I'm-done-hammering-this-meat-you-best-be-on-your-way way. 

If only they had more rum.

The man behind the bar comes over and he starts speaking in pretty quick Spanish. I ask him to slow down, and he very cheerily does so, and describes that we are in a tiki bar, and he has been traveling the world to learn about tiki cocktails, and that he loves rum and we are now in his rum museum and he would very much like to make us some cocktails. I know all this because I am VERY drunk, and that is the time when I understand and speak Spanish, unlike when I am sober and just sort of stutter and cry.

I ask him what is best, and he offers to make us a couple of drinks that I ascertain with my drunk Spanish powers will a. contain rum and b. possibly be in a coconut.

I watch him behind the bar, and it is evident that this man is a professional. He pours with flair, he pulls out syrups he has clearly mixed himself, and he smiles the whole time, clearly a man who would be as thrilled making a cocktail for the first time as he is for the 7000th time. I recognize a man who loves to bartend, and I am immediately excited for whatever comes next.

And I am not disappointed because he comes over with THIS.

The way to a woman's heart is setting shit on fire.

He walks away and I stare at the flame and wonder if I am supposed to blow it out before drinking, a question I ask the nice woman I have decided is his wife. She says yes, and I try to blow it out but fail. She says, "Mas fuerte!" so I blow harder and blow the entire lit sugar cube out of the glass and onto the table where she quickly puts it out and laughs at me for my overzealous blowing. 

By that time, the barman comes over with something I had not expected on our trip to Spain, which is a giant cocktail in a giant coconut. He bids us buen provecho and Dan and I both take a sip of our respective cocktails.

IT HAS ITS OWN LANTERN

If you are in Spain, go to a place called Cubaname.

It is special. It is incredible. It is some of the best tiki cocktails I have ever had, and they are made by a very happy and lovely Spanish man named Eloy, who is accompanied by his wife Loli, and they are fabulous folks who somehow made us feel like we were in the Caribbean while we were in a rather cold Spain that still necessitated a jacket I did not have.

Dan and I drown in the amazingness of our cocktails. They are on par if not more delicious than cocktails at Hale Pele. We are already quite drunk but we cannot leave these my-head-sized cocktails on the table, because they are savory and spicy and wonderfully balanced and incredible. The other two folks have gone outside to enjoy the beverages, so Eloy and Loli strike up a conversation with us, and I am drunk enough to understand everything they are saying, and they tell us to spread the word about Cubaname and the Museum of Rum and also to go visit his friend in Seville, because Spain is trying to elevate cocktail culture and we are willing to patronize a good bar wherever there is a good bar.

We leave with promises of visiting his friend, and a great photo of one of the best bartenders I've ever met.

Two cool guys and their drunk translator

I tell Dan next time we come to Spain we will need to get churros and more of these cocktails and he agrees and we return to our hotel in happy spirits because we just drank the best cocktails the size of our faces we have ever had.

Lessons Learned in Spain: 

11. I do not know where things are on the map

12. I cannot eat prawn heads

13. Jerez has amazing tiki cocktails. Seriously, who knew.

Spain Day 6: Jerez

IT’S CHURRO DAY.

Yes, after waddling home like the ice cream-laden ham-dumpster that I am, I have made the decision that come what may, today is the day I live my dreams and finally celebrate my 30th birthday by eating my white whale of a churro. No matter that my birthday was in January or that no one should spend this amount of dollars to eat what costs $1 at any Costco. The school systems and popular culture in America have told me to follow my passion and my passion is churros. 

As I am following my passion, I will let everyone know if the money follows, but churros don’t seem like very industrious desserts so I doubt they’ll be paying me anything to eat them.

I am not the best at learning lessons but I have internalized a Very Important Lesson: Eat the damn churros when you see the place is open. Don’t wait. DON’T WAIT TO EAT CHURROS. This is a lesson that I will pass on to my children, who will ask me earnestly, “Mom, what is the meaning of life?” and I will tell them just as earnestly, “You are really making this hangover worse, here’s some money to go get mommy a churro and what’s our family motto?” and they will sigh and say, “Don’t wait to eat churros,” and they will run down to the local Costco to get me a churro and while internalizing my valuable life lessons that will ensure they become very successful presidents who are also doctors.

