26th January, Republic Day. This day 57 years ago, India became a republic after gaining independence from the British. But their legacy lives on… the language, roads, railways, judiciary…… and of course, the persistent malaise of bureaucratic red tape. But India at with a mere 60 years of experience is a mere novice in the arena of bureaucracy unlike Great Britain, where it has been lifted to the level of a fine art. Since moving to London in late 2004, I have been at first been stupefied, as a result of seeing things through Indian eyes, where ‘developed’ ought to be better, and then gradually enraged at the most ridiculous and unimaginable delays brought on by the stalwart bureaucratic bulwark here. When we arrived, it took us a month to get a BT phone connection. I could get one in Bombay in a days time, so what could BT possibly be doing for the remaining 29?
Next came the unanticipated challenge of the bank account. A simply procedure (given that in India in the past one needed to be introduced by 2 existing account holders, citizens of worthy standing, above reproach) of opening a bank account has to be experienced to truly appreciate the finer points of UK’s bureaucratic supremacy. In hindsight, I was one of the fortunate ones – being an exalted ‘premier’ customer with the bank in India, I had a superior status to any normal applicant, already having been vetted to be worthwhile the bank’s time to assign a ‘relationship manager’ – apparently cultivating me was important enough to them in India, so it wasn’t even a matter of my suitability or my presumption to open an account with the erstwhile HSBC, but rather a matter of formality to have me introduced by HSBC India. Not rocket science – but naturally, copious amounts of paper work must be involved. It would be gauche of me to expect such an old and venerable organisation to just do things electronically….. in this day and age and in shuddering bad taste. So, I wait patiently to be summoned by the bank… and after a week, greatly and justifiably miffed given my exalted status in Bombay, vent my frustrations on my relationship manager in Bombay, only to be told the paperwork had been dispatched just after my email ….. and that too by courier (yes, I did ask if they had entrusted it to the Indian postal system with its endemic reliability problems). So you’re possibly wondering, what could have happened? Quite simple really – even elementary you could say…. The paperwork was in London as a matter of fact, but hadn’t reached the desk of my new relationship manager…… !!!
Now why I would have assumed they’d automatically check incoming post, is beyond me and only emphasises my lack of comprehension in these weighty matters. So eventually, after two excruciating weeks was I grandly bestowed with a savings account in the UK and I’ve been assured by other expatriates, that I was very fortunate to get it done so quickly!! Boggles the mind….. but what made me think about the past, is of course, the present, and yet another brush with the delicate fronds of UK’s inscrutable government – a whole new level of bureaucratic inefficiency. If only this was a category in the Olympics, you wouldn’t be reading nearly as much about Britain’s hopes or rather the lack of them in the 2012 Olympics! But I digress – so easy to do when there’s steam coming out of ones ears. Having arrived on a dependent visa on the coattails of my erudite spouse, a student, it now came time for us to extend our visas. The Home Office website, optimistically (and now in my mind entirely untruthfully!!) states that most applications – almost 70% are processed within 4 weeks. So, instead of writing this from my Mom’s place in Bombay while enjoying a display of nationalistic pride watched over by the Russians and eating something deliciously spiced, I’m negotiating my way through an indifferent sandwich in the grey and freezing London weather. We submitted our application on the 2nd of January as soon as we got back from our Christmas break, and promptly received an acknowledgement from the Home Office stating that they were indeed in receipt of our request and that they would assign it to a case worker who would get in touch with us if our application was deficient. Most impressive thus far… and being a gullible fool lulled by the false sense of security brought on by this missive, I rebooked my ticket to Bombay for March 8. Enough room to manoeuvre even around the home office or so I naively thought.
Well, it’s my duty to inform you, that I was sadly mistaken – why? Oh I don’t know – a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ perhaps? Or could it be the call to the Home Office this morning to check the procedure to expedite an application as I now had a business meeting fixed in Switzerland at the end of February? After being bored to tears by the automated system, a rather anaemic male voice hesitantly introduced himself as Steve – while I gave him my spiel and the all important reference number, there was absolute silence form the other end, making me wondered if I’d lost my tenuous connection, but that was not to be – instead my blood pressure steadily climbed north, when, after noisily consulting with his computer, Steve reported that our application hadn’t yet been assigned to a case worker ….!!
I’m still taking deep breaths, but my ears still feel warm. At the end of a month (70% processed according to their libellous website!!) they still hadn’t gotten around to allocating the file to someone to review. Beat that. Back home, I could have paid someone to move my file from one desk to another….. corruption you say – hmmm, but then again, could it be a commercial interpretation - introducing the alien word ‘efficiency’ to the otherwise thriving bureaucracy? To be fair though, the Passport Office in India has progressed by leaps and bounds – they have a fixed time it takes to get your passport back, whether it’s the same day, a week, month or 3 months, but by God – they do deliver. But to be blithely told that my application was just languishing there after nearly a month – the GALL!! I have this tremendous urge to slap someone – preferably several people at the Home Office – justifiable remedial therapy as it were. But instead, I’ve come to the sad conclusion, that this is now the time for me as an Indian to just bow to the masterful hand of the British Bureaucracy and admit out loud to the world and more so to my Indian brethren, that we take a false pride in our inefficient, corrupt, laggard and supremely useless public and government sectors.
We are but chelas….. merely aspiring to greatness….this is the birthplace of bureaucracy and any upstart colonist with grandiose visions of having surpassed their guru is merely to be pitied as delusional. So now, I’m off to another favourite British pastime – dashing off an indignant letter to the Home Office berating them from their gross ineptitude. But I lie. It’s a letter humbly requesting them to expedite my application and return my passport in time, naturally, duly supported by the firms senior partner, on the company letterhead. After all, I am from the colonies….
Why am I doing this really?
Buggered if I know! It feels a little strange to be writing stuff which could be read by just about anybody. Aashish suggested I use this space to host the bits of writing I'm doing now, but how can I say this without sounding insufferably coy? It's hard to make public things that are so personal. True, the stories I've got so far are not about me or anyone I know, but it still feels like I would be posting a piece of me for all the world to see and talk about and that's really unsettling. So guess I should forget about ever becoming a famous author!!
Travelogue - Paris
May 16, 2006
Back at work after a glorious weekend, although just barely! (back at work i.e. J). Feel like 106 and not 36 :), but the weekend was well worth it! Had a wonderful time and despite being more knackered that I can remember in a very long time, am all set to plan another trip back J. Next time though, we’re taking the eurostar and staying in town J. Although, to be honest, I’m kind of glad that we did stay at La Defense coz at least now I know what it’s all about – never would have gone in that direction otherwise. Basically, it’s like Canary wharf in London – a commercial/urban regeneration area outside the main city with all glass and chrome high rises, eclectic sculptures, hotels, restaurants, convention centre, movie theatre, shopping centre, blah, blah. The highlight is of course, the Grande Arche de Defense which is this huge office tower in the shape of an squared arch and you can take an elevator to the top for a panoramic view (which we didn’t bother with – we’d had enough of panoramic views by then from the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tour!). Aaaargh!! Perilous partner just snuck up on me – how does it do it every time?? It’s almost like he’s got some sort of homing device going when it comes to me doing stuff other than work! now he’s completely thrown me off my flow! Where was I???
Oh well, never mind, we’ll pick it up as we go along. The silly flight is only 40 minutes so it’s really pakaoing that you have to be at the airport so early, so next time, definitely the train. Anyway, by the time we got into La Defense it was 8 pm, and of course, we couldn’t find our stupid hotel!! After missing it a couple of times and getting really frustrated with the Hilton and the French and whatnot, our eyesight finally prevailed and we managed to check in without further incident. We had reservations at Aux Lyonnais at 9.45 pm, so had enough time, but both of us were sort of fading, and although I would have had liked to go, it’s probably for the best that we decided against it. We thought we’d dine at the hotel restaurant only to rock up to find it empty – and I mean no employees either!! So had to go downstairs, and just decided to dine at the first and closest restaurant, the Hippopotamus – a grill. Not really and ideal choice, but we were sort of beyond caring at this point. Although I have to say that during the main course, I was rather wishing we’d gone to Aux Lyonnais! The meal started off well, with a lovely crunchy deep fried platter of squid rings, cheese balls, spring rolls and something else and a big tasty Caesar salad. The main course was rather disappointing, but I guess that was to expected from a chain restaurant, and we were only too glad to leave and crash for the night.
After a sumptuous American b’fast – an indulgence for sure, but what they hey – we were on holiday, we actually managed to leave the hotel by 10 pm and headed straight for the Louvre, but via the Tuileries. Strolled around enjoying the sunshine and admiring the statues strewn all over the place – the first one that caught my eye (and for all the wrong reasons!!) was this majestic one of a centaur on the rampage with a buxom damsel caught up at his side in a most ravishing manner and oh! The ridiculousness of it all – the majesty and the sense of fury all belied by this extremely silly pigeon perched on the centaur’s noble head!! Talk about ludicrous imagery to a grand moment. The poor centaur looked anything but threatening from that angle. That’s when I looked around and noticed, believe it or not, that every statute we glanced at, had a stupid pigeon atop it!! If it just wasn’t so rude, it would have been totally hysterically (well, it was rather) rows of majestic statues, with pigeons on their heads, almost like little sculptures themselves. We strolled towards the Seine and took in the Museé d’Orsay, before meandering back to the entrance of the Louvre at the stupid Pyramid. What an eyesore.
We’d already planned a couple of thematic trails, and the first one went off just fine before Aashish and I got into a fight and went our separate ways. I spent the time in a lovely arched area with the sun pouring in through the skylights, surrounded by the most impressive sculptures sitting under a fake tree (at least I think they were fake – or rather I’m just assuming they’re fake) reading my library book. Aashish eventually joined me and we kissed and made up and then decided to have lunch at one of the café’s at the Louvre. Since the weather was pretty good, we opted to wait to be seated at the terrace where we enjoyed a glass of white wine along with our light lunch – a duck confit terrine with a smashing salad while Aashish had a potato cheesy bake – yum. We lingered over tea and coffee before hitting the master pieces trail – I wasn’t going to go for that initially, but thought I’d give the Mona Lisa another chance – and yep – she’s still got to be the most highly overrated painting in the world, and of all of Leo’s creations, the most mediocre!! The man was a genius and all that everyone can think to rave about is this silly painting. We finished off in the afternoon, and decided to stop for a spot of tea in the Jardin de Tuileries and found ourselves a café with seats under an awning right next to a lovely little lake with statue and lush purple irises (well, horticulturist I’m not, so you’ll just have to take my word for it….i.e. that’s what I believe Irises ought to look like!). of course, the silly menu had to offer crepes as well, and as I’d refrained from dessert with lunch, I decided to indulge myself with a chocolate crepe (no that wasn’t the indulgence…) accompanied by a dollop of chantilly. Of course, the dollop turned out to be this huge half plate covering 3 verrry generous squirts of cream! Such decadence – but can you think of a more appropriate setting?
Dinner was at L’Os a Moelle and we decided to stroll by the Seine to the Invalides metro and take the train from there rather than the Tuileries where we were. It was at the Place de la Concorde that we realised that the Louvre, Pl. de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe and get this, the Grande Arch de la Defense were perfectly aligned along the Champs d’Elysees!! Talk about the triumph of town planning! Most impressive. Of course the walk to the Invalides took longer than we anticipated, and then the train refused to show up – and there we were glancing at our watches every few minutes hoping for divine intervention and wondering how far the restaurant was from the tube once we got off and if they’d hold our table!! Typical isn’t it and of course, while we were waiting, 2 trains for the opposite direction came by and mocked us!! Eventually, at five minutes to nine, the stupid train rumbled up (to match the 3rd going in the opposite direction!!) and despite being 7-8 stops away, we reached our destination in a little over 10 minutes. Luckily the restaurant was just a few steps away from the metro, so we got there at a quarter past nine (and all this after Aashish kept complaining about why I’d made such a late dinner reservation!!). Then of course, the woman at the reception couldn’t find my booking which I had to point out to her (solely going by the fact that it was the only contact number with a UK country code!! Since the name was unrecognisable!!), and were seated squished amongst two other tables and all the patrons had to re-jig their belongings to accommodate us J. The menu is written out most neatly on theses blackboards which they come an plonk at a space near you JJ and as the review said, for an infamous price of €38 (which includes service charge!!) there were more ‘et’ (and) than ‘ou’ (or) on the menu! A total of 6 courses to choose from (not counting the cheese coz the only choice there was eat it or don’t eat it!). Aashish and I chose all the alternates possible and just went head to head on the fish course, but apart from that we were able to sample everything (well, almost) on the menu.
The feast began with amuse bouche. Sadly, I didn’t catch what it was, but it was delicious – even more so given how hungry we were but it did help take the edge off. It had teeny chunks of what tasted like lamb (but could have been beef) as the bottom layer and a lovely creamy, cauliflowery soupy thing on top with a little froth cap and a faint flavour of cumin??? The first course was the soup, and all I could think of was Rahul’s most likely shocked expression when the soup plate with only the croutons was placed in front of him, and his most agonized ‘Mim!!! Where’s the soup?!?!?!’ LOL!!! Aashish and I had quite a laugh about that – all through the soup course as a matter of fact. For the uninitiated, let me explain. Mimi and Rahul had been here (well, at least I think this is where it happened), and the soup plates are brought out with just the garnishing, with the soup tureen being carried out subsequently and the soup then ladled atop the garnishing JJ. I had the tomato which was served cold and very tasty, but was outshone by the fish soup. Sounds most plebeian, but the dollop of cream just took it to another level and it was more lobster bisque than fish soup! An excellent opening gambit! What followed was even better, with Aashish again picking the exotic – 3 oysters with cheese while I enjoyed a duck terrine with melba toast and mixed lives with a tart dressing. Muuaaah. We had asked for white wine, which so far escaped us, and Aashish was optimistically positive that their plan was to serve it with the fish (B@*%%@#) – but the silly receptionist woman just plain forgot! The service was excellent and these guys were being run off their feet – not surprising given the extensive menu and the fact that the place was packed, but they were doing a super job, and smiling throughout. Of course, the dimbulb was the only one who managed to break stuff and drop it and forget our order J. Where was I – ah yes, the fish, where both of us opted for the white fish lightly grilled served with wilted spinach and mushrooms (not sure what kind, but very small little baby looking ones). Very nice indeed, and by this time, we were getting quite full as well. The meat course was next, with Aashish opting of the beef while I had to have the lamb. Mine came with little bits of fried ‘konphal’ – the purpleply coloured veggie so thinly sliced that if you blew it’d fly away. By this time, I was feeling positively sick, and didn’t really want the cheese, but it came anyway, accompanied by tartly vinigered leaves – rather an interesting combo which I’ve never tried before, and of course, I couldn’t finish mine – I mean, what’s the point, coz it was only camembert and I wanted the dessert. No surprise there, I went for the chocolate option while Aashish went for the grilled ‘ananas’ both of which was accompanied by a tall glass of something piquant and lovely. Mine also had raspberries which was the perfect touch and yes, by this time, both of us were felling really REALLY sick and ready for the closest bed. Oh – in the midst of all this, we’d asked the waitress to take our photo and instead of clicking the shutter button, she managed to hit the on/off button instead J so we all had a bit of a giggle about that – her ‘blague’ as she insisted (little joke) Naturally, the daft one when she finally showed up with our bill had included the wine, and seemed to have completely forgotten that she hadn’t gotten us any!! Still, it was rectified with a minimum of fuss, and it was with great strength of mind that we managed to haul our carcasses from the restaurant back to the hotel and crashed straight away! Spectacular!!
