In a word? Incredible!!

Hola!

I am writing on Friday evening from our new hotel, the Tryp Jerez in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, room 415.  It’s a very large room with an extra twin bed that has been turned into a luggage rack. 

Back to Casa Gonzalez!

Ran into this demonstration, but no idea what they want!

Casa Patas

Casa Patas bar area

Appetizer -- chips I recognize, R ate the rest!

Wonderful asparagus and roasted red pepper!

Tomato salad

Full order of Iberian ham!

My potatoes, bacon with fried egg on top!  Yum!

Couldn't even finish dessert!

Close to the stage much???

Guitar player; excellent!

Singers and clappers!

Stunning gal!

Three dancing together

So amazing to watch!

Those are fast moving feet, and I want a pair of red shoes!!

Youngest dancer

Male dancer (obviously...)

Final dance!

Curtain calls!

It has been an incredibly long day, as we had hoped to make the drive in something like 6 hours, and instead it ended up a bit over 7½ hours. No problems, really, just either traffic jams or road construction.  (It’s amazing how Emmy, our wonderful GPS can occasionally be baffled by Spanish road construction?!  Fortunately, we also have a good Spain/Portugal atlas, which really came to our rescue today!  Robert is truly an incredibly good navigator!)  Also, note to the planning secretary:  When one knows they are leaving the next day and have a long drive in front of them, do NOT, repeat NOT, schedule a late activity the evening before!!  Sheesh!

So, while we have absolutely no photos from our drive today, we do have photos from our Flamenco evening last night!  To begin:

We went back to Casa Gonzalez about 7:30 pm last night for another round of their wonderful cheeses and wines.  Our plan was to start with that, and then to move on to Casa Patas for dinner there and their highly-recommended Flamenco show (Spectacular, rather!)  When I looked for Casa Patas yesterday morning, I was thinking we would have to take a cab or Uber. It was something like 14 minutes that way – and when I switched Google Maps to walking instead of driving, it was only 9 minutes?!  Go figure! So, from Casa Gonzalez to Casa Patas, it was very easy to do, which is nice as I was a bit concerned about walking long distances in strange neighborhoods at night.  However, no problem!  

We got to Casa Patas about 8:25 pm and there was our reserved table for two for dinner before the show.  This time, I ordered a half-ration of tomato salad, a half-ration of asparagus (which was wonderful!) and a half-ration of potatoes with bacon and fried egg on top.  That was really good; would definitely have that again!  Robert ordered full (I didn’t mean to do it! – R) portion tomato salad and a full (I really wanted only a half portion. – R) portion of Iberian ham – so much that we couldn’t even finish it!  Second note to planning secretary:  Do not go to Casa Gonzalez for cheese plate and wine if planning on trying to eat more food immediately afterwards!  All these lessons to learn…

The show was scheduled to start at 10:30 pm (WAY past this traveler’s normal bedtime) but of course didn’t start until 10:45 pm. The show was in two halves, with a short intermission, and we got out about 12:20 pm or so.  The room was small – maybe jamming in about 120 people? (and turns out R was a bit worried about the lack of fire entrance) and for some reason, we were seated right NEXT to the stage, on one of its two sides!  Incredible! No idea how we got so lucky, although it’s possible that as we did reserve way in advance, that had something to do with it!  (You can’t request anything when booking, and some of the seats were so far away from the floor, I’m not sure those folks could see anything at all!)

The show itself was amazing. I cannot think of enough good adjectives to describe it!  There were three male singers, one male guitar player, two female dancers (one in early 20’s and the other in 30’s I’d guess) and one male dancer probably in late 20’s.  Apparently, Casa Patas is known as the “house with flying feet” and boy, is that really the case!  Neither of us have ever, ever seen feet moving so fast they were a blur!  Everyone got to do a solo number – the singers first, and then a dance with all three dancers together, and ending the first half was a wonderful dance by the truly beautiful young lady dancer.  She had beautiful legs and the most beautiful hands I think I’ve ever seen!  I really never thought too much about the Flamenco, but the hand movements seem very similar and important to the story telling as they are with the hula in Hawaii.

The second half started with a marvelous guitar solo number, followed first by the older lady dancer, and ending with the male dancer.  He was incredible!  I’ve never seen a male Flamenco dancer before, and he was exquisite!  Wow!  We were able to take some photos, but I’m not sure they can really convey the precision and beauty of the dancing.  Oh! And the younger lady dancer had polka dots on, so I felt like we were really getting to see the real thing! (As far as we could tell, there were no tour groups in the theatre, and while there was one particularly noisy group, they were not of tourists – looked like a company’s after-party to a seminar!  At one point during dinner, they were doing the wave!  Fortunately, they were better behaved in the theatre!

We were able to get back to the hotel really quickly, but after such an amazing performance, neither of us were really able to go to sleep quickly!  However, the alarm went off at 7 am, and we were up and washed and dressed and down for breakfast about 8 am.  From there, we repacked everything and headed downstairs to the lobby to check out.  Easily done, and then our Uber driver arrived in two minutes, and we were off once again to the airport.

No problems picking up the car, and we were soon heading out of the airport and to Jerez.  It took us a couple of wrong turns to get headed in the right direction, but for the most part, we had some lovely toll and non-toll roads to Jerez.  Jerez seems to be a really lovely place, and of course we are here during their annual Flamenco festival! As we told the nice young man at the desk – TOMORROW night, certainly not tonight!  

Tomorrow we have a sherry tasting and tour scheduled at noon, but first, right after breakfast, we are heading out to the LAVANDERIA to get laundry done!!  So – more tomorrow, as we are now interested in food and sleep, and I’m not sure in what order!

Lots of love,

m

xxx