I walk with Dan to the Churro Boob to finally fulfill my dreams and eat of the forbidden fried dough in the garden of desserts.

Hello darkness my old friend

We walk up and observe the prices, which, for the low low sum of 1 euro, I can achieve greatness. Usually it costs me about $5 to pay a homeless man to tell me I’m amazing, since they won’t do it for less than that for some reason, so this is quite the deal and I am thrilled. However, they sell churros by weight and not by the stick, my customary form of buying at Costco and all Six Flags establishments, and their weight is all in metric so I’m not sure if 1/2kg is the appropriate amount or if I should get ‘minimo.’ Dan suggests we go with minimo because 1/2kg of churros sounds like a lot, and he is a smart man who frequents markets where they sell him things by weight, so I defer to his wisdom and approach the counter. Behind stands a pillar of the earth, a wise and benevolent sage who is bequeathing his greatness onto the fortunate passers-by in the form of churros, and I approach this man with the same gravitas one approaches a yogi after a long trek up some mountain in Nepal because I am certain I’ve put in the same amount of effort by walking ten minutes from my hotel to get here.

In a small and deferential voice, I say, ‘Yo quiero minimo, por favor,” and silently I add O GREAT WISE MAN WHO WILL FULFILL MY DREAMS, and the very normal and nice Spanish man does not even blink and squirts more fried dough from a FREAKING CHURRO GUN into the giant vat of hot oil that makes dreams come true and pulls out a giant churro circle, snips a few pieces, and throws it all into a piece of paper in a cone shape so I can catch every single tear I cry into it.

Dan tells me to stop getting the churros soggy so we wander around the corner to the little cafe that is behind the churro kiosk (really part of it) and, completely unsure of what to do with my newfound treasures, I sit and order a cafe from the nice man who is making them. I open my paper cone of wonders like it is a beautiful woman’s arms covering her nakedness that I am pulling away so I can consume her insides. I hold up a piece of churro and take a bite, and the feeling of eating my dreams fills me with excessive joy.

The man who made my coffee looks at me from behind his glasses and sighs, and pulls out a packet of sugar and dumps it out on my paper. He points to the churros and at the sugar in the universal language for, “Idiot, you are doing this wrong,” and I thank him profusely in Spanish. Dan and I enter a whole new galaxy of amazingness that is sugary fried treats, and we strike up a lively conversation with Jesus, the coffee man who is also the churro expert, and another man Adolfo, who chimes in because he hears me say, “Soy de America,” like the ethnocentric sonofabitch that I am, and he says, “Soy de Paraguay, yo tambien soy de America!” We have a nice conversation about both being from America, which by the end I feel like is pretty accurate, and that I have as much in common with Adolfo as I do with people from Texas, and figure instead of splintering the Northwest into Cascadia we should start considering consolidating all the American continents and taking over the rest of the world and calling the whole thing America just so everyone doesn’t have to answer the question of where they’re from.

In the afterglow of churros, we explore the streets of Jerez, and I remind Dan that this is where flamenco was invented so we should explore some things related to flamenco.

Is it cultural appropriation if we get married in this?

I wrestle with the hardest decision of my life, which is not to buy a flamenco dress because I a. don’t dance flamenco and b. don’t dance flamenco.

I think briefly about learning to dance flamenco in order to wear this dress, but I weigh that against my decision to only eat churros for the rest of my life, and figure the flamenco dress will only gather dust after I transform into a stick of fried dough and only wear sugar until the end of time.

Earlier in the day, we were enlightened by Jesus and Adolfo to hit up Tabanco El Pasaje for some flamenco at 2pm. While the internet implies it might be a super touristy joint, the fact of the matter is that everything in Jerez is technically a touristy joint, because it is just not the big of a place. We head over, and decide that it is irrelevant what the nature of the place is, because it is awesome.

Sherry out of a tap, I guess that’s cool

We arrive a little late, so it is hard to see the flamenco, but they are a kind joint and have installed this giant mirror to make it easy for the latecomers.