Sunday was the Notre Dame and we left a little later and meandered across stopping and admiring all the little knick knacks for sale at the small shops. There was this one shop that was selling an orchestra of animals, and the horses with their instruments were truly worthy of acquisition – but alas the shop was shut!! The sign did say open all days, but from noon as was the gelato shop next door!! (and they even had something called black chocolate flavour and diabetic ice cream). since we had quarter of an hour to kill, we figured we just go on ahead and return here before moving out of the area. We strolled over the bridge enjoying the wafting sounds of the accordion before taking photos in the garden of the Notre Dame. Thought we’d have to stand in line to get in (not happening), but then discovered that was for groups, so managed to slide in without any trouble. Mass was actually in progress, and it was just so cool when they’d pick up the hymn and the notes of the organ would soar through the cathedral – really glad we were there on a Sunday and were able to catch it. The bishop (or whatever the gentlemen was) was black, as was this other priest who was sitting in a corner – he was ebony and looked like a statue – very evocative. Anyway, after that we strolled some more, and decided to mosey on to check out the location of the Tour d’Argent since we were in the neighbourhood – and well, neither of us were impressed with the view (at least from our perspective at the ground level to their top level where the restaurant is), although the tuxedo clad maitre d’ that we espied at the door was another story, we decided to use the money to buy silly gifts instead and eat at one of the little bistro/café’s that we had passed earlier. But of course, this was after we did a good bit of shopping for souvenirs strolled up and down the banks – oh! Which brings me to one of our highlights – Aashish was just resting his tired feet at this little garden while I went off to acquire some small make up mirrors with famous paintings depicted on top. I came back and joined him and soon enough there was this troupe of uniformed, booted girl guides or the French equivalent of something similar, clomping along with leader bearing a banner J. They went past us (of the girls had a scarf tied around her left ankle for some reason) and around one side of the grass centre, before deciding that this was not the best route, backtracked and went around all the away to the other side – basically to get to the same point. There they pondered over the signs and write ups and did some talking, before marching right back past us back whence they came JJ most bizarre!! By this time, our appetite was beginning to whet, so we decided to head back to the river crossing and see if the band had set up. On our way over, there was this comic dude doing stuff which we didn’t find all that funny so we moved on, but there was a trio that was setting up alongside, that looked most promising.
We got there in time to get front row seats on the kerbside J (Aashish was a little reluctant, but since I had already most unceremoniously plonked myself down, he gingerly joined me. The band was just tuning up and they were a quartet – guitar, sax/clarinet, drums and double bass and soon enough they launched into a jazz rendition of bits and pieces of old favourites. Turns out to be an American band, and while they were certainly enjoyable on a sunny day in the middle of the bridge, not exactly what you would call brimful of talent J. Still, a most enjoyable way to spend part of the day. Of course, they had their CD’s on display and quite a few people bought one. There was this little kid though, who had a better idea, and toddled over to the display case and kept picking out the coins that were already deposited J and going back to mommy with a triumphant unsteady step clutching her booty!! JJ of course, mommy not only made her put it back, but gave her even more coins to add to the collection when she did unsteadily but with great consistency. Eventually, hunger asserted itself, and we decided to forage for our dejuner. But of course, got sidetracked by the cow store JJ and we are now the proud owners of, and I kid you not, the world’s first samurai cow!! And yes, you have to see it to believe it!! It’s utterly tasteless and digusting with it’s paunch and hanging udders, but it was calling our name. Sadly, the horse orchestra shop was STILL closed L so have nothing to add to our musical animal collection.
Unfortunately, the restaurant with the most interesting menu that we’d seen, was the tiniest and all the tables were full, and well, by that time we were too hungry and distracted to wait, and Aashish was doing an admirable imitation of a cranky 3 year old who couldn’t make up his mind, so we opted for a tiny creperie. Of course, our decision was led with our stomachs and instead of just choosing a crepe, we had to go whole hog and run with the fixed menu. Which means, I had a yummilicoius duck salad – loads of crunchy greens with a piquant dressing, topped with 4 slices of very lightly roasted still pink duck - superb!!! Aashish went for the hearty home made vegetable soup (which was my plan originally, but then, you didn’t really think I was going to say no to a duck salad, did you??). For the plat – just to clarify, in the French way, you start with an entrée, then move on the main course or plat and follow up with dessert, Aashish chose a crepe - a silly chicken and something, while I had the spinach and goat cheese tart and then wound up with a crepe au chocolat J while Aashish indulged with some apple pie. Yes, you got it again – we were feeling sick at the end of it all!!
We then decided to amble down to the Museé d’Orsay to check out the 3rd floor where the impressionist are and then have tea in the Tuileries. Of course, it was a far longer walk from the Notre Dame than we had expected, and by this time I was positively dying to go the loo, and couldn’t wait to get to the museum! Anyway, we finally get there, only to see this humongous line snaking all around the people separators! Gasp!! Incredible – there was no way in hell (even without my present affliction) I was going to queue that long for a gander and the impressionists, so we were toying with the idea of heading back to the hotel and setting out again for dinner, blah, blah. Anyway, crossing over from the Museé d’Orsay to the Tuileries, we enjoyed some lovely music from a one man band taking advantage of some stupendous acoustics under the bridge. I don’t know why it is, but all the musicians here sound so much better than in London. Could be because they all carry around their own amplifiers with them with recorded bits, so you always get the impression of a full band and not just a solitary musician. Of course, this particular chappie had more than one musical talent, and was really most impressive. Anyway, to recall myself to my narrative, things were getting too desperate to contemplate anything but a dash to the nearest café or hotel, and the Westin loomed to our rescue most fortuitously J. Makes you understand why our hotel had a security lock on the bathroom doors and you needed the access code to get into the loo JJ - these French!! Anyway, my equinamity recovered, we carried out plan for tea in the Tuileries in a different café this time, next to a couple of huge sculptures of a winsome turtle and an agonized looking female form. Thusly fortified, we carried on from the Place de la Concorde where there was utter bhasad happenning – turns out it was a group wedding (they looked Japanese) and there were all these decorated limos driving around the place, with the couples – I saw 3, looking confused in the middle, and general revelers just honking their horns for joy J. Heehee – so very French I say, to do all this in the middle of an extremely busy thoroughfare.
We headed up the Champs d’Elysees, with the Arc de Triomphe as our goal, and boy, oh boy! Is it a long walk!! Especially considering we’d walked all the way from the Notre Dame already! J Still, it was fun checking out life on the Champs d’Elysees, stopping for a pulsating performance by a group of 4 young male street dancers – with loads of talent and a couple of aching heads and pulled shoulders I imagine! Mimi called in the midst of all this to grill us about dinner at ‘her’ restaurant J. We eventually moved on from the dancers to chance upon a group of uniformed vetrans gathering with flags and towards the Arc the band started pouring from the metro – late latifs! before making our way to the Arc. Hadn’t realised that it was open till 11 pm! Anyway, thought we were going to die, but made it to the top with hearts pumping precariously and breath coming in large audible gasps JJ and spent about 20 minutes or so reflecting on the city and it’s view. Of course, it turns out the vetrans and marching band were all headed for the Arc, so we were treated to the sight of them marching down the Champs d’Elysees, while the traffic behind them was held in abeyance all the way down to the Place de la Concorde, to the Arc de Triomphe. Really cool and totally unexpected. Anyway, the ceremony was still happenning at the Arc by the time we spiralled our way downstairs with relative ease and tremendous speed J and we took the circutious route back to the Champs d’Elysees to select a café for our diner.
We gave the side we came by a skip as according to Aashsih all the cafés on that side were full of American tourtists and got sidetracked by the Toyota showroom where they had the future car on display. That’s the one where the driver’s side is wherever you’r sitting and the steering can just slide from to either side J. They had an F1 demo upstairs where you could sit in an F1 car and run through a race simulation which I would have liked to do, but alas, my stomach had other plans. After rejecting several cafés and their menus, we finally decided to run with one which had the traditional ‘pot au feu’ on the menu, which literally means pot on the fire. After we sat down and were handed the menu, we realised it was a specialist beer place, with quite an ecclectic menu. We couldn’t resist the starters, which are colour coded, Blond, another type of blond but I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was called, Amber, Brun to refelct the groupings of the beer J. We went for a Brun platter which was simply delicous. A lovely melange of a seafood paste served with sesame breadsticks, a most unusual lentil salid with duck – believe it or not, the lentil in question was your silly ‘usal’ but my oh my – do they know what to do with their ‘usal’ – Maharashtrains, world over, please take notice!! This is how it’s meant to be eaten! The final of the trio was chicken with a melange of citrus fruits and mangoes – rather weird, but just went so well together!! Who’d have thunk it. It all came in a most asthetically pleasing long tray with the trio in square bowls. Very avant gardeish J and very, very edible. We were feeling really most pleased at having chosen this café to bestow our patronage upon. Sadly, they didn’t have the pot au feu, but since I was dithering about what to go for, i.e. that or the lamb with potatoes dauphinoise, I took it as a celestial sign and prepared to indulge my craving for dauphinoise and was I disappointed??? Ooho no!!! the potatoes were superlative! Such thin slices layered one atop another with glimpses of cheese in between and a brown top. Sheer bliss and I was totally rhapsodic. Of course, it was an obscene amount of potato to have to consume, but I did do my very best and left less than a quarter behind with most regret. If I really wasn’t feeling so sick, I’d have asked for a doggie bag!! And oh – the potatoes were an accompaniment to the lamb shank – which was great, but just paled in comparison to the sheer voluptousness and unparalleled richness of the potatoes. Aashish tried his first ever tagine, and enjoyed it immensely. It was a suble chicken with lemon tagine, but with the tartness of apricots and olives thrown in. Not really my scene, but he loved it. We did think about dessert, but were just ready to go home and crash, which we did with maximum haste, well, maximum haste possible at that point it time at any rate. A most satisfactory day all around J
Monday was our lunch date at Chez Catherine. This is Catherin Guerrez, one of the premier female chef’s of the city and I was happy to cancel the Tour Eiffel lunch at Altitude 95 for it. We of course, got up late, and picked up breakfast at the station before heading for the Eiffel Tower – got there at about 11ish, but thankfully not too much of a line. Did the usual ooohing and aaahing and pointing out what we knew and even lamented the lack of our ‘durbin’ albeit being inspired by what felt like a remarkable large contingent of elderly, genteel maharashtrians J who seemed to be following us around – or was it the other way around?? For a while there, on our way up in the lifts, at the sight of the spectacular panorama, we actually contemplated giving Chez Catherine a miss, and just staying on here! Anyway, the restaurant was at a lower level, and started a little inside the frame, plus we had finished well in time, so we decided to stick to the plan and head for Chez Catherine, and am I glad we did!!! It took us a while to find the place, coz the stupid map we had didn’t even show the street it was on, so we had to tramp quite a bit, but we prevailed (ok, so it was after a couple of desperate phone calls to the restaurant asking for directions J), and the smiling, portly maitre d’ was waiting outside on the street, and looked as relieved as we did JJ. It’s not a large place, and the décor is a bit like Indigo. But the food…. Oh my!!! No wonder she’s one of their top chefs!! We decided to go for the 2 course menu for €40 (and this is great value for money given the kind of food!!) – entrée and plat, giving the dessert a skip. Since we were both eyeing the same things, we decided to get one of each and share. I started with the raviole of langoustine in creamy frothy soup, while Aashish went for the tuna and melon salad. Mmmmm – simply superb. Words literally fail me and I can still taste the velvety texture of my soup – which had just a hint of anise (which I loathe!! But here, it was something else altoghether) and the don’t stint with their langoustine either! I got about 5 good sized chunks that were sweet and slightly springy to the bit, but then melted in your mouth…just exquisite. Aashish’s dish was a simple yet unthinkable combination of melon slices topped with tuna shashimi served with a trace of soy. It feels a bit strange, but astonsinhgly enough, it somehow goes so well together! I really wanted to so desperately lick my soup plate, but that would have been just too de trop! So had to settle for scraping the last spoonfuls as discreetly as I could without making a total fool of myself, when all I wanted to do was noisly slurp, chomp and then lick the last vestige of the langoustine raviole!!! Aaaaah – heaven! Then we went to high heaven J. Since we were both eyeing the gambas and the calamari, we decided to get both and split. Of course, after having tasted both, I think the better decision was to have ordered a gambas and calamari each!!! Which is what I will do the next time around and I don’t care what kind of a glutton they think me!!
First the gambas – simple enough, 4 plump prawns with their tails intact on a bed of gravy with funkily carved bamboo shoot spears and asparagus tips for garnish was set down in front of me. The calamari was a lot more dramatic – why you ask?? Well, because for the first time in my life, they served the entire calamari!! Body with tentacles attached!! Just too cool for words!! The whole thing was delicately placed on a bed of artichoke mash and had a dark inky sauce (which I suspect is the squid ink) interspersed with a lighter sauce. I tell you, we just sat and ogled our dishes for quite a few seconds before we finally gathered our wits enough to give them a try! And then….. Mim – I know you love L’Os a Moelle and it IS good, but baby oh baby….THIS is my restaurant!! Chez Catherine is Chez Nous if I’m ever in Paris again. My plan is to work through their entire menu and go back for several helpings of the gambas and calamari and of course my langoustine, till I’m either sick of them or am out of money!! The gambas (by the way, in case I haven’t mentioned, they’re prawns) was poetic! If I had any inclidnation in that direction, I would have broken into a sonnet, a haiku or even a couplet J instead all I did was slowly chew like a cow, swallow and grin inanely JJJ. To thell with sophistication – while I didn’t stoop to licking the last of the sauce, I did do a thorough job of dunking the bread in it to the very last morsel, and well, ok, so I did use my finger to swipe off the last bits of gravy I couldn’t reach otherwise J. Mannaa, I say!! The asparagus and bamboo shoots were incidentally – well not true really – I rather liked the bamboo shoots, probably because the sauce had a touch of coconut milk, but it’s so subtle, that if Aahsish hadn’t reminded me, I woudn’t have realised, well, not consicously anyway. The calamari was a triumph as well, especially consdiering how stupid they are by themselves, but her sauce was phenomenal and it was so flavourful and went so perfectly with the calamari that it was epiphany!
In case you were wondering, the restaurant does have a meat section, but were were just enamoured by the seafood and didn’t really wander any further, and I have to say, I see no reason to!! This was quite simply the best seafood I have ever had and that’s saying quite a bit considering that during our trip back home over Easter, I was convinced that only the Asians knew how to deal with seafood in a most satisfactory manner. Hmmm, perhaps it’s still largely true, but oh my!! Catherine does know indeed!! Speaking of the devil!! She actually walked by us in her uniform with a smiling ‘Bon Jour’, but I was so entranced by the food, that by the time I realised it was the great lady herself, she gone past and it was too late to say just how super her food was and how we wanted to lick the plates!! Of couurse, she’s got a cookbook out, but of course, it’s in French JJ. I was really most ready to over another round of the same, but Aashish persuaded me to move on, so after a wind down cup of tea and coffee with some petit fours, we left Chez Catherine, but not before I took a photo outside the door J. Since the portions weren’t heavy, I wasn’t feeling sick – wasn’t hungry, but I think I would have very much liked to have felt sick after eating another round (yes, yes, of the same!! ).
From there, we made our way to Pigalle and found our way to the Sacre Coeur, and did another cardio workout (guess it wsa a good think we stopped lunch when we did, otherwise, instead of a cardio workout it would have been a cardiac arrest!) climbing up to the bascillica. Incidentally, Sacre Coeur is sacred heart if you are interested. The bascillica itself is rather silly – doesn’t come near the Notre Dame which I really like plus they’re really uptight – women have to have their shoulders covered and you can’t wear hats, etc. We just sat and pretended to soak it all up, when all we were doing was trying to recover and cool down from the climb up ;-o. After our equilibrium was restored, I led the search for the Monmarte artist’s square, which we found without much effort – of course getting sidetracked to buy cheesy gifts J. Oh – and if you are planning to buy posters this is the palce to do it – the same stuff that you find along the banks of the Seine near the Notre Dame, etc. at much reduced prices!!! We strolled around the square taking in the various artists at work and the paitings displayed, before we got side tracked by the caricature artist, and I guess, the longing showed on my face, coz before you knew it, we were seated for couple caricature!! The artist, Bernard I think his name was (will have to check to see how he’s signed) chatted with us, well, me, and seemed to be impressed by my French ;-o and did rather a good job with the sketch – lots of laughter all around, and suggestions of aashish being the king of bollywood and what have you not J. I must get that laminated before any damage comes to it. Armed with our precious work of art, we found a café offering a strategic view of a couple of artists painting and parked ourselves for an indulgent late dessert of Poire Belle Helene for me – i.e. pears with vanilla and chocolate icream, chocolate sauce and chantilly while Aashsish went for the day’s special, huge fresh strawberries with ice cream, syrup and chantilly.
