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.