Get there early so you don’t have 

to stare into the reflection of your mistakes

We return home for a siesta, and rise from our coma to go eat more food and enjoy the whole concept of eating at 9pm, which, as a restaurant worker and/or lady of the night, I appreciate fully and completely. We decide on a place called Bar Bocarambo, because Dan is interested in eating paella, and he has read that this place has paella. 

We arrive and realize the next Utter Truism of Spain: anything that is written on Google is complete and total lies. Not through the fault of the reviewers, but mostly because a lot of places just decide to do a thing sometimes and then they do it and they have no interest in doing it regularly because why should they? Life is lovely and relaxed in Spain, they are not your paella slaves, so if they don’t feel like making paella, they will not make paella.

I respect this wholly and do not fault them for the lack of paella. The bruise of no crispy rice dish is also assuaged by the fact that everything here is goddamn delicious.

Cola de toro is a national treasure in Spain and in my heart

Spinach croqueta is like if spanakopita 

and my deepest desires made a baby 

that was socially acceptable to eat

By the time the sorbet made of fresh strawberries arrives, I feel like we have failed as a country, because the ability to walk in to literally any restaurant and be excited for whatever happens to you in Spain is alive and well, while back at home I sometimes walk into restaurants and they throw me out for being ‘smelly’ and ‘an affront to humanity,’ and the food is also not as good.

By the end of our visit to Bar Bocarambo, I am as delighted as one person can be, and I am thrilled by the experience and by the beautiful Spanish words I read in the menu that I will carry with me forever:

Les damos las gracias por elegirnos y al mismo tiempo le pedimos disculpas por lis fallos que podamos cometer.

Which they translate as, “We thank you for choosing us and apologize in advance if we fail you in any way.”

And is how I will be opening all conversations for the rest of forever.

Lessons Learned in Spain:

     9.  Put sugar on your churros

     10.  Animal butt parts are delicious

     11.  The Spanish will make paella whenever they feel like it

Spain Day 5: Jerez

I realize today that I have eaten a lot of ham. I wake up and proclaim that I regret nothing and then fall back asleep until it is time for dinner. I wake up once more and proclaim myself the queen of Spanish culture because people have siesta here and I have just elevated the siesta from rejuvenating downtime to actual coma. 

By the time Dan and I go out, the sun is setting, and we are enjoying the relatively empty streets that will grow busier as the night grows longer. We do get to see our favorite residents of Jerez though, which are the multitude of dogs that roam around with their owners. 

Or no owners, whatever.

I think about how much better Spain is than home because dogs can just ramble around and do their own dog thing and it’s no big deal, and I think of how nice it would be for Likely, and then immediately think of how terrible it would be for me to continuously go to Spanish jail because my dog would round up all the local dogs and organize a crime ring where the dogs stole hams and also jewels and I’d have to explain to the police that I thought she had bought me all these diamonds and I can’t believe she betrayed me like this.

My Spanish is just not good enough to explain that they shouldn’t send me to jail, so I return to being thankful for leash laws in America. 

We have decided to return to the steak house, which is called Meson del Asador and is a traditional grill-type restaurant where they make very large plates of very large meats. Remembering our lessons from yesterday, I take the menu and tell Dan I will order us the perfect meal, and with my newfound knowledge of how to be an adult I select a salad item and also some vegetables, and also croquetas because it is important to always have those at every meal, and then instead of a plate of ham, I order other parts of the pig to eat, ignoring the part of the menu that says ‘para compartir’ and assume that just because it’s for sharing doesn’t mean it’s too much food.

Oh food

Plz stahp

FOOD STAHP

The food does not stop. The food continues. The food continues with portions that would make America weep in the knowledge that they are second-class when it comes to stuffing people until they die. We look around and see mostly families eating, and decide we probably should have enlisted seven more people to have shared this meal with us. But it is delicious and warms our bellies so we high-five for being really good at eating and wander out into the night with every intention of going home because we are so full that if we make any sudden movements it will be like the time they filled that whale with dynamite in the hopes of getting it cleanly off the beach but instead exploded whale guts everywhere and bits of whale were stuck to the beach for ages.