It was just such a treat to be able to come back here, this time around with money and do all the stuff I would have liked to have done 12 years ago, but couldn’t afford to! That was the time with Saraline and Tove, where a bunch of Japanese men wanted their photographs taken with Saraline, a true blue Nordic blonde blue eyed wonder J. It was so lovely to watch this elderly oriental origin artist start with a blank narrow pannel and turn it into a vista of the Eiffel tower with the bridge in front only using blue and white – of course, that was before he started on the second panel – EXACTLY the same thing!! And then when we walked around to see what he had on display it was all the same!! So much for wanting to buy an original work of art :P:P. There were a couple of intresting paintings of course, but nothing affordable that we really liked, so we just settled for a cup of tea before meandering back to our hotel to pick up our bags and head for the airport. The only thing left on the agenda, was for Aashish to eat ‘le Big Mac’, and the plan was to check in and do the needful. Except we had to go through passport control to be able to drop our bag off, and of course, all the restaurants were on the other side!!! Here there was only a pitiful café and an even more pitiful cafeteria, so I took the plunge and insisted we go back into the country for le Big Mac J. Immigration looked a little confused, but let us through without a demur, allowing us to enjoy the unusual experience of le big mac with a salad instead of fries :P, before we went back through passport control a second time. I have to say the French are most phlegmatic – not evne a raised eyebrow, but we have been in and out of France twice in the same day – now how’s that for jetsetting????
Needless to say, I was demolished by the time we got home – feeling every year of my newly acquired 36th year and dreading getting up this morning. But as you can see, I’ve had rather a productive day (well, not from the company’s perspective…. but then you can’t have everything now can you!) and I’m about to leave to head home. Need to pick up the tickets for the Clapton show and of course, get ready for Anaheeta and Farsheed’s arrival on Saturday, which means, mega house cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping all to be done by Saturday!!!
Back at work after a glorious weekend, although just barely! (back at work i.e. J). Feel like 106 and not 36 :), but the weekend was well worth it! Had a wonderful time and despite being more knackered that I can remember in a very long time, am all set to plan another trip back J. Next time though, we’re taking the eurostar and staying in town J. Although, to be honest, I’m kind of glad that we did stay at La Defense coz at least now I know what it’s all about – never would have gone in that direction otherwise. Basically, it’s like Canary wharf in London – a commercial/urban regeneration area outside the main city with all glass and chrome high rises, eclectic sculptures, hotels, restaurants, convention centre, movie theatre, shopping centre, blah, blah. The highlight is of course, the Grande Arche de Defense which is this huge office tower in the shape of an squared arch and you can take an elevator to the top for a panoramic view (which we didn’t bother with – we’d had enough of panoramic views by then from the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tour!). Aaaargh!! Perilous partner just snuck up on me – how does it do it every time?? It’s almost like he’s got some sort of homing device going when it comes to me doing stuff other than work! now he’s completely thrown me off my flow! Where was I???
Oh well, never mind, we’ll pick it up as we go along. The silly flight is only 40 minutes so it’s really pakaoing that you have to be at the airport so early, so next time, definitely the train. Anyway, by the time we got into La Defense it was 8 pm, and of course, we couldn’t find our stupid hotel!! After missing it a couple of times and getting really frustrated with the Hilton and the French and whatnot, our eyesight finally prevailed and we managed to check in without further incident. We had reservations at Aux Lyonnais at 9.45 pm, so had enough time, but both of us were sort of fading, and although I would have had liked to go, it’s probably for the best that we decided against it. We thought we’d dine at the hotel restaurant only to rock up to find it empty – and I mean no employees either!! So had to go downstairs, and just decided to dine at the first and closest restaurant, the Hippopotamus – a grill. Not really and ideal choice, but we were sort of beyond caring at this point. Although I have to say that during the main course, I was rather wishing we’d gone to Aux Lyonnais! The meal started off well, with a lovely crunchy deep fried platter of squid rings, cheese balls, spring rolls and something else and a big tasty Caesar salad. The main course was rather disappointing, but I guess that was to expected from a chain restaurant, and we were only too glad to leave and crash for the night.
After a sumptuous American b’fast – an indulgence for sure, but what they hey – we were on holiday, we actually managed to leave the hotel by 10 pm and headed straight for the Louvre, but via the Tuileries. Strolled around enjoying the sunshine and admiring the statues strewn all over the place – the first one that caught my eye (and for all the wrong reasons!!) was this majestic one of a centaur on the rampage with a buxom damsel caught up at his side in a most ravishing manner and oh! The ridiculousness of it all – the majesty and the sense of fury all belied by this extremely silly pigeon perched on the centaur’s noble head!! Talk about ludicrous imagery to a grand moment. The poor centaur looked anything but threatening from that angle. That’s when I looked around and noticed, believe it or not, that every statute we glanced at, had a stupid pigeon atop it!! If it just wasn’t so rude, it would have been totally hysterically (well, it was rather) rows of majestic statues, with pigeons on their heads, almost like little sculptures themselves. We strolled towards the Seine and took in the Museé d’Orsay, before meandering back to the entrance of the Louvre at the stupid Pyramid. What an eyesore.
We’d already planned a couple of thematic trails, and the first one went off just fine before Aashish and I got into a fight and went our separate ways. I spent the time in a lovely arched area with the sun pouring in through the skylights, surrounded by the most impressive sculptures sitting under a fake tree (at least I think they were fake – or rather I’m just assuming they’re fake) reading my library book. Aashish eventually joined me and we kissed and made up and then decided to have lunch at one of the café’s at the Louvre. Since the weather was pretty good, we opted to wait to be seated at the terrace where we enjoyed a glass of white wine along with our light lunch – a duck confit terrine with a smashing salad while Aashish had a potato cheesy bake – yum. We lingered over tea and coffee before hitting the master pieces trail – I wasn’t going to go for that initially, but thought I’d give the Mona Lisa another chance – and yep – she’s still got to be the most highly overrated painting in the world, and of all of Leo’s creations, the most mediocre!! The man was a genius and all that everyone can think to rave about is this silly painting. We finished off in the afternoon, and decided to stop for a spot of tea in the Jardin de Tuileries and found ourselves a café with seats under an awning right next to a lovely little lake with statue and lush purple irises (well, horticulturist I’m not, so you’ll just have to take my word for it….i.e. that’s what I believe Irises ought to look like!). of course, the silly menu had to offer crepes as well, and as I’d refrained from dessert with lunch, I decided to indulge myself with a chocolate crepe (no that wasn’t the indulgence…) accompanied by a dollop of chantilly. Of course, the dollop turned out to be this huge half plate covering 3 verrry generous squirts of cream! Such decadence – but can you think of a more appropriate setting?
Dinner was at L’Os a Moelle and we decided to stroll by the Seine to the Invalides metro and take the train from there rather than the Tuileries where we were. It was at the Place de la Concorde that we realised that the Louvre, Pl. de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe and get this, the Grande Arch de la Defense were perfectly aligned along the Champs d’Elysees!! Talk about the triumph of town planning! Most impressive. Of course the walk to the Invalides took longer than we anticipated, and then the train refused to show up – and there we were glancing at our watches every few minutes hoping for divine intervention and wondering how far the restaurant was from the tube once we got off and if they’d hold our table!! Typical isn’t it and of course, while we were waiting, 2 trains for the opposite direction came by and mocked us!! Eventually, at five minutes to nine, the stupid train rumbled up (to match the 3rd going in the opposite direction!!) and despite being 7-8 stops away, we reached our destination in a little over 10 minutes. Luckily the restaurant was just a few steps away from the metro, so we got there at a quarter past nine (and all this after Aashish kept complaining about why I’d made such a late dinner reservation!!). Then of course, the woman at the reception couldn’t find my booking which I had to point out to her (solely going by the fact that it was the only contact number with a UK country code!! Since the name was unrecognisable!!), and were seated squished amongst two other tables and all the patrons had to re-jig their belongings to accommodate us J. The menu is written out most neatly on theses blackboards which they come an plonk at a space near you JJ and as the review said, for an infamous price of €38 (which includes service charge!!) there were more ‘et’ (and) than ‘ou’ (or) on the menu! A total of 6 courses to choose from (not counting the cheese coz the only choice there was eat it or don’t eat it!). Aashish and I chose all the alternates possible and just went head to head on the fish course, but apart from that we were able to sample everything (well, almost) on the menu.
The feast began with amuse bouche. Sadly, I didn’t catch what it was, but it was delicious – even more so given how hungry we were but it did help take the edge off. It had teeny chunks of what tasted like lamb (but could have been beef) as the bottom layer and a lovely creamy, cauliflowery soupy thing on top with a little froth cap and a faint flavour of cumin??? The first course was the soup, and all I could think of was Rahul’s most likely shocked expression when the soup plate with only the croutons was placed in front of him, and his most agonized ‘Mim!!! Where’s the soup?!?!?!’ LOL!!! Aashish and I had quite a laugh about that – all through the soup course as a matter of fact. For the uninitiated, let me explain. Mimi and Rahul had been here (well, at least I think this is where it happened), and the soup plates are brought out with just the garnishing, with the soup tureen being carried out subsequently and the soup then ladled atop the garnishing JJ. I had the tomato which was served cold and very tasty, but was outshone by the fish soup. Sounds most plebeian, but the dollop of cream just took it to another level and it was more lobster bisque than fish soup! An excellent opening gambit! What followed was even better, with Aashish again picking the exotic – 3 oysters with cheese while I enjoyed a duck terrine with melba toast and mixed lives with a tart dressing. Muuaaah. We had asked for white wine, which so far escaped us, and Aashish was optimistically positive that their plan was to serve it with the fish (B@*%%@#) – but the silly receptionist woman just plain forgot! The service was excellent and these guys were being run off their feet – not surprising given the extensive menu and the fact that the place was packed, but they were doing a super job, and smiling throughout. Of course, the dimbulb was the only one who managed to break stuff and drop it and forget our order J. Where was I – ah yes, the fish, where both of us opted for the white fish lightly grilled served with wilted spinach and mushrooms (not sure what kind, but very small little baby looking ones). Very nice indeed, and by this time, we were getting quite full as well. The meat course was next, with Aashish opting of the beef while I had to have the lamb. Mine came with little bits of fried ‘konphal’ – the purpleply coloured veggie so thinly sliced that if you blew it’d fly away. By this time, I was feeling positively sick, and didn’t really want the cheese, but it came anyway, accompanied by tartly vinigered leaves – rather an interesting combo which I’ve never tried before, and of course, I couldn’t finish mine – I mean, what’s the point, coz it was only camembert and I wanted the dessert. No surprise there, I went for the chocolate option while Aashish went for the grilled ‘ananas’ both of which was accompanied by a tall glass of something piquant and lovely. Mine also had raspberries which was the perfect touch and yes, by this time, both of us were felling really REALLY sick and ready for the closest bed. Oh – in the midst of all this, we’d asked the waitress to take our photo and instead of clicking the shutter button, she managed to hit the on/off button instead J so we all had a bit of a giggle about that – her ‘blague’ as she insisted (little joke) Naturally, the daft one when she finally showed up with our bill had included the wine, and seemed to have completely forgotten that she hadn’t gotten us any!! Still, it was rectified with a minimum of fuss, and it was with great strength of mind that we managed to haul our carcasses from the restaurant back to the hotel and crashed straight away! Spectacular!!
Sunday was the Notre Dame and we left a little later and meandered across stopping and admiring all the little knick knacks for sale at the small shops. There was this one shop that was selling an orchestra of animals, and the horses with their instruments were truly worthy of acquisition – but alas the shop was shut!! The sign did say open all days, but from noon as was the gelato shop next door!! (and they even had something called black chocolate flavour and diabetic ice cream). since we had quarter of an hour to kill, we figured we just go on ahead and return here before moving out of the area. We strolled over the bridge enjoying the wafting sounds of the accordion before taking photos in the garden of the Notre Dame. Thought we’d have to stand in line to get in (not happening), but then discovered that was for groups, so managed to slide in without any trouble. Mass was actually in progress, and it was just so cool when they’d pick up the hymn and the notes of the organ would soar through the cathedral – really glad we were there on a Sunday and were able to catch it. The bishop (or whatever the gentlemen was) was black, as was this other priest who was sitting in a corner – he was ebony and looked like a statue – very evocative. Anyway, after that we strolled some more, and decided to mosey on to check out the location of the Tour d’Argent since we were in the neighbourhood – and well, neither of us were impressed with the view (at least from our perspective at the ground level to their top level where the restaurant is), although the tuxedo clad maitre d’ that we espied at the door was another story, we decided to use the money to buy silly gifts instead and eat at one of the little bistro/café’s that we had passed earlier. But of course, this was after we did a good bit of shopping for souvenirs strolled up and down the banks – oh! Which brings me to one of our highlights – Aashish was just resting his tired feet at this little garden while I went off to acquire some small make up mirrors with famous paintings depicted on top. I came back and joined him and soon enough there was this troupe of uniformed, booted girl guides or the French equivalent of something similar, clomping along with leader bearing a banner J. They went past us (of the girls had a scarf tied around her left ankle for some reason) and around one side of the grass centre, before deciding that this was not the best route, backtracked and went around all the away to the other side – basically to get to the same point. There they pondered over the signs and write ups and did some talking, before marching right back past us back whence they came JJ most bizarre!! By this time, our appetite was beginning to whet, so we decided to head back to the river crossing and see if the band had set up. On our way over, there was this comic dude doing stuff which we didn’t find all that funny so we moved on, but there was a trio that was setting up alongside, that looked most promising.
We got there in time to get front row seats on the kerbside J (Aashish was a little reluctant, but since I had already most unceremoniously plonked myself down, he gingerly joined me. The band was just tuning up and they were a quartet – guitar, sax/clarinet, drums and double bass and soon enough they launched into a jazz rendition of bits and pieces of old favourites. Turns out to be an American band, and while they were certainly enjoyable on a sunny day in the middle of the bridge, not exactly what you would call brimful of talent J. Still, a most enjoyable way to spend part of the day. Of course, they had their CD’s on display and quite a few people bought one. There was this little kid though, who had a better idea, and toddled over to the display case and kept picking out the coins that were already deposited J and going back to mommy with a triumphant unsteady step clutching her booty!! JJ of course, mommy not only made her put it back, but gave her even more coins to add to the collection when she did unsteadily but with great consistency. Eventually, hunger asserted itself, and we decided to forage for our dejuner. But of course, got sidetracked by the cow store JJ and we are now the proud owners of, and I kid you not, the world’s first samurai cow!! And yes, you have to see it to believe it!! It’s utterly tasteless and digusting with it’s paunch and hanging udders, but it was calling our name. Sadly, the horse orchestra shop was STILL closed L so have nothing to add to our musical animal collection.
Unfortunately, the restaurant with the most interesting menu that we’d seen, was the tiniest and all the tables were full, and well, by that time we were too hungry and distracted to wait, and Aashish was doing an admirable imitation of a cranky 3 year old who couldn’t make up his mind, so we opted for a tiny creperie. Of course, our decision was led with our stomachs and instead of just choosing a crepe, we had to go whole hog and run with the fixed menu. Which means, I had a yummilicoius duck salad – loads of crunchy greens with a piquant dressing, topped with 4 slices of very lightly roasted still pink duck - superb!!! Aashish went for the hearty home made vegetable soup (which was my plan originally, but then, you didn’t really think I was going to say no to a duck salad, did you??). For the plat – just to clarify, in the French way, you start with an entrée, then move on the main course or plat and follow up with dessert, Aashish chose a crepe - a silly chicken and something, while I had the spinach and goat cheese tart and then wound up with a crepe au chocolat J while Aashish indulged with some apple pie. Yes, you got it again – we were feeling sick at the end of it all!!
We then decided to amble down to the Museé d’Orsay to check out the 3rd floor where the impressionist are and then have tea in the Tuileries. Of course, it was a far longer walk from the Notre Dame than we had expected, and by this time I was positively dying to go the loo, and couldn’t wait to get to the museum! Anyway, we finally get there, only to see this humongous line snaking all around the people separators! Gasp!! Incredible – there was no way in hell (even without my present affliction) I was going to queue that long for a gander and the impressionists, so we were toying with the idea of heading back to the hotel and setting out again for dinner, blah, blah. Anyway, crossing over from the Museé d’Orsay to the Tuileries, we enjoyed some lovely music from a one man band taking advantage of some stupendous acoustics under the bridge. I don’t know why it is, but all the musicians here sound so much better than in London. Could be because they all carry around their own amplifiers with them with recorded bits, so you always get the impression of a full band and not just a solitary musician. Of course, this particular chappie had more than one musical talent, and was really most impressive. Anyway, to recall myself to my narrative, things were getting too desperate to contemplate anything but a dash to the nearest café or hotel, and the Westin loomed to our rescue most fortuitously J. Makes you understand why our hotel had a security lock on the bathroom doors and you needed the access code to get into the loo JJ - these French!! Anyway, my equinamity recovered, we carried out plan for tea in the Tuileries in a different café this time, next to a couple of huge sculptures of a winsome turtle and an agonized looking female form. Thusly fortified, we carried on from the Place de la Concorde where there was utter bhasad happenning – turns out it was a group wedding (they looked Japanese) and there were all these decorated limos driving around the place, with the couples – I saw 3, looking confused in the middle, and general revelers just honking their horns for joy J. Heehee – so very French I say, to do all this in the middle of an extremely busy thoroughfare.