That is us, but if we exploded it will be completely whole pieces of Iberico ham.

So I get some ice cream.

Dan questions my choices. I tell him I am the queen of choices. 

That's El Queen of Choices to you.

He pats me on the head and rolls me back home and we go to bed to have probably very intense dreams of the ham overlords that now rule our lives.

Lessons Learned in Spain: 

     7.  Restaurants really want you to leave feeling full
     8.  I like ice cream

Spain Day 4: Jerez

We wake up and get some breakfast at the hotel, which consists of mostly ham, because we have forgotten the lessons of the previous day very quickly in the presence of more ham. After eating our delicious future regrets, we review the plans for the day:

1. Walk around Jerez
2. Look at stuff

Feeling sufficiently overloaded with an itinerary, we set off to try to fit in all of our activities.

Teapots, guns, and other essentials.

Authentic Spanish art.

As we wander, we remember that we actually do have one more thing to add to the itinerary. Anyone who knows me knows that the last time I traveled to Spain, I was cheated out of a churro, mostly because I will tell anyone who will listen, like a vegan at a barbecue, THIS IS CENTRAL TO EVERY INTERACTION THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THIS ABOUT ME.

Anyway, the story goes thus: We came to Jerez, and there was a marvelous kiosk in the center of the town that had an old man making fresh churros. The smell of freshly crisped dough evoked a happiness reserved only for Golden Retrievers at tennis ball factories. My eyes filled with tears, my heart swelled, but the line was long, and I considered if I would have enough time to get a churro before we had to leave, and as I considered, I was pulled aside to enter the mercado, and when I returned to the churro kiosk, my mind made up to brave the line and eat all the churros, the magical kiosk was shuttered and closed. Then it wavered like a mirage and flew into the sky, never to be seen again, and perhaps having never existed at all.

That last part didn’t really happen. It is just always present in my CONSTANT NIGHTMARES ABOUT NEVER GETTING A CHURRO.

Much of our trip was planned to retrieve this churro and stop the night terrors that have plagued me ever since, because my life is hard and the trials I face are many. We wander up the streets, not bothering to consult maps but walking based on the pull of my heart only, and eventually, we come upon a sight I thought I would never see again:

Like a heavenly boob.

Right where I left it, in the center of town, is the churro stand with the old man flipping churros. In a rare case of reality exceeding expectations, in my dreams there was only one churro stand and one churro man. In reality, there are TWO churro stands and two churro men, standing together, timeless in their pursuit of greatness, flipping churros like hardened warriors who fend off enemies back to back, only instead of fending off enemies they are delighting them, and instead of using swords they are sticking people in the face with fried dough sticks. 

I bask in the beauty of what I have come upon, but it is early, and Dan and I decide to satisfy Requirement #2 in our Very Important Plan and look around the square a bit before settling into our churro heaven. We walk around and look at things, and they are all very nice things, and then our bellies are ready to receive greatness, so we return to the churro kiosk to enjoy what is most certainly the best thing that will ever happen to me including the births of any children that I ever have, whom I will most definitely remind at every turn that they are great and all, but one time I had a churro in Spain so clean your damn room.

We make the left turn to get back to the square, and I am basically sliding towards the kiosk on a river of drool and I see its magical boob in the distance and then my eyes adjust to the sunlight and 

It.

Is.

CLOSED.

Dan quickly reminds me that we have two more weeks in Jerez, to prevent me from falling to my knees and trying to tear up the cobblestones and throw them at the very-shuttered churro stand, because we have fallen victim to the same thing that happened last time, which is that store horarios are pretty loose in Jerez, and when things are open and when they are closed is really dependent on how people are feeling that day, it seems to us, which I maintain is much better for the satisfaction of life of the shop owners, but much less better for the satisfaction of life for people who want churros 24/7.

To cheer me up, Dan buys me a rose from the flower market next to the churro stand, and he is so sweet that I shovel all my feelings back down into the dark pits I keep them in (the one labeled Desire for Desserts is the biggest pit) and we decide to go get something else to eat.

“I shall name his Squishy and he shall be my Squishy.”

Everywhere in Jerez are signs denoting ‘Hay Caracoles!’ and they have a friendly drawing of a snail next to them, and the snail always looks so happy we decide we should definitely eat his face off, because the lack of churros has made me a heartless beast who needs to consume the happiness of small animals. The only issue is that we have absolutely zero ideas how to eat these, so for the first few minutes we fumble around like dumb otters trying to crack shells on other otter bellies because I know these open somehow but how? HOW?!

Luckily, an old Spanish man comes along and sits at the table next to us, and rescues me from my stupidity by ordering some caracoles and picking them up and rapidly sucking the little suckers right out of their shells. He is halfway through his cup while we have barely removed two caracoles from their little tiny houses that are also the scenes of their own little tiny murders (the resale values are just through the floor). We realize there is a Better Way, and take to aggressively sucking the snails out with a gusto reserved for any activity that isn’t sucking snails out of their shells.

Horrific image of a snail village genocide.

We return home, full of entire civilizations of smaller lifeforms and also some sherry, and take full advantage of the siesta culture. I long suspected that I was a person made for siestas, and this first day in Jerez confirms it: I am the queen of naps and also naps are essential to a well-rounded adult life. We wake up ready to attack the evening, and exit our hotel once more, heading for the plaza where most of the restaurants are clustered. We follow this person, cuz she seems to know where she is going.

Always trust a lady who gets 20 men to carry her places.

We wander by some restaurants that have lots of people sitting outside, and then decide to try the restaurant with no people sitting outside, Tala Bar, because what do people know anyway?

So much room for activities.

The answer is a lot, because this place is fine, which puts it seventy stars ahead of anything that we get home. Because we deem the food just fine, we decide to move on to another tapas place, to have more tapas, because the beauty of tapas is that you can have tapas, and then have other tapas, and then more tapas, until you are drunk on tapas and also wine and also you are dying but you assume it’s from the walking and not from the mass amounts of tapas.

Our death walking takes us to a restaurante, where we quickly realize that at restaurants you order food, and not tapas, but we are American and very fancy so we order an appetizer to split and give them an expired coupon and talk about how much better our country is than everyone else’s. The server stares at us when we order a single appetizer and two drinks, and asks, “Algo mas?” We say no gracias and he continues to stare at us, then walks away. After a moment, another server comes up and confirms, “Algo mas?” And we say no gracias again and he stares at us again and walks away, and we smile happily for communicating perfectly in Spanish and letting these folks know we are tourists who are determined to eat every croqueta in the city, no matter the strange situations that allow for it.

After our wonderful journey of tapas, we figure we should get one more thing to round out the evening, and by now we have drank quite a few glasses of wine, and reading signs has gone out the window, so we enter another tapas bar and order a small plate of delicious tapas.

Figure 1: Not tapas.

Because we are hoping to invent a new way to seal our insides with meat, we order more ham tapas, only to find that we have inadvertently entered some sort of steak house where the small plates we are used to are actually the entire side of a pig. We decide that as we live by ham, we shall die by ham. It is a fitting death for people who can’t read or understand the country of Spain.

Lessons Learned in Spain:

     4. Don’t eat all the ham
     5. Read the names of places because they might be steak houses
     6. EAT THE CHURROS WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE

Bonus gif of me asking Dan to take a picture of me next to a statue and being very good at posing for it:

Spain Day 3.2: Jerez

IT'S JEREZ DAY!

And for real this time! Which I know because we have finally pulled into the train station, and it is decorated with pretty tiles which denote being in a quaint Spanish town.

Suspicious wet spots denote being in a train station.

We get to the taxi line, and immediately realize that we will be needing our limited Spanish abilities a lot on this trip, because Jerez is fairly out of the way and most tourists do not come by train. 

We arrive at our hotel and I politely put all my things away and make a nice space for Dan.

This seems like a good place for a suitcase.