We headed up the Champs d’Elysees, with the Arc de Triomphe as our goal, and boy, oh boy! Is it a long walk!! Especially considering we’d walked all the way from the Notre Dame already! J Still, it was fun checking out life on the Champs d’Elysees, stopping for a pulsating performance by a group of 4 young male street dancers – with loads of talent and a couple of aching heads and pulled shoulders I imagine! Mimi called in the midst of all this to grill us about dinner at ‘her’ restaurant J. We eventually moved on from the dancers to chance upon a group of uniformed vetrans gathering with flags and towards the Arc the band started pouring from the metro – late latifs! before making our way to the Arc. Hadn’t realised that it was open till 11 pm! Anyway, thought we were going to die, but made it to the top with hearts pumping precariously and breath coming in large audible gasps JJ and spent about 20 minutes or so reflecting on the city and it’s view. Of course, it turns out the vetrans and marching band were all headed for the Arc, so we were treated to the sight of them marching down the Champs d’Elysees, while the traffic behind them was held in abeyance all the way down to the Place de la Concorde, to the Arc de Triomphe. Really cool and totally unexpected. Anyway, the ceremony was still happenning at the Arc by the time we spiralled our way downstairs with relative ease and tremendous speed J and we took the circutious route back to the Champs d’Elysees to select a café for our diner.
We gave the side we came by a skip as according to Aashsih all the cafés on that side were full of American tourtists and got sidetracked by the Toyota showroom where they had the future car on display. That’s the one where the driver’s side is wherever you’r sitting and the steering can just slide from to either side J. They had an F1 demo upstairs where you could sit in an F1 car and run through a race simulation which I would have liked to do, but alas, my stomach had other plans. After rejecting several cafés and their menus, we finally decided to run with one which had the traditional ‘pot au feu’ on the menu, which literally means pot on the fire. After we sat down and were handed the menu, we realised it was a specialist beer place, with quite an ecclectic menu. We couldn’t resist the starters, which are colour coded, Blond, another type of blond but I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was called, Amber, Brun to refelct the groupings of the beer J. We went for a Brun platter which was simply delicous. A lovely melange of a seafood paste served with sesame breadsticks, a most unusual lentil salid with duck – believe it or not, the lentil in question was your silly ‘usal’ but my oh my – do they know what to do with their ‘usal’ – Maharashtrains, world over, please take notice!! This is how it’s meant to be eaten! The final of the trio was chicken with a melange of citrus fruits and mangoes – rather weird, but just went so well together!! Who’d have thunk it. It all came in a most asthetically pleasing long tray with the trio in square bowls. Very avant gardeish J and very, very edible. We were feeling really most pleased at having chosen this café to bestow our patronage upon. Sadly, they didn’t have the pot au feu, but since I was dithering about what to go for, i.e. that or the lamb with potatoes dauphinoise, I took it as a celestial sign and prepared to indulge my craving for dauphinoise and was I disappointed??? Ooho no!!! the potatoes were superlative! Such thin slices layered one atop another with glimpses of cheese in between and a brown top. Sheer bliss and I was totally rhapsodic. Of course, it was an obscene amount of potato to have to consume, but I did do my very best and left less than a quarter behind with most regret. If I really wasn’t feeling so sick, I’d have asked for a doggie bag!! And oh – the potatoes were an accompaniment to the lamb shank – which was great, but just paled in comparison to the sheer voluptousness and unparalleled richness of the potatoes. Aashish tried his first ever tagine, and enjoyed it immensely. It was a suble chicken with lemon tagine, but with the tartness of apricots and olives thrown in. Not really my scene, but he loved it. We did think about dessert, but were just ready to go home and crash, which we did with maximum haste, well, maximum haste possible at that point it time at any rate. A most satisfactory day all around J
Monday was our lunch date at Chez Catherine. This is Catherin Guerrez, one of the premier female chef’s of the city and I was happy to cancel the Tour Eiffel lunch at Altitude 95 for it. We of course, got up late, and picked up breakfast at the station before heading for the Eiffel Tower – got there at about 11ish, but thankfully not too much of a line. Did the usual ooohing and aaahing and pointing out what we knew and even lamented the lack of our ‘durbin’ albeit being inspired by what felt like a remarkable large contingent of elderly, genteel maharashtrians J who seemed to be following us around – or was it the other way around?? For a while there, on our way up in the lifts, at the sight of the spectacular panorama, we actually contemplated giving Chez Catherine a miss, and just staying on here! Anyway, the restaurant was at a lower level, and started a little inside the frame, plus we had finished well in time, so we decided to stick to the plan and head for Chez Catherine, and am I glad we did!!! It took us a while to find the place, coz the stupid map we had didn’t even show the street it was on, so we had to tramp quite a bit, but we prevailed (ok, so it was after a couple of desperate phone calls to the restaurant asking for directions J), and the smiling, portly maitre d’ was waiting outside on the street, and looked as relieved as we did JJ. It’s not a large place, and the décor is a bit like Indigo. But the food…. Oh my!!! No wonder she’s one of their top chefs!! We decided to go for the 2 course menu for €40 (and this is great value for money given the kind of food!!) – entrée and plat, giving the dessert a skip. Since we were both eyeing the same things, we decided to get one of each and share. I started with the raviole of langoustine in creamy frothy soup, while Aashish went for the tuna and melon salad. Mmmmm – simply superb. Words literally fail me and I can still taste the velvety texture of my soup – which had just a hint of anise (which I loathe!! But here, it was something else altoghether) and the don’t stint with their langoustine either! I got about 5 good sized chunks that were sweet and slightly springy to the bit, but then melted in your mouth…just exquisite. Aashish’s dish was a simple yet unthinkable combination of melon slices topped with tuna shashimi served with a trace of soy. It feels a bit strange, but astonsinhgly enough, it somehow goes so well together! I really wanted to so desperately lick my soup plate, but that would have been just too de trop! So had to settle for scraping the last spoonfuls as discreetly as I could without making a total fool of myself, when all I wanted to do was noisly slurp, chomp and then lick the last vestige of the langoustine raviole!!! Aaaaah – heaven! Then we went to high heaven J. Since we were both eyeing the gambas and the calamari, we decided to get both and split. Of course, after having tasted both, I think the better decision was to have ordered a gambas and calamari each!!! Which is what I will do the next time around and I don’t care what kind of a glutton they think me!!
First the gambas – simple enough, 4 plump prawns with their tails intact on a bed of gravy with funkily carved bamboo shoot spears and asparagus tips for garnish was set down in front of me. The calamari was a lot more dramatic – why you ask?? Well, because for the first time in my life, they served the entire calamari!! Body with tentacles attached!! Just too cool for words!! The whole thing was delicately placed on a bed of artichoke mash and had a dark inky sauce (which I suspect is the squid ink) interspersed with a lighter sauce. I tell you, we just sat and ogled our dishes for quite a few seconds before we finally gathered our wits enough to give them a try! And then….. Mim – I know you love L’Os a Moelle and it IS good, but baby oh baby….THIS is my restaurant!! Chez Catherine is Chez Nous if I’m ever in Paris again. My plan is to work through their entire menu and go back for several helpings of the gambas and calamari and of course my langoustine, till I’m either sick of them or am out of money!! The gambas (by the way, in case I haven’t mentioned, they’re prawns) was poetic! If I had any inclidnation in that direction, I would have broken into a sonnet, a haiku or even a couplet J instead all I did was slowly chew like a cow, swallow and grin inanely JJJ. To thell with sophistication – while I didn’t stoop to licking the last of the sauce, I did do a thorough job of dunking the bread in it to the very last morsel, and well, ok, so I did use my finger to swipe off the last bits of gravy I couldn’t reach otherwise J. Mannaa, I say!! The asparagus and bamboo shoots were incidentally – well not true really – I rather liked the bamboo shoots, probably because the sauce had a touch of coconut milk, but it’s so subtle, that if Aahsish hadn’t reminded me, I woudn’t have realised, well, not consicously anyway. The calamari was a triumph as well, especially consdiering how stupid they are by themselves, but her sauce was phenomenal and it was so flavourful and went so perfectly with the calamari that it was epiphany!
In case you were wondering, the restaurant does have a meat section, but were were just enamoured by the seafood and didn’t really wander any further, and I have to say, I see no reason to!! This was quite simply the best seafood I have ever had and that’s saying quite a bit considering that during our trip back home over Easter, I was convinced that only the Asians knew how to deal with seafood in a most satisfactory manner. Hmmm, perhaps it’s still largely true, but oh my!! Catherine does know indeed!! Speaking of the devil!! She actually walked by us in her uniform with a smiling ‘Bon Jour’, but I was so entranced by the food, that by the time I realised it was the great lady herself, she gone past and it was too late to say just how super her food was and how we wanted to lick the plates!! Of couurse, she’s got a cookbook out, but of course, it’s in French JJ. I was really most ready to over another round of the same, but Aashish persuaded me to move on, so after a wind down cup of tea and coffee with some petit fours, we left Chez Catherine, but not before I took a photo outside the door J. Since the portions weren’t heavy, I wasn’t feeling sick – wasn’t hungry, but I think I would have very much liked to have felt sick after eating another round (yes, yes, of the same!! ).
From there, we made our way to Pigalle and found our way to the Sacre Coeur, and did another cardio workout (guess it wsa a good think we stopped lunch when we did, otherwise, instead of a cardio workout it would have been a cardiac arrest!) climbing up to the bascillica. Incidentally, Sacre Coeur is sacred heart if you are interested. The bascillica itself is rather silly – doesn’t come near the Notre Dame which I really like plus they’re really uptight – women have to have their shoulders covered and you can’t wear hats, etc. We just sat and pretended to soak it all up, when all we were doing was trying to recover and cool down from the climb up ;-o. After our equilibrium was restored, I led the search for the Monmarte artist’s square, which we found without much effort – of course getting sidetracked to buy cheesy gifts J. Oh – and if you are planning to buy posters this is the palce to do it – the same stuff that you find along the banks of the Seine near the Notre Dame, etc. at much reduced prices!!! We strolled around the square taking in the various artists at work and the paitings displayed, before we got side tracked by the caricature artist, and I guess, the longing showed on my face, coz before you knew it, we were seated for couple caricature!! The artist, Bernard I think his name was (will have to check to see how he’s signed) chatted with us, well, me, and seemed to be impressed by my French ;-o and did rather a good job with the sketch – lots of laughter all around, and suggestions of aashish being the king of bollywood and what have you not J. I must get that laminated before any damage comes to it. Armed with our precious work of art, we found a café offering a strategic view of a couple of artists painting and parked ourselves for an indulgent late dessert of Poire Belle Helene for me – i.e. pears with vanilla and chocolate icream, chocolate sauce and chantilly while Aashsish went for the day’s special, huge fresh strawberries with ice cream, syrup and chantilly.
It was just such a treat to be able to come back here, this time around with money and do all the stuff I would have liked to have done 12 years ago, but couldn’t afford to! That was the time with Saraline and Tove, where a bunch of Japanese men wanted their photographs taken with Saraline, a true blue Nordic blonde blue eyed wonder J. It was so lovely to watch this elderly oriental origin artist start with a blank narrow pannel and turn it into a vista of the Eiffel tower with the bridge in front only using blue and white – of course, that was before he started on the second panel – EXACTLY the same thing!! And then when we walked around to see what he had on display it was all the same!! So much for wanting to buy an original work of art :P:P. There were a couple of intresting paintings of course, but nothing affordable that we really liked, so we just settled for a cup of tea before meandering back to our hotel to pick up our bags and head for the airport. The only thing left on the agenda, was for Aashish to eat ‘le Big Mac’, and the plan was to check in and do the needful. Except we had to go through passport control to be able to drop our bag off, and of course, all the restaurants were on the other side!!! Here there was only a pitiful café and an even more pitiful cafeteria, so I took the plunge and insisted we go back into the country for le Big Mac J. Immigration looked a little confused, but let us through without a demur, allowing us to enjoy the unusual experience of le big mac with a salad instead of fries :P, before we went back through passport control a second time. I have to say the French are most phlegmatic – not evne a raised eyebrow, but we have been in and out of France twice in the same day – now how’s that for jetsetting????
Needless to say, I was demolished by the time we got home – feeling every year of my newly acquired 36th year and dreading getting up this morning. But as you can see, I’ve had rather a productive day (well, not from the company’s perspective…. but then you can’t have everything now can you!) and I’m about to leave to head home. Need to pick up the tickets for the Clapton show and of course, get ready for Anaheeta and Farsheed’s arrival on Saturday, which means, mega house cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping all to be done by Saturday!!!
Travelogue - Andalucia
September 12, 2006
‘Oh I’m off to sunny, sunny Spain, e v y España and I’m taking the Costa Brava train, e, v, y España, something about the senoritas at the door… e, v, y, España ……. España por favor, España por favour!!’ JJ taking about finally getting the point of a song, oboy oboy oboy, do I get it or what!!! and I can’t wait to be off to sunny Spain myself, again. What an incredible holiday. Mimi totally outdid herself both in terms of the itinerary as well as the spectacularly yummy little boutique hotels she picked – a 100% strike rate, each one was better than the next and all just fabulous. I also think the reason I’m gushing so much is that it was all so unexpected…. One of the only holidays where I haven’t organised anything apart the flights (all I did was call and confirm the bookings and pay for stuff as required) and so had no idea of what was planned or for that matter where the hell we were going (apart from Sevilla), so it came as a wonderful surprise and each little town was so distinct in it’s geography and the stuff we did there so it was an double whammy of the unexpected and the charming and quirky.
But before I launch into my enthusiastic account of Andalusia, talk about frenzied hosts.. ever since Ma & Ba arrived, i.e. since 29th July, we’ve had guests non stop! First then Mimi, and we left the day after they did and got back to have Sachin come stay with us while Mimi & Rahul were just leaving…. Phew! Never ending stream.. guests galore!! Just got back from lunch with Marnie and she even mentioned that I looked so pleased with myself and very relaxed J but then again, she also thought I’d lost weight and had to ask one of her colleagues where Andalusia was!!! But, I digress….. still, it was such a satisfying holiday and I’m in such a great mood, it’s a real bummer to have to come back to London and then to work!! First things first… Sevilla (that’s pronounced ‘Sayveeya’ – double l’s are a y and of course the ubiquitous j as a ‘h’ sound J). Anyway, Sevilla was hotter than hell! We got in, in the morning, and it wasn’t too bad, although you did feel the difference the minute you stepped off onto the tarmac – our hotel, the first of Mimi’s little gems was in the old town and if the taxi driver hadn’t known where it was, we’d have never found it!! The Amadeus as the name suggests is a very musically inclined hotel, with the ground floor being devoted to comfortable seating and a host of mint condition musical instruments. There have a quite little room with seating around a table (perfect for a romantic breakfast) where there is an upright piano and a guitar – this room has a door, so presumably it’s for those that are musically inclined but not necessarily talented enough to inflict on the other guests JJ and outside, is a gorgeous grand piano and a harp!! Each of the rooms of course are named after a famous composer with Mozart having the place of honour at the only suite the hotel had. The keys were in the shapes of musical notes and notations J, and here’s the best bit. While checking in, we were told that breakfast would be served on the terrace between 8 and 2!! J - of course we had to check with each other to make sure we’d heard right…
The rooms were quite charming, tiny, but with attached bathrooms and nice fluffy towels. The best part was that each room had a CD player with a collection of classical CD’s that you could swap around. Also, they had a small library on the top floor with a selection of books, in various languages. The roof terrace was also lovely, but it was just too hot to even think of hanging out there, so we decided to explore the old town a bit and set out armed with a map, which really didn’t’ do any good… still, we managed to get around and come to a relatively large, picturesque square with a fountain in the middle and seating along the periphery under the shade of trees and we hung around there just chilling and eating our ice creams. There were a couple of restaurants around the square, so we selected one with a fan blowing cool water J - a feature that was irresistible to every single passer by, who’d stop and wonder and inspect it before moving on. The food here was probably the worst of the entire trip – very mediocore, although Mimi’s pork chops were rather good. Aashish and I shared the paella (remember, that’s Paeya), which was ok. Of course, in true tradition, we had to go back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta – none of us had really anticipated the heat (went up to 42 degrees!!) plus we’d had to leave the house at 4 am that morning to make our flight from Gatwick. We stepped out again in the evening, and this time ventured towards the shopping district (and it was still bloody hot!!), and after having actually given up on finding the Mango store, discovered it on our way back J. Our first splurge….. of course, I’d already identified some flouncy, frilly flamenco aprons that were must buys and loads of t-shirts with bulls on them. Saw a lovely sleeveless one that I’d wanted, but of course, couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d seen it….like a fool, I left all my souvenir shopping for our last day in Sevilla, which I hadn’t realised was a Sunday!! So net, net, got nothing from there!! And there was this gorgeous shop selling ceramics and hand painted fans (everyone in Seville carries one, no surprise…..and the ladies actually wear them as accessories), and I thought maybe I’d spend some money and buy a nice fan and not the usual tourist crap…..aaah, next time J
Oh – forgot to mention… the roads in the old town are a joke!! They are so narrow its hard to take them seriously – barely enough room for a grown up car to pass through, and the street our hotel was on….. to even call it a street is making me smile, but it did have a street sign, but it’s so tiny, there isn’t room for 3 people walking abreast!! Naturally, all these little ‘calles’ as roads are called, are cobbled and muy romantic J. It’s funny how the buildings are so close together, but it works, coz it keeps the street in the shade as much as possible, so walking there is bearable, and then the houses open into cool and usually verdant courtyards, and it’s impossible to tell what a house is actually like just from the way it looks outside…..
Dinner was at another little square, but this time we opted to sit indoors. Since we were feeling hungry earlier than the normal Spanish dinner time of 10.30, all the restaurants were empty… this one had some people, and it turned out they were a tour group J. Had paella here again (they only do it for a minimum of 2 people) and this time, we had a winner!! Quite easily the best paella I’ve ever eaten – quite ‘jholly’ and with these HUGE red prawns or ‘caribinera’ as they’re known locally. Utterly scrumptious and they were most generous with the crustaceans. The next morning was our trip to Granada, so we didn’t linger for long, and went back to the hotel, to be greeted with the unexpected treat of a virtuoso pianist in full flow… this young chap (egged on by this older chap) was at the grand piano in the lounge and was doing bits and bobs of different pieces, but what a superb hand. We stood around on the 1st floor hanging over the railing and enjoying the free concert – what a lovely and unexpected way to end the evening. Of course, Mr. Velkar set the alarm and for whatever reason, it refused to go off… so we were late!! But it’s funny, coz dawn in Spain is at 8 am!! Not surprising actually when you consider that they’re physically behind London and the GMT, but for whatever strange reason, follow the rest of Europe on the clock, which puts them an hour ahead of London!! Go figure, these Spaniards I tell you! Still, we made it to the station without any trouble and picked up our car and breakfast and headed for Granada and the Alhambra - none of us really wanted to go, but we’d already bought the tickets online and booked the car :P:P)– cursed by our own efficiency J. All 3 of us would have rather spent the day just pfaffing around J. Hoist by our own petard as it were.
Anyway, got to the Alhambra without too much trouble, but that’s when things got excited. At the carpark, while doing my usual stretching exercises to get a parking ticket (I finally got it right on the last day while coming back to the airport carpark to drop off the car!), oh – incidentally, this lady passing by took pity on my gyrations and actually walked across while I was trying to unbuckle myself to pull the ticket out of the machine and give it to me J. Jolly friendly people these…. Anyway, while all this was happening, I managed to stall the car… and then, after this nice lady handed me the ticket, I couldn’t start the blasted thing again!! The battery was totally dead and there we were at the entrance to the carpark blocking everyone else…. But totally stuck!! What a situation! Had to get out and push – well, poor Aashish did most of the pushing, coz he only had Mimi to help coz I was still in the drivers seat (now you now why the driver’s seat is used to convey the aura of control and power :P), and we just got into the closest carpark, where Aashish almost broke his back trying to push it up a slight incline into the lot, before I turned around and we went downhill – and yet again, these Spaniards, this young girl who was just at her car, leapt forward to give a hand with the pushing of the car to get it aligned right…. What a friendly bunch. After several calls managed to get the number of the Hertz helpdesk, and had to wait ages before they found someone who spoke English, but once we crossed that hurdle, it was cool – no problemo!! They’d send a tow truck and if the car couldn’t be fixed, they’d tow it away, and order us a taxi to their town office and give us a replacement car…
Now, for the next rather unique bit of Spanish characteristics… (the first being the friendliness of the people of course!) – these people are so hung up on timing it’s not funny. The Alhambra has restricted timings for the palace inside, as well as the main entrance and we had afternoon tickets, i.e. they will only let you enter after 2.00 pm!! We almost made it in before the security guard realised that we had the ‘tarde’ ticket and sent us out again J. So since we had time to kill, we did lunch and called Hertz back asking them to send the tow truck…which came and duly took the car away… of course, there was some confusion coz the driver thought we were going back with him, and we thought we were staying and having a taxi sent for us later.. one of the security guards from the carpark seem to take a keen interest and was helping the in the arm waving exchanges that were taking place, and coz we had split to be able to finish lunch and get the car sorted out, he even most helpfully caught my attention to tell me my ‘amigos’ had arrived from the carpark….. incidentally, lunch was a Spanish omelette or as they are called in Spain, a tortilla (don’t forget the double l rule… that’s tortiya to you!). When we went in for the second time, the guard recognised us, and gave us a big ‘Hola!’ J.
Overall, the Alhambra was a bit disappointing… mostly because when you come from India where Islamic architecture has had such a great influence, it’s nothing fancy when you see it again on a much smaller scale.. I mean, hey, we have the Taj…. And while this is rustic and suchlike, it’s ok, no great shakes. What’s really nice is these orange trees in the courtyards with huge oranges hanging down (and this is all over the place – we even saw them in Sevilla, in the main square of the Giralda, except we thought they were lime coz they were green!!). here again, we had the 2.30 – 3.00 pm entrance for the Nasrid palace and we got there about 10 minutes before but they wouldn’t let you in till it was exactly 2.30 pm! So we just hung around and draped ourselves on the side ramparts, watching them let in the 2-2.30 pm ticket holders and deny the 2.30 holders… right up to 1 minute before the stipulated time.. who’d have thunk it!
The palace itself was also just ok, a couple of nice features, gardens, but like I said… impressive if you’re European and haven’t seen much Islamic stuff. I didn’t particularly want to see the generalife gardens, but since the ticket included it, we did a quick tour – extremely dumb!! But I did manage to sort out the taxi pickup to the car rental, and Mimi chatted with some kids and their parents from Barcelona who were practising their English on her J. Mr. Velkar of course, rushed us to the roundabout where the taxi was supposed to pick us up from (we eventually followed panting and puffing with Mimi threatening to have a heart attack imminently) and then spent the next 10 minutes cooling our heels! Still, when the taxi came, it was a cool one – this dude had a screen for the back seat showing music videos with great surround sound. Very cool!! We drove for quite a while and we were actually wondering if he was driving us all the way back to Sevilla (some 250 km away!!), but it was to the airport – coz that was closer. Anyway, we got an upgrade on the car, and another full tank as well! JJ so net, net, apart from the cost of the phone calls (which were made on the office phone J), we made a profit on the car rental :P. We also managed to get back to Sevilla before Rahul’s arrival (the jerk was upgraded twice on his flight, all the way to First class, and actually was offered a night suit to change into to enjoy his slumberette experience even more, and even had some minor celebrity babe travelling with him a la pyjamas) and we popped out for some tapas. Sevilla has loads of tapas bars, but can’t say I was overly impressed with what was on offer. Their pork is exceptional – they must have really contented pigs in Iberia!! But the rest was ok.. still, quite a feat getting the stuff ordered in a crowded, noisy and wholly Spanish bar.
Here’s another apparently Spanish trait that I’d never thought of… they seem to be serious animal lovers… somehow, that’s not the image one has of Spaniards.. I mean you say English, and you think of horses and dogs… but the Spanish love their dogs and there are so many people with pets, and of course, they take them everywhere! At the tapas bar, the next table (everyone stands coz there’s hardly any seating) had this fluffy looking dog who was looking around hopefully for scraps, and even the day before, we ran into so many dogs, mostly rather silly looking, accompanied by proud, but sheepish owners JJ. There’s this particular breed of dog, that I think is indigenous to this region at least and he’s all wolly and furry and wrong for the climate… but you see this creature everywhere! But it’s lovely to see the dogs romping about everywhere, peering from doorways and just being silly. The next day, we took a horse carriage from the Giralda square and did a tour of the city… the real city of Sevilla, i.e. the modern bits is across the river while we were in the picturesque bit. We drove past the river, saw the bullring in the distance, then went inside the palace gardens (Maria Lousia gardens I think they were), then onto the Plaza de España (which after travelling to other bits of Spain we figured out was as prolific as our very own M. G. Road in India…. Every single town/village boasts a Plaza de España) – this was on a grand scale and most impressive, but being the afternoon, utterly deserted!! This is where one of the Star Wars (new lot) scenes between Aniken and Amidala was filmed as well…..
After that relaxing jaunt, we decided to exert ourselves and check out the Giralda, and I’m very glad that I did… it’s the biggest gothic church in the world and the 3rd biggest church in the world after the Vatican and St. Paul’s – most impressive. The interiors are magnificent, and the sheer scale of it all takes your breath away. I’ve always loved the Notre Dame, but next to this one, it just pales into insignificance – imagine that!! It’s also where the tomb of Christopher Columbus is kept, and they also have a section for private services and we were lucky enough to witness a wedding… well, the guests arriving at any rate J and it was cool to watch everyone in their finery… what surprised me was that a number of the women were wearing trousers – somehow hadn’t thought that would be a popular decision for a wedding particularly in church and in a country like Spain! Goes to show how much I know! Of course, the ladies all had matching hand fans that they swished and clicked open J, and there was this one dude with a bright orange waistcoat who stole the show J. What was really funny, is that the wedding photographer, even took photos of all the tourist that were gaping at the guests J. Imagine your wedding being a tourist event. But what a superb place for a wedding. Of course, Rahul had to go and say that it reminded him of Afghan Church!! So naturally, I will have to make a trip there to verify his claim. Anyway, after gawping at the guests for a bit, we made the ascent to the tower of the Giralda. Hmmm – have I mentioned, this was originally the site of a mosque built by the moors in xxxx, but was then razed to the ground to make way for the church? Anyway, the tower is 17 floors high and thankfully there are no steps, but just slopes all around, but still, you do arrive panting to the top, but when you get there, the view is quite incredible… Sevilla is quite a white town itself (white towns are specialities of Andalusia, done primarily as protection against the heat – where all the houses in the village/town are painted white and it’s really picturesque). While we were up there, the bells rang and it was enough to make one jump out of one’s skin!! Talk about resounding!
After that Aashish and I felt too lazy so we opted to go back to the hotel and just read and catch up on a bit of siesta, while the intrepid explorer and her beau went back to the Plaza de Espana, visited the Real Alcazar and whatnot. We hooked up again after dinner to catch the flamenco performances at Los Gallos (yes, that’s Gayos and means rooster). It’s a tiny little bar with a small stage and baby chairs and tiny tables… and very difficult to find!! But find it we did, eventually…. and got there just in time for the start of the performance. What can I say!!?!?! It’s was brilliant – think it was a family effort (between the acts there was a baby crying upstairs, where the dancers were descending from, and every now and again there’d be gestures and chatting with someone upstairs from the stage J. There were two primary guitarists each accompanied by a pair of male vocalists and clappers, and then there were 3 women dancers, 2 men and 1 older lady who did the singing and just a wee bit of footwork. It started off well enough, but each successive act was better than the next and they finally built up to a crescendo with all of them taking the stage. The first dude who came up was this young, skinny boy, but oh my! He was simply breathtaking with his footwork. At one stage, he was doing this tippy toe flamenco thing like a running train and it almost felt like he was just going to fly off the stage!! Quite incredible….and then of course, he did all these most impressive spins. I’ve never seen such an incredible male dancer before (and that reminds me of Sergei Filin of the Bolshoi in Bright Stream, but that’s another few pages ;-o) – actually gave you goosebumps just to watch JJ. Then there was this rather cross looking young woman who was a super dancer, followed by this much older woman who did the crooning along with some token dancing, but she was quite the character, with her faces and gestures and funny thing she did that looked like she was lifting her boobs back up J. But my favourite was the last female dancer, also an older woman, but still so beautiful – what I’d call a perfect idea of a Spanish beauty who did the flamenco with a fan and then castanets and for me was the perfect blend of skill, charm, beauty, character and verve. At the end when they came together on stage, all of them.. oh – before that, the second male dancer came on stage, and he was pretty good too, and Rahul kept insisting it was the same guy – FOOL! Well, it wasn’t and in the end, they all wound up on stage and it became like a fiesta atmosphere with the women chatting and the cross looking one looking quite lovely when she suddenly broke into this huge smile and the place resounded with Olé’s and claps and it was just so much fun!! I really wish we’d gone for another performance to another flamenco place just to see how it would compare… I know, I know…… next time…. J
Oh – forgot to mention, the waiters at the bars and restaurants are most relaxed and easy going – they hum and even actively sing while they work and this one dude even had a cigarette dangling from his mouth when he was clearing up (of course, in Ronda, I saw a horseback policman with a cigarette while on active duty…..viva Espana!). anyway, my point was after a couple of days, we got used to well, service being uniquely Spanish, when suddenly at breakfast at one of the café’s we were shocked by a show of English efficiency!! The waiter of course was English, and kept bustling about while the two other Spanish boys just had a gait that moved to the beat of a much less purposeful drummer JJ. After breakfast we headed towards Cadiz and our first pre-booked meal destination at El Faro. This turned out to be our first navigational challenge, as within the silly little town, there were no decent road signs and we just couldn’t find the blasted railway station. The original plan was to hire a locker and leave our baggage at the station as the port town has a reputation of things being stolen from parked cars… anyway, after going around the same place a couple of times without any clear signs for the station, we took a call to just head for the restaurant and deal with the bags when we got there. Found the restaurant a damn sight easier than the station and it was in this really narrow road, choc a block with cars parked on both sides!! But wait, miracle of miracles…. They not only had valet parking, but a huge empty enclosed parking garage!!J of course, we realised later on our way out that, that was the back of the restaurant J.
This was the place where the booking was for Señora Calling and her troupe, but luckily he didn’t ask for my name, and just led us to a table when I said we had a booking J. We got to the restaurant at 2.30 pm, but it only started filling up after 3 pm in true Iberian style, and there were still people enjoying a leisurely lunch when we left at 5.30 pm!! We had the caribinera here as well, but on hindsight, they were not value for money at all – I mean they were delicious – absolutely superlative, but then so were the prices… quite outrageous! But the restaurant did have the best octopus salad on offer, and a lovely waiter, who of course spoke no English, but was most entertaining, especially when Rahul just sat through the first three courses with an empty plate causing him much consternation, and when finally when he agreed to have something put on his plate, the dramatic sigh of relief was quite funny… we started of with the grilled prawns and then went onto the octopus salad, which is served with potatoes – I know, a very strange combination, and one I would have thought that was doomed to fail, but it was just superb! The octopus was meaty and tender and the potatoes divine and it all came with this slightly piquant dressing and olive oil – muuah. That was followed by these delicate, feathery prawn tortillalets that just crunched themselves into oblivion J. Rahul had one of these much to our waiters joy and oh yeah… everytime he’d come with a dish, someone would pick up a fork, and he’d go.. ‘no no.. a mano’ J and no, that’s not like the American mano à mano aka man to man, but rather, by hand :P:P. The last item was pimentos stuffed with crab smothered in cheese and baked, and that was Rahul’s and of course, drew another series of sounds from our waiter when he realised this time around, none of us were eating and it was only Rahul :P – sort of a cross between a spitting cat and a tired befuddled one J. Still, we did sample some and I thought it was quite delicious J…. Yep, next ime ;-o. finally come time for dessert, he says he’s only got Spanish menus, so we say, no problemo… and of course, once it’s there, we have too many questions, so when he finally comes to take the order with a flourish and a pretend lick of the pencil stub, we ask for the carta Inglese JJ - his deflated expression was really hilarious. Needless to say, that we were all feeling jolly sick after dessert!
Eventually, we tore ourselves away and headed towards Vejer de la Frontera, our next stop for the night. The directions we had were really precise and accurate to a ‘T’ J. Vejer is this small ‘white’ town up in the hills, but close enough to a beach (some 12 km away) and it’s the only place where the roundabout leading to it has a big fat VEJER sign (byt the way, that’s pronounced VEHER and Frontera is Fort, so effectively there are a lot off little town built around old forts). Naturally the roads are narrow and two way and winding… but we made it without too much drama, although getting to our hotel in the old town was quite exciting – cobblestoned roads, parking on one side, and barely enough space for 1½ cars with of course 2 way traffic J. Our first hotel Casa del Califa had a magnificent view of the valley below and parts of the white town and while the rooms were nothing great, it had these most intriguing stairs and little passages and nooks and crannies and an amazing terrace sit out. Luckily we had a room just off the terrace, and used it as a private terrace most of the time J. They also had a cosy little cave like room which was the games room – with trivial pursuit, chess, monoploy, a huge jigsaw (and all the corner pieces were white!! That it – just plain white!! Talk about patience required to try and figure that one out). The hotel also has a restaurant El Jardin del Califa (which translates as the Caliph’s garden) which is really popular, so much so that we couldn’t get a table there that night, and had to book for the 2nd night J. So what did we do for dinner??? I can’t remember – oh dear! Let me think. Oh yes! The hotel’s bang on the main square… and you wonder, could it be? Is it really? Plaza de Espana??? Of course it is!! J it’s got this fountain in the middle of the square with these rather large lubrigous looking frogs (4 of them actually) and seating all around. But before dinner, how could I have forgotten to mention the parking… naturally the square is packed and there’s barely enough place for a single car to go around the plaza, but the hotel has parking a ways down the hill with steps allowing you to come back up. After dropping the bags off, Aashish and I went to park the car, and my oh my – was that a challenge J. We went down this really narrow and steep, and what I hope was a one way street) throught the old town, barely saving the sideview mirrors from scratches, and then had to go up this really steep unpaved slope to get to the carpark. Most exciting J. The trudge back up to the hotel however was not quite as exciting!! Not true really, coz we passed peoples house and they were on the steps sitting and chatting with their neighbours and it felt like we were in a fairly story rather than real life!! Really an incredible experience… and these were like regular streets in the town with proper street names et al, but so tiny!!
Dinner was nothing spectacular, but it was outdoors and in the square so we got to see the action… for a small town, this place sure has lots of traffic. Even when I was waiting in the car while the others checked in, there was a non stop stream of cars going around the square. Most peculiar and then of course, this car comes up and parks besides me, and a manner which in any other country/city would have earned an instant ticket, and the driver kept saying ‘pas possible’ while his cohort kept insisting it could be done J and voilà – it was!! Anyway, even while we were having dinner, loads of cars kept whizzing past, some of them slowing down and stopping in front of the restaurant and you had to wonder if they did take away J, and then I think the cooks mother paid a visit, coz this car with an older couple stopped and the chef came out for what looked like an exasperated chat JJ, and then some younger kids come up to confirm plans with one of the waiters J all in their cars, going around the fountain. My theory (arrived at the following day) is that all these cars come up to the plaza coz that’s the only place to turn once you’re up the mountian JJ. After dinner we went back to the terrace and enjoyed the moon for a bit before retiring. Oh – and yes, the hotel had a couple of cats that meandered about and kept you amused, and there was a rooster in a distance that was probably crowing in the evening to signal the end of the siesta time ??? J. Incidentally, you can bring your breakfast up to the terrace and enjoy it there. The only thing was that it was really windy – which was a lovely change from the heat in Sevilla, but totally unexpected and dinner was quite a challenge to keep things from flying off before you were good and ready. We then made sure of full ‘paisa vasooli’ by hanging out and playing trivial pursuit in the games room before packing it in for the night. And oh – they also have a map room, where they have a computer with internet access J
Breakfast was at the restaurant, outside in a lovely garden area, compelte with speakers hideen in birdhouses, a decorative well, and whatnots. Quite a good spread too, with cold cuts, cheese and fruit in addition to cereal and breads and loads of jams and suchlike. The plan was to go into Tarifa where we had a whale watching scheduled and incidentally, Tarifa’s the place that’s supposed to be windy….. but my oh my, the wind that persisted through breakfast, was a mild ‘phoooo’ compared to the storm whipped up here…… hmmmm. So much for Chicago’s claim… they should really visit this region to understand the true meaning of Windy City!! Anyway, we got to Tarifa and Rahul got really excited coz he thought he’d get either some kite surfing or wind surfing going… we had an enormous, and I mean ENORMOUS lunch… portions in Spain, well, Andalusia are large to start with – very hearty, but this place was just ridiculous. We asked for a salad, and this huge bowl come out.. Mimi ordered grilled prawns and they came with a loaded plate with a dozeon of these good, solid sized whole critters – enough for 3, I’d asked for a swordfish steak,and I kid you not – it was almost a foot long – just crazy!! And shockingly, the prices were most reasonable… one of our cheapest meals, but oh so much food!!! Unfortunately, after driving through the old time and managing to locate the whale watching office, we were told the watching was off coz it was too windy! The gits were supposed to have called us, but of course no one did, and before you start rolling your eyes at the Spaniards, let me hasten to add that this was run by Swedes….. but that also expalined why Rahul had no luck with the wind/kite surfing school and why we couldn’t see anyone at all on the water….
Intrepid explorers that we are, we carried on undettered to the beaches, driving quite a bit to get to Bolonia which is a popular local beach and very lovely,.. the sand is grainy, which is lovely when it’s still, but when the wind picked up it was like being whipped JJ. Quite an experience!! Thankfully, all Spanish beaches are topless so managed to get an unbroken tan while the others squealed (well, only Mimi and then me when I was urged into the bloody freezing Atlantic!!! When are these people going to realise that’s why we have the Mediterranean?!?!?!) and splashed about in the water. Keeping with the pet friendly policy there were random dogs strolling about enjoying the wind and water and whole families bravely battling the wind for their day at the beach. It was great fun to just sit there and watch all the goings on. A real local family beach, with everyone but us and another set of American tourists who paid for the umbrellas and chair, and they brought their own chairs and umbrellas – a sight which sent us into convulsions in Tarifa. Every single person on the road was either carry a beach umbrella, or beach chairs, or a cooler or pushing a baby stroller!! Without fail – the entire stretch of very long promenade JJ. Eventually, the wind just got too much for us, so we decided to try another beach on Mimi’s list, La Barrosa which naturally was in the opposite direction! Well, we got there, and I can’t tell you how much it reminded everyone of Florida! Neatly manicured green spaces, clean palm tree lined streets, older people with pot bellies, posh beach houses – rather bizzare. The complete opposite of Bolonia. This one had only tourists, no locals (or if they were, the well to do ones), the beach had strings of hotel owned chairs and umbrellas, soft white sand, and NO dogs!! And well, don’t remember seeing any children either! Most sterile.
We drove back in time for drinks on the terrace before moving down to dinner at El Jardin del Califa, and I must say, I can understand why you need to reserve a table. It was one of the best meals we had during the trip and best of all, unplanned and spontaneous! Thankfully, we were sitting inside so no wind to deal with, and this is the oldest part of the hotel, where they used to store grain and was used as a cistern. It’s really charming and old world and done up most evocatively. we started off sharing a mezze platter which was excellent – I particularly liked something (no, I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s like a ‘bora’) and the babaganoush (morrcon version of begun bharta) was superb. Rahul had ordered some kebabs as well, while Aashish opted for a salad loaded with fruit and nut and very nice. After much agony we decided on the main course, and Rahul did the pork, Mimi went for the lamb tagine, Aashish went for something called Mijoli which was rice with begun and kheema and cheese while I was lured by the lamb with okra – haven’t had bhindi in ages!! Well, in the vein of the starters, the main course didn’t disappoint – Rahul’s pork was exquisite – quite easily the best pork I have ever tasted in my whole life and he looked like a most satisfied hog himself after scarfing what he called his best meal in Spain (poor chap – a bit hard on someone who’s not a seafood freak), Aashish’s thingymajig was also very interesting and my lamb was butter sof and delicately spiced with ginger and sadly too much for me to finish!! Rahul’s cup ranneth over when he found out they had Haagen Dazs as well J. Our waitress was lovely, to look at and service wise and it was a fun meal all around – especially since we’d all been merrily drinking since 8 pm J.
The next morning, the plan was to check into Escondrijo our second hotel in Vejer before wandering out. What can I say.. the best laid plans… Escondrijo is run by this English couple Netty and Nigel (who’s called Miguel locally…. Don’t ask why!) and they’ve turned their home into such a beautiful place to stay. Like El Casa del Califa, it’s got several levels and their office (which is a small desk and the dining table J) and 3 rooms are on the same floor with the pvt. terrace room upstairs and the library along the steps and then going down from the base floor into the sub-ground area where breakfast was served, along with an open bar, den housing the CD collection, a piano and the TV and a small internet room. Unbelievable! It’s really like your own house, excpet a damn sight nicer, and with big, fluffy towels, and crips sheets and someone else keeping it all clean – how much more perfect can it get?? The terrace was much smaller and the view not as exotic as the Casa del Califa, but enough place to lounge about and chill. In residendece are also their dog Duena, and their 2 cats – we only met the first called Pinky for some strange reason. This one is that cat in the ‘curiosity killed the cat’ phrase. I’ve never seen such an inquisitive cat!! Every sound, every gesture, every movement…. he’d be there inquring about JJ. Well, it was just too perfect a setting to waste, so we just lounged there the whole day – reading, listening to music and messing about with the animals – that cat was just hysterically and I had such a good time just playing with it’s mind. The rooms I suspect are forbitten territory for them and they’re just desperate to get in. This cat was in reality just an overgrown kitten who is apparently fascinated by these vases with long reeds that were in our room and just coulnt’ keep her head out of them and was so intruiged. It’s such a lovely thing to be able to have pets to amuse you and play with, but not really your responsibility to look after J. What a holiday!! Pure bliss. Oh – we did step out for lunch – to this little café overlooking the valley and had our first taste of Cazon, a local speciality which is dogfish lightly spiced and with lemon and then batter fried. Excellent! This café also had the best sangria we’d had so far (well, it was the best we had period!) and we went through 2 harras JJ - coz Mimi and Rahul decided it was a lot better than their Cerveza’s! (beer). By the by, harra is a jug, and our fst experience was at the indifferent restaurant where we began with ½ a harra, then had copas (copa = glass), but towrads the end it was always as full harra to start with J We actually went here by default, coz we went exploring for a restaurant close to the Escondrijo, but everything was shut!!! Opening at 6 pm only, so we eventually meandered our way thorugh the old town, saw the sights, did some souvenir shopping – where this shopkeeper chappie kept up a constant stream of chatter in Spanish about a myriad range of subjects…. J. So truly a most satisfying day.
We split up for dinner coz I was starving by 8 pm, and the sloppies were too sloppy, and went back to the restaurant that was open from 6 onwards.. of course, we were the only people there barring another young American couple. Dinner was good as well – almond soup to start with followed by pork for me (almost as good as the Califa’s) and a huge bowl of mussels for Aashish. The restaurant was on the ground floor and upstairs seemed to be the owners house coz there were kids screaming and running around – but it was more of a novelty than a nuisance – even an adult thumping about chasing themJ, and then they came down 3 off them and started palying on the street outside, running around JJ. What a great life!! Dessert was a bit of a bummer – the menu said wild strawberries with cream and what came was funny berries with custard JJ. Must remember English strawberries and Andalusian wild strawberries are a whole mindset apart! Of course, Mimi and Rahul came rocking up at the fag end for their dinner, so we hung out together for a bit, before we retired… after a bit of a meander through town. I stopped at this little shop selling shawls and wall hangings that was still open, drawn by the sight of what seemed to be a working hand loom, and the lady there spoke English so had a rather long and interesting chat with her… it’s her mother that weaves and some of the pieces were hers, but the rest from a co-operative. What’s more, her sister visited Hyderabad many years ago to learn about spinning and weaving and came back with some lovely textile printing blocks and was now actually visiting her in Vejer, but they hadn’t been able to go to the beach because of the ‘levante’ or the wind! When I told her I might stop by the following day, she warned she might not be there coz if the wind had eased up, she’d be at the beach JJ. Good life, wot! Send Mummy to the shop instead.
We got home to find a cat with rather a fancy diamond studded collar hanging about the front door, so when we went in and I held the door open, she popped in as well. And then promptly followed us to our room J. Then of course, after we'd locked the front door I got to wondering whether or not the cat actually belonged here or if we'd just taken someone else's cat in! Was rather worried about that, but then eventually let it go. Next morning, we heard mewing outside the window and voila - there she was again, so without thinking about it, I just opened the shutters and she was back in J. Thankfully, she did belong to the house and what's more, was just dying to get into Mimi & Rahul's room for some obscure cat reason. When we went out, she joined us and then sat patiently outside Mim's room mewing every now and again and raising a plaintive paw asking to be let in J. Found out later, that she did manage to slip past Rahul's vigilance and duck under the bed causing much trauma to Mimi in trying to figure out how to get her out - I actually had to carry her out of our room at one stage coz she was too comfortable to move J. I do like these cats rather much! Mimi and Rahul did find the bar Janis Joplin (yeah - most bizarre) but it was a tiny hole and empty so they went somewhere else that had a rude bartender who thawed when they asked for some pistachios J
Had a wonederful night in our sumptious bedroom – it was just so cozy. Breakfast was lovely as well with Netty’s sister playing hostess – we started with fruit and cereal with a really tasty yoghurt, follwed by eggs and toast and of course juice and tea/coffee. Very nice indeed. Incidentally the bathroom on that floor is just spectacular! Don’t worry we have photos J
September 13, 2006
Did I mention that on Monday, my first day back at work, Guy (that’s my boss) called, and the phone has caller id, so I knew it was him, but the only thing in my head, was ‘Hola! Que tal?’ and I had my mouth open, but my brain was saying that’s not right, so there I was holding the phone with an open mouth for quite a few seconds while Guy identified himself, and it then came to me, I should have said ‘Apara speaking’ when I answered!! JJ. Today sadly is also going to be a long day at work – have a deadline for an RFP submission tomorrow 9 am. What a sad life…. But on to happier things J. The next day was reserved for lunch at Hacienda Rosalejo followed by a trip to Cabo de Trafalgar…. Of course, we didn’t realised till we actually got there, that Cabo meant cape – we’d been thinking lighthouse, beach, and all sorts of silly things. But first, our adventure to find Hacienda Rosalejo. Mimi had read about this obscure but very good restaurant with a tasting menu that was out of this world, in the middle of nowhere. Reservations were a must coz there was no guarantee that they’d be open, so I had called and then made another colleague call and confirm in Italian/Spanish. So, duly armed with maps, etc. we set out early on and it was a looong drive, but I have to say, a most interesting one – the landscape we encountered was completely different from what we’d seen up to now – rolling hills that on closer inspection turned out to be farmland… with swathes of grain being harvested. After a couple of false moves and losing and finding our way back on the correct road, we finally came across the highway Villamartin, only to realise that we should have been at the other end J. But the directions we had were very precise, and the Hacienda was supposed to be 6.6 km from the start of this highway, and since we’d been driving for quite a while and it was 2.40 pm, the suspense just got ratcheted up another notch to serious tension JJ as we counted off the kilometres one by one and as we crossed #6, the tension was palpable J - and lo and behold, we saw a sign for a hotel/restaurant (the knife and fork thingy), and an executive decision was taken that it didn’t matter what it was, that’s where we were going to eat! But…. As promised, it was indeed Hacienda Rosalejo – yay! Victory!! Well, we pull into the parking lot where there are other cars, but the entire place seems to be deserted, but that’s what the reviewer had said anyway……, and the front door was shut, so we went around the back to come across a couple of men who were of no help at all, and then Mimi found the restaurant, but that too was empty, when this young dude appeared looking rather confused to see us and informed us that the restaurant was shut!! So of course, we launched into our reservations bit, but he just continued to look confused and said they were shut all month!! Can you believe that?? Talk about twilight zone!! I’d actually spoken to someone here, not once but twice and confirmed a lunch booking for that date!! And they were shut – for the month no less!! Poor Mimi was just so upset, and she felt even guiltier coz we’d driven so far…. And she was in tears… which really pissed the rest of us off, coz, well, this is just not done!! Hope she’s remember to write stinker on the blog about the Rosalejo. No wonder the restaurant doesn’t have a Michelin star despite its alleged excellent cuisine!! They were probably shut when they came around J.
We then backtracked to Villamartin to try and find some lunch, except Villamartin is such a tiny village, that everything was shut for siesta… so we then headed for Arcos de la Frontera, where we pulled up at the first restaurant, the Voy Voy J. Thankfully, the restaurant was still open, and we ordered lunch – and had the best Cazon ever!! Oh no – I’m such a nerd – was just re-reading this last bit (it’s several days after it was originally written) and instead of the Kaaazon sound of Cazon, I was thinking of the Kayzon of Star Trek!!! Watanerd watanerd!! :P:P
September 21, 2006
Ok – I’m picking this up after so long, I’m not sure I can even remember what happened next! Aaah – it’s coming back to me now. Had a bit of a frenzied must do situation when we got back…. Well we didn’t go back, but to Vejer but headed straight for the Cabo de Trafalgar and the beach.
in case you're wondering, Cabo is Cape - and diminished holiday intellect only made that connection once we were there! Looking at it now, it's so blindingly obvious - must be the sun and time difference that make you a little soft in the head :-). The lighthouse itself is not very imposing, but rather quaint and has a wooden platform running all around it, but the sea!! Oh my - it was simply grand. So utterly blue and for miles around - quite spectacular. Of course, it was rather windy as well, and it was only after we toured the lighthouse (the next time we go, I plan to spend some more time there, just hanging around on the rocks enjoying the majesty of the cape) and were halfway to the beach, when we saw Mimi and Rahul trudging back - and of course, my first thought was they'd either had a fight or cut themselves on something... but it turns out that beach didn't allow any swimming. I suppose I should just explain this - there is a narrow stretch of road that leads to the lighthouse, and it's flanked by a beach - that was choc full of kite surfers, and there's a small beach just at the foot of the light house as well, which is where we had gone. And I was really please coz I saw a naked woman :-) finally, a nude beach for a perfect tan.... but alas, since I was the only one even remotely interested in a nude beach and the rest wanted to get into the water,. we trooped off to the other beach, only to have a 'no swimming' there as well...... and yes, the soft headed finally solidified enough for realisation to set in.... we were at the bloody cape - of course swimming in these waters was dangerous!!! and not permitted!!!! aaaargh - talk about feeling a right idiot, so we just headed for El Palmar (which incidentally is the closest beach to Vejer - but we were too busy being intrepid explorers reaching far and wide to the other beaches), which turned out to be a rather nice beach. Have I mentioned the great thing about Spain is that all the beaches are topless? We stayed there till the sun started sinking (at around a quarter past eight), and even made it up the hill to our home in Vejer before it got dark J.
Rahul was set on a Spanish Thai green curry dinner, so Aashish and I meandered our way through the old town checking out potential restaurants, but somehow, I just couldn't bring myself to have another meal with the same deep fried fish smell, and we wound up at the French restaurant at foot of the road where our hotel was, and I'm so glad. The food was really good, and I had a lentil soup with Iberian ham, and a most gorgeous smoked salmon and roquefort millefeuille with light as a feather pastry. Aashish had fish and it was a delicious change J.
Next morning we were off to Jerez de la Frontera (hmmm, did you say Herez??) As usual, it was a rushed departure... I went and got the car up to the main square from the car park (and let me assure that was quite a feat in itself coz people had parked their cars in the middle of the car park as well and it took me ages and more backing and forthing that I had anticipated before I was able to manoeuvre myself out of there!! Anyway, loaded the car and headed back for breakfast and suchlike, and of course, now that we're pushing to leave, suddenly both Nigel and Netty are all out chatty.... here I am trying to pay the bill and leave, when Nigel starts chatting about the UK and what we're doing (each one!) and when I told him Mimi wrote for a children's comic, he launched into this story of how he met a someone at a party once who also wrote for children and they had staff meetings to discuss the length of a rabbit characters ears!! :) Too bad really that they picked this moment - it would have been fun to chat more. Netty told Mimi that their 5 year plan was to have this house completely for themselves and buy a new one for the hotel.... and that this winter, they'd be holidaying in Vietnam! Now, that is the life!! I can really see myself doing something like this. Not making pots of money, but enough to get buy and do at least one decent holiday a year, a scrumptious house with silly animals bounding around in a laid back relaxed town up in the hills but 10 minutes from the beach!! Ole!! We finally managed to say our goodbyes and leave, and what do you know!!! Our first parking ticket in Europe.... apparently, those slots at the square come with restrictions - no wonder the place was free when I brought the car up from the carpark! and quite a hefty one at that issued by the Vejer police. It was stuck in the windshield and initially we thought it was a flyer, and were joking about parking tickets.... and well, only took a proper look as we were heading out of Vejer and realised it was a parking ticket. How rude. Of course, then there was this debate about how to pay, rather, Mimi and Rahul were debating in the back seat... the front seat had a wiser approach... say nothing till someone asks you to pay up :) and then of course the discussion went to how I'd be on the 'wanted' list of the Vejer police and I'd never be allowed back in Spain.... Rahul of course was in hysterics with visions of me skulking around the Iberian border in a huge sombrero trying to duck in....
The drive to Jerez was done without any mishaps (well, apart from a huffy Aashish refusing to navigate when we had conflicting directions) - and the directions provided by this lady were spot on! Quite literally - right from the petrol pump on the left of the first roundabout to the roundabout with the headless man and the square with the palm trees :) perfect to a 'T'. When we got to the hotel, it was a flurry of chaos, as we had tickets for the noon show at the Real Escuela and it was just coming up to a quarter too, so Monica who runs the place just organized us - told us to leave the bags and she'd sort us out, called for a taxi, called the school and sent us off... we made with enough time to collect the tickets and be seated before the show began...and what a show. Ok, so I do like horses very much, but it was really incredible how well trained this lot were and how they did those horrendous looking side steps and alternate leg changes to the music. While it was beautiful, a part of me baulked at it - I mean, I'm sure the horses can't be enjoying this at all which is rather unfair!! The arena was packed (when I was collecting the tickets they had already sold out - ours were advance booking and a good thing too!!) and of course you had all the Spanish ladies clicking their hand fans open - such an elegant sight - even in their regular clothes. The horses were gorgeous, especially the darker ones with their gleaming coats and when they did the prancing march, it was just incredible. The carriage act was pretty good too and it was wild to see just how tightly they could turn in a circle, but the finale was really spectacular with the flanks of riders doing their thing - very Ole! Sadly, photography is not allowed, so no shots :(.
We made a dash for the entrance as soon as the show was over (I have to admit I was most reluctant to leave coz it was only 1.30 pm and I was positive it went on till 2 pm :P) and were lucky enough to get the first cab - of course, we had a bit of a fight with another lot.. well, not really a fight, more of a 'oi - I say it first.. but ah, we hailed him first...' but were back at the hotel soon enough and sure enough Monica had most efficiently dispatched our bags to our room, and then sorted out the parking for us - we'd parked a little ahead of the square, and as she explained it, up to an hour was fine and to save hassle we bought a 2 day parking card even though we were only there for just a day. Of course, when we got to the car to prop up our parking card, lo and behold!! yet another blasted parking ticket!!! Unbelievable - 2 in the same ruddy day! So we went back to Monica for advise, and get this, she was berating herself for not having asked about the car when we arrived... J. Still, we figured out how to pay the fine (well, had to pay this one coz we were going to be there till the next afternoon!) and then finally headed out to lunch. Mimi & Rahul went off to this 'designer' tapas bar that Mimi had read about, and we just rocked up across the square to this tiny bar, where Moncia said they might have sandwiches (we were kind of sick of the same tapas everywhere by now..), but alas! no such luck and we had to settle for a tapas lunch. Thankfully, we had acted on Aashish's brainwave and rescheduled the bodega tour for the following morning, so we had a chance to just take a breath in the afternoon before heading to the Hammam Andalusia.
Mimi and I had elected to go in for the full treatment, while Aashish chose a half hour massage and a dip in the baths, and Rahul, the cowardly custard (apparently he was traumatised by some Thai massage some time ago...) staunchly refused all offers of a massage and wanted to wallow in the pools. After some instructions (which apparently no one listened to, coz once we were in the changing room, we hadn't a clue about what we were supposed to do, and after much consultation between the ladies and men's changing room [thankfully we were the only people there], and discussions about shoe sizes - huh! weird wot?! who'd wear shoes in a turkish bath?? Anyway, turns out these are rubber feet protectors and you're supposed to wear them in the baths - not sure why... if that wasn't enough, along with the big fluffy towels, we were given plastic elasticised shoe covers which we had to don in the reception before we were allowed into the main bath area! hmmmm - well, we made it to the dressing room, and then as I said, confusion reigned supreme, to take towels or not, which direction, blah, blah. Anyway, finally sorted all of that out, and we crept towards the bath... crept coz everything is very dimly lit inside - most exotic and well, very soothing. We'd been instructed to dip ourselves in the following order - first tepid, then hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold, but in no event stay in the hot (all this is water in case you haven't got it) for more than 10 minutes at a stretch.
Well, the tepid was heaven... the bath has, well all the baths have these underwater lights that change colour every 10 minutes or so, and it's dark with exotically soothing music playing... ummmmmm. Fabulous. Mimi got so carried away she did a bit of swimming in the bath :) - jolly embarrassing! Aashish was the first to take the plunge in the hot and we all followed.... and to my surprise, it wasn't all that bad and after a while, rather comfortable. My plan was to do just hot and tepid, and that was reinforced after Aashish went into the cold pool up to his waist and came back out saying it was just bloody freezing and impossible to go into! But then after a bit, I thought I'd give it a try and I did, and yes, it was freezing, but the shock of the cold was comparable to the shock of the Atlantic at the beach! Also, I didn't wade in slowly like Velu and hang about waist deep contemplating the sub zero temperature, but plunged right in and it wasn't so bad. Ok, so I got the hell out soon enough but felt immeasurably brave after that ;-o. Then coming back to the hot was interesting - your whole body's tingling as you get out of the cold, and then it starts to hurt when you get into the hot! Hmmmm - not good, you say... but after doing this a couple of times, you rather start to enjoy it, and you do feel your circulation going and well, feel rather invigorated :-). But rest assured, there was much yelling and some serious litany swearing the first time everyone went into the cold pool (thankfully we were all alone) along with heaped curses on the sensibilities of the crazy Turks who invented this (Rahul reckons that's why they went to war so often... every time Mummy said go for a bath, they hopped onto their steed and started attacking other civilisations :-)) and those even crazier Swedes!
In the midst of our dippings, this rather strong looking lady took Aashish away for his massage, and the 3 of us really got into the hot cold routine, with Mimi and I staying in for 30 seconds in the cold :) (of course, at the end of 30 seconds it was a very rapid exit coz the cold actually starts to hurt you - like pins and needles). Aashish came out of his massage looking like a zombie... so relaaaasssked that he could barely stand up, and assured us he'd be back after a shower to wash off all the oil. It was our turn for the Hammam treatment after that while Aashish returned and joined Rahul in the bath. But now, onto us... we were both in the same room, and this time there were 2 hefty women. The room had two marble beds on either side an a sink in middle against the wall. The reason for the marble beds is that they keep washing you off with loads of water - much to my indignation; Mimi got sploshed by water poured from a lovely earthen bowl while I only got an aluminium bucket!! Felt like a horse being washed down!! Anyway, we started by being rubbed over with this soap type thing that smelt of the silver coated elaichi (the English equivalent positively eludes me at this time!) which naturally made Mimi feel hungry.. then after been hosed down, we were thoroughly scrubbed with a scrub glove (which we got to keep as souvenirs) and then packed with warm mud and had our faces painted with stuff and then were left to marinate. While we were marinating, we could hear Aashish imparting his wisdom to Rahul and despite several 'bebous' ranging from plaintive to booming, they obviously couldn't hear us.
The ladies eventually came back for us and after another round of hosing, washed our hair and then sent us out - it was really cold out after the warmth of the treatment room, so my masseuse very sweetly got us both big, fluffy bathrobes to wear and we had to dry off before the massage, but were given some lovely sweet tea, served in this ornate silver teapot with little sip size cups. Then, onto the massage room where we were rendered loose limbed and compliant - the best facial massage I've had... although they didn't do our fronts - just our entire backs and then face and shoulders - Velu was oily all over when he was done! Anyway, the boys had already left by then so we went back to the dressing room but decided against washing off, and just patted ourself dry of the oil and headed back to the hotel. It later came out during dinner that Rahul had been thrown out very politely from the baths, and while leaving, he thought he'd left the map behind, and with his atrocious efforts at dumb charades tried to explain it to the receptionist (not the same one who gave us instructions coz she spoke English just fine), and for all his efforts, this dude who was sent it to check the dressing room came out with Aashish's shorts! JJJ. Rahul had the hysterics accompanied by a sniggering receptionist and hurried to explain that's not what he meant and in any case he'd found the silly map... and in the meantime, Aashish who was in the shower (he'd left the shorts on the door I think) doing his feet finishes to find his shorts missing.. J. So he was really flummoxed, and then this chappie comes in most embarrassed with his shorts, and gesticulates and tries desperately to explain that he wasn't really some sort of deranged shorts theif/ fetish man, but that somebody had left something and he thought this was it.... and Mr. Velkar rises to the ocassion by reassuring him thusly, and I quote 'No problemo!' LOL.
Dinner was La Mesa Redonda, a rather good restaurant (complete with Monica's approval!) so we all gussied up and went across. The minute you enter the restaurant it looks like someone's living room with a sofa and table lamps.. and Mimi who was leading was a bit taken aback, but it opened out into a small, intimate restaurant. We were seated by our waitress - an unusual sight, and that too a middle aged lady with whom we had an interesting exchange of dialogue while ordering our meal - first of all, we couldn't make up our minds coz there were just so many interesting things on the menu to chose from! And to add to our confusion, she came along with the day's menu that was also on offer! Of course, that took some miming coz it wasn't written down, but I did get 'paloma' - and even sang Una Paloma Blanca (I'm just a bird in the sky), which I remember as a white dove - not sure that it was dove and not pigeon, but hey - not really that much difference is there! We all ordered starters and mains, while Mimi the brave plumped for 2 starters and a main, and our lady looked at her with renewed respect and said as much :). Here again, the portions were most generous - I'd ordered scallops - quite by accident, coz they call them escalopes, and I thought that was the escalope of flattened meat thingies, so was pleasantly surprised to have a plate loaded with half a dozen humongous scallops! Never I have I seen so many in a single serving - at best you'd get two, but usually only just one of this size, and I was struggling with 6!! Mimi ordered the poached eggs with prawn and they were sublime! Quite the high point of the entire meal, closely followed by the main course of pork stuffed with pate. We also had quite an exotic selection of game - with rabbit and the paloma, and of course no place for dessert. The chef came out to do his rounds and stopped and chatted with us - not surprisingly commenting on Mimi's sheer order of magnitude :-). I don't know how, but she actually finished everything (her 2nd starter was a vegetable lasagne - no pasta, just slices of vegetables imitating lasagne.. and no, the slices weren't thin! and while on the starters, Aashish had a hearty soup and Rahul this little shrimp puffs steeped in alcohol)!! Rahul was more than a tad merry after 2 glasses of red wine, and they had to scrap their plans for a night out at another bar :-) as we staggered our way home.
After breakfast, we headed back in the direction of the Real Escuela for the tour of the Sandeman Sherry bodega and made it just as the tour was leaving... did all the sampling - Mimi & Rahul drank all their fino!! and then while they headed back to town, I persuaded Aashish to check out the training at the Real Escuela and the tour of the stables. The training was cool, coz there were the main riders from the performance who were doing the training with the younger riders on the horses putting them through the paces. We then went for a tour of the stables, and apart from being smelly and completely the wrong place to wear slippers too... it was rather informative. Apparently, it's a 4 year course at the riding school and each year only 4 applicants are chosen out of 80-100. Of course, it's predominantly Spanish, coz the language of instruction in Spanish, but this year they had a Danish girl and previously a Dutch guy. To apply, the students not only have to pass a written test, speak Spanish fluently, but also have a dressage display on one of the horses from the school that they've never ridden, and now there are 5 female students - quite an achievement in a male dominated arena (think we saw all 5 of those women in the training, coz I remember being surprised to see so many women there!). The criteria for selecting the horses are very strict - like all thoroughbred classifications and they stable and train other horses as well. Learnt another interesting fact.. the white horses that you see don’t start of being white...they’re this grey and then as they get older they start dappling with white spots appearing and the older they get the whiter they get! Did you know that? So the splotchy ones are partway there, the dappled greys are young ‘uns and the white ones are veterans! Interesting, wot!
We gave the museum a skip and since we couldn't find a taxi we started walking in the general direction and before you knew it, we were back in familiar territory - yep, Jerez is a small town! I was dying to go the the designer tapas place that Mimi had been to, and we found it easily enough, and though none of the sherry barrel tables were free, we founded a shaded table and did our ordering with my linguistic talents at the fore - forgot the Spanish word for duck, so flapped my arms and quacked at the waiter, and voila, 'magre' was ordered J J. As Mimi had described, all the tapas came with a virulent green sauce or a fluoroscent orange one accompanied by Sali wafers and the fried cheese was fabulous!! Can’t remember if I’ve elaborated on what ‘tapas’ are – basically, they’re Spanish hors d’ouevres and can constitue a whole meal if you eat enough of them, and mostly the locals drink fino or dry sherry along with it. Typical tapas would include pork (usually with garlic), chicken (we had one stuffed with ham and cheese), fish balls, even grilled brinjals with honey!! prawn in poached egg (speciality), fried cheese, and loads of stuff, all served in bite sized pieces served with bread/breadsticks.
Incidentally, this is Spain’s sherry growing region, and the different kinds of sherry is what is drunk here – manzania in Sevilla (which makes me keep breaking out in song – Ill bhangia bill bhangia…. J), but only fino in Jerez (only Sherry from Jerez region is called fino). The other thing about Jerez is that when we got there, well, at least the area near our hotel, all you could see were older people! Mimi claims it’s coz there’s nothing else here but the fino J although, things did pick up on the day we left coz of the feria de Otono (Autumn festival) that was just beginning. We had to leave right after to drive down to Ronda, which we managed without too much drama, even stopping at Grazelema on the way. Grazelema is this really tiny town up in the mountians and it’s really cool to see the changing landscape as we drove down. Right from the Sevilla side which was more barren to the brilliant coast of Cadiz, then onto the picturesque white towns in the hills at Vejer and then the rolling farmlands around Villamartin/Ubrique and now, the dense foliage of the mountains. Most unexpected to suddenly see so much lush greenness but apart from being adorably pretty to gaze upon (no pun intended!) Grazelema is also next to a national nature reserve. While Mimi and Rahul went to explore Grazelema, I took a little horizontal break on the carparking stones but before I couldn't even contemplate a nap, those two were back, so onwards we continued to Ronda. The geography of Ronda is just spectacular.
I’ts these sheer soaring cliffs with buildings suddently appearing atop - quite breathtaking - but sadly I don't think we have a single photo!! L at least, I don't think so. We also didn't have a map from direction we came through for getting to the hotel so after getting further and further away from the town, we decided to call the hotel and check - turns out half the roads are closed for the feria, and we'd have to take the outside road in any case... the directions seemed clear upto a point, but then, we seemed to be going along this narrow road getting nowhere, so we backtracked and tried again, and eventually asked a very friendly barman for directions, and lo and behold - we had been on the right track all along - just gave up too early. Anyway, we found the hotel and a good carpark, and then just chilled by the hotels miniscule pool J. This place is outside town with steep steps leading up into the town, but excellent coz on the other side it abutted a stud farm - and get this, right next to us in a pen was this mare with her new foal - both coal black and so pretty, and then on the gently rolling hill yonder, there was a whole bunch of horses grazing! At when the began it was just a couple of horses on the top silhoutted next to the tree and it looked like a movie set. Very cool to say the least. I spent the evening just sitting there relaxing watching the horses and soon enough there were these bells.... attaching to goats also meandering about in the adjoining area - totally unexpected and such good fun. We had dinner reservations in town, but none of us felt like making the effort of trudging up the steps so we gave it a skip and just ate at the hotel. I really enjoyed my dinner of a super prawn tagine and even indulged in a bit of dessert - chocolate crepe with a berry coulis J. For the life of me I can't remember what Aashish ate, but I do know he enjoyed it. The best part was the tables were all outdoors, 2 on the patio and the rest in the garden with vibrant table settings and as the sun sets at 8.30, you gaze out on the movie set silhouette ahead of you. They also served a complimentary glass of fino along with a tapas before the meal which was a nice surprise.
The plan was to go into town the next, although Velu was content to just stay where we were...but I had some serious souvenir shopping to finish before we left. But after a lovely breakfast where we made an important scientific breakthrough, we just felt too lazy to move, and so the plan was to just lounge about, read - yes, they had a small library as well! and then head out in the evening. But coming back to our breakfast - Aashish had gone down first, but came back empty stomach coz they would apparently only serve all of us... but I think that's just Aashish being Aashish and if he'd asked they'd have fed him! So, anyway, I went down with him, and it was just so gorgeous. Breakfast, this time out on the terrace, looking over the mare and foal and the other horses peacefully grazing away. Breakfast was a good spread too, with fruits (the most fruit I've ever seen in Spain thus far!!), cheese, meats and bread along with different kinds of jams and preserves and honey. I know you're dying to know about the scientific breakthrough, so here goes - bees are carnivores! Bet you didn't know that! A bunch of them that were hovering around took an unnatural interest in the ham plate, and Aashish very sagely informed me that they were only curious and once they'd satiated their curiosity they'd move on.... hah! curious indeed - they were taking chunks of meat and flying off, and they just refused to budge from that plate. They started off with the salami which I think was easier to nibble on and decimate, but they did try the Iberian ham as well.... and not a glance at any of the sweet stuff that was on the table! Very focused indeed - like a good mac/mangy! ;-o. So eventually, we had a little battle of the bees vs. Guha, coz I saw no reason why I should sacrifice my ham for any more scientific research and anyway, Aashish wasn't having his, so I started cutting around the bees and taking away more and more of their sample :-).
If you think that was just a freak thing, I have empiricial evidence to support my theory. When Rahul rocked up for breakfast, I stayed to keep him company and this time, we were well prepared - stuck another plate on top of the ham plate, but one of those suckers manged to find a gap and snuck in and had to be hastily but carefully shooed off and napkins used to pug the leak J. While it was under cover there were no bees hovering, but the minute I opened it to make Mimi's sandwich, it was like magic.... pirhana scenting fresh blood....like moths to a flame………..like bees to honey (NOT!!)…. back again to the carnivore fest! Who'd have thunk it!! Bet none of the vegetarian honey slupers know that this eartwhile production is fuelled by pork products!! JJ
Lunch was relatively meagre, coz they only do a tapas lunch and like I said, we were too lazy to make the climb merely to forage for food! Still, it was quite tasty - very different tapas from the norm - coz it was only vegetables!! Gasp! Shock! Horror!!! and here in Spain - what an aberration! I swear it must be just the garlic that keeps them alive as long as they live :). Mimi & Rahul left earlier on, but we eventually made it to town close to 6 pm, and my oh my!! Am I glad we went! This town knows how to party!! But before that, let me go on a bit about how simply breathtaking it is physically. There's a bridge that goes over the ridge and it's just spectacular... sheer drop on one side, with green outcroppings and even a little waterfall and then suddenly from that point the town extends inland - and I only know that because of the postcards showing an aerial view! It's truly an amazing sight. The bridge opens onto the Plaza d'Espagna (and no, no points for guessing that), and a little further on is the bullfight, Ronda's pride and joy. This is one of the oldest bullrings in the country, and Ronda has produced 2 of Spain’s most worth dynasties of bullfighters, the first being the Romeros followed by the Ordonez family. What we'd never realised is just how integral bullfighting is to Spanish life. Even when we were in Sevilla and Vejer - at least one TV channel was devoted to bullfighting, and then we saw something that really brought this home. In front of the bullring there were statues of Pedro Romero and another bullfighter - can't remember if it was Cayetano Ordonez or another Romero (I think the latter), and not only were there flowers put there at the foot of the statue, people and I mean young people, were taking photos of themselves posing next to the statue!! Can you imagine?? They are like rock stars in this country. Anyway, the 'Corrida Goyesca' is an annual event that is timed to coincide with the annual feria at Ronda. Here, the bullfighters are rigged out in traditional costume and there is a parade through the town as well before the fights. By the time we got there, the fights had already begun, but there were still people thronging outside the door - with hopeful faces waiting for a glimpse of anything if the door were to open at all.
While still in London, I was torn between wanting to see a bullfight because it was such a traditionally, proud Iberian thing to do and so much a part of their life, that well, it was a bit like, when in Rome... (I'd have liked to see the gladiators in action, even though that was gruesome), but at the same time, I just feel so bad for the bulls. A little better knowing that they do get eaten after they're killed, but I didn't like the fact that they were teased... well, that dilemma was resolved when it became apparent that tickets were impossible to get. We discovered just before getting there that the legendary Cayetano Ordonez's grandson was making his first appearance here at Ronda, and tickets had been impossible to get since ages and were outrageously priced when they were available for that brief time. But my point was that despite my squeamishness, the atmosphere is just so electric - the combination of the feria and the bullfight is positively intoxicating and it's just so exciting you want to be a part of it... well I did anyway J Velu looked positively tortured with all the crowds and wanted to run away. Well, we meandered around a bit taking in the party atmosphere our own unique ways JJ me, with a huge smile and Aashish looking pained. The streets were festooned with balloons and lanterns, and all the bars were blaring music, and there were impromptu flamenco's being staged everywhere - have an excellent clip of one of the multitudinous waiters wearing the frilly flamenco aprons doing his thing JJ, but the best bit was seeing everyone all togged up in their best, strutting their stuff. You had whole families dressed in the height of fashion - mummy's and daughters wearing matching, flouncy flamenco skirts, with their hair caught up in the tradition style complete with flowers and fans! Superb!! Even little kids were dressed to the hilt, stuffed in their prams and promenaded. It was just such a great atmosphere - a complete free for all - stalls selling tapas and foods spilling into the streets, people checking out other people :), babies, children, teenagers, grandparents, parents, singles, groups, everyone!! Talk about rocking! We sadly had to leave the hub of the party coz Aashish looked like he was about to cry and went back to the less crowded street looking for my souvenirs. We wandered towards the garden and well, I was very curious about the crowds thronging, so we went in through the other gate and discovered the reason - there was a huge projection screen put up that was broadcasting the bullfight live! Oh my - what excitement, except for I don't know what came over me, and I turned into a complete cowardly custard - every time the crowd roared, I just had visions of the bull being hurt and I just couldn't bear it!! On hindsight that was a bit silly, coz they were probably just cheering a fancy move by the matador, but I just had to leave - Aashish was busy taking photos of the gorge and the noise didn't seem to bother him - typical!! Of course he is totally anti- bullfighting. And here I was wanting to see, but so lacking the stomach to even handle the sound effects.
We headed back towards the Plaza to come across the classic picture of Mimi & Rahul sitting next to each other at the end of the bridge eating McDonald's burgers!! That we do have a photo of. J. Oh - forgot to mention, think the entire police force of Ronda was out patrolling the streets - I mean for a small town, how many people would they have? But we saw police on horseback, on foot, in cars on bikes.... and of course, in true Spanish style, one of the mounted police was smoking J. I definitely have to come back to Ronda, this time with Aashish and enjoy the feria and try and catch bullfight (how - I have no idea!!) - well, maybe I'll start by just trying to watch it on the screen and then move into the ring... Since we had to leave early the next morning to drive back to the airport in Sevilla, Aashish and I went back for dinner to the hotel while Mimi & Rahul make up for our missed reservation the night before. We'd ordered paella, and it was humongous - 4 people could've easily eaten from it and well, it's no surprise that we felt so sick, despite the leftovers!! Settled the bill that night as well, and the hotel very thoughtfully provided us with a 'picnic' breakfast which was left in one of the coolers for us to take. Speaking of the hotel - haven't mentioned it at all. It’s next to the ruins of the Arab baths (baños, being baths - and we never got around to exploring that - quite shameful esp. since we were right next to it). The best feature was of course the patio and terrace and pool areas, but the rooms were rather sweet as well. Small, and the bathroom so tiny the towels were kept outside J, but clean and well maintained, and the best bit - when we went to our room, there was a carafe of water and a plate of rather delicious chocolate chip cookies JJ.
We left the next morning while it was still dark - but that’s not too difficult since the sun only comes up at 8 am!! And made it to the airport without any mishap. Except when we got to the car park, the Hertz section was choc a bloc so I had to park elsewhere and we (and 2 other cars) couldn't find the attendant, but the counter guys insisted they were there, blah, blah. Still managed to get all that sorted out, in time to join the others in the check in line, and then sadly, homeward bound. Oh! Almost forgot. The immigration counter is at the departure gate, i.e. each departure gate has it’s own little counter and ours was presided over by a rather bad tempered old gent, who kept yelling at people when they just whizzed past (not unsurprisingly!! I mean who expects an immigration desk right there?) even children… he was unhappy with my visa for some reason – first said it had expired – again, not surprising coz he was looking at an older one!! And when I flipped to the right page, he kept muttering something, but I didn’t learn enough Spanish in the 10 days to comprehend, but it was clear that he was unhappy with my schengen visa – probably because it was issued by the Swedish consulate and not the Spanish… and only grudgingly stamped it - thank god he wasn’t there on our way in! Of course, there were no stamps to be found at the airport so all my loverly postcards had to be sent from London! But we did find several newspapers with front page leads on the bullfight and Mimi was so excited coz she’d seen them in the procession – yep, they’d seen the whole thing that we sadly missed, so we promptly bought a Spanish paper for the pictures J.
I have to say, this was one of the best holidays I’ve had, and a lot of the credit goes to Mimi for all her hard work in research the right little towns and the best hotels to stay in. Ole! But I just fell in love with Vejer and quite possibly Ronda (although I’m not so sure how I’d feel if we’d gone some other time instead of during the corrida and feria) and will definitely go back. Sevilla was alright, but not a patch on these two which are now up there on my list of places to be in (the other is Montreux in Switzerland).
Of course we were quite knackered when we reached home and while we didn’t have to fly back to India that night; we did have yet another houseguest to reckon with and a most unexpected one at that. But more about that and the sleeping bag later….. first, my old nemesis – Gatwick airport (that’s where I missed a flight back to Switzerland after having checked in, and then having them call my name for boarding after the flight had left [and baggage offloaded], to have the lady at the information desk helpfully tell me that ‘all the announcements here run a little late, love…’), and while we didn’t miss the flight, on the way back, we had to wait for ages before they found a conveyor belt for our luggage…. And one of the cleaners cackled at announcement apologizing for the inconvenience due to a strike, and told us that it was always like this!! But we did have some excitement, in the form of Pink (chart topping singer), and we were alerted to her presence by one of the immigration officers asking if the other knew who Pink was and that she’d just come through.. of course, Mimi got really excited and insisted that all of us stay on full alert to spot her, and well, unsurprisingly the rest of us couldn’t really be bothered, but voila… there she appeared and walked right past us much to Mimi’s incoherent gawking joy and naturally she then berated Rahul for not getting into his paparazzi mode and taking a photo with his famous camera phone (fair comment though coz he took pictures of everything else!!). But it really is the most annoying thing to have arrived at your destination and then have to wait around for ages before they find a conveyer belt for your luggage!! Bloody Gatwick!
‘Oh I’m off to sunny, sunny Spain, e v y España and I’m taking the Costa Brava train, e, v, y España, something about the senoritas at the door… e, v, y, España ……. España por favor, España por favour!!’ JJ taking about finally getting the point of a song, oboy oboy oboy, do I get it or what!!! and I can’t wait to be off to sunny Spain myself, again. What an incredible holiday. Mimi totally outdid herself both in terms of the itinerary as