Our room is huge and gorgeous, with doors that open onto a small balcony. Doors that open out to a balcony are a key part of feeling like one is on vacation, so we are intensely pleased that we have this. Our room also has a little separate sitting area, which I go to investigate, and discover that this sitting room ALSO HAS DOORS OPENING ONTO A BALCONY. Two balconies! We can barely contain ourselves with all of our good fortune, until Dan says, “Hey Rox, I think there is another balcony…”

And then we discover that we are in a room with four balconies, which is an absurd number of balconies but also seems right somehow. We drown in our happiness, and I briefly consider taking pictures of the place in order to be a better travel writer and then review all the parts of the hotel, but that seems like an activity that doesn’t involve getting Spanish food and wine into my face as quickly as possible, so I abandon it in favor of walking through the city towards food and wine.

Immediately, I realize my ten pairs of shoes will do me no good because what I really should have brought was a FREAKING JACKET. As a person who goes places a lot, one would think I would be very good at packing by now, but somehow it has become quite the opposite, and the older I get, the more I just start throwing random items into a bag like a useless Mary Poppins, thinking, “Maybe I will need an Oxford dictionary on this trip, you just never know, better take it just to be safe,” and then arrive at my destination and freeze to death and get buried with my dictionary because I forgot to ask myself whether I’d need a jacket or not, to which the answer is always YES, something that I should know as a Portlander and also just a human being on the earth.

Anyway, Pro-Traveler Tip #2: Always bring a jacket. 

The jacket becomes important because while Jerez de la Frontera is supposed to be in the mid-70s, it’s taking its sweet time to get there, and somehow 65F in Jerez feels like 50F in Portland. Probably due to the many fountains full of water in the city, which is a fact I have not run by any scientists but sounds completely correct.

Ornate fountains have a severe impact on weather patterns in Spain.

Luckily for me, I do not travel/do anything at all without my black and white flannel, so I am at least relatively warm, but nonetheless I resolve to buy a jacket at the first place I see. 

This looks like a good place to start.

Dan and I sit down at this probable jacket store (my Spanish is not very good, any of those words could mean anything) and order some things. 

Not a jacket.

Former pig jacket, not good present-times jacket.

We leave the jacket store without any jackets but happier for the delicious wine and first plate of Iberico ham. We initially decided we would order a plate of Iberico ham at every restaurant, just based on how delicious and insanely cheap it is, but after the first plate we realize this would result in returning to the States as The People Who Ate Dan And Roxanne, so we eschew this plan for much more reasonable eating habits and lots of walks.

How else will we see all the walls?

And get our prayers answered?

After what seems like an interminable walk that Dan confirms was exactly twelve minutes, I beg to sit down somewhere, and we find a pretty plaza with outdoor tables. The nice thing about Jerez is that there are many, many outdoor tables for intrepid travelers who like sitting outside when it’s cold without a jacket. The other nice thing about Jerez is how completely devoid of people it can be, which means often you have a whole plaza to yourself. Well, almost to yourself, if you don’t count pigeons and teenagers, which I do not.

Teenagers are the pigeons of people

I lean back in the sun and bask in the tranquility of Jerez, of the quiet streets and the simply delightful foods and always-full glasses of wine. It is everything I hoped for, a lovely city with a small-town feel, with beautiful architecture and sights. As I reflect on how lucky I am in life, I see this:

“Prepare to get your pigeon world rocked.”

I did not think I could get any luckier but apparently I am the LUCKIEST PERSON ON THE PLANET because our tranquil glass of wine in a beautiful plaza turned into free front row tickets to some good ol’ fashioned pigeon sex. 

“Move over dude, let me get in there!”

“Awwww yiss”

“Dude, can’t wait to tell the bros about this.”

“Hey girl, we heard—“ “NOOOOOOOOO!”

“SANCTUAAAARYYY!”

I commend the lady pigeon for escaping, or possible male pigeon, because I am not a bird doctor and have no idea if this was a dominance display or a pigeon orgy (definitely a pigeon orgy) that ended in one of the birds seeking refuge at a church. Either way, I am laughing hysterically and narrating the scenario loud enough that Dan decides it is time to go home and put us to bed because we are running on some very questionable sleep and the highlight of our trip so far has been birds doing it and we’re possibly hallucinating.

“Stop looking at me, swan!”

Lessons learned from our first day in Jerez:

1. Bring a jacket.
2. Jerez is very pretty.
3. Don’t eat ham for every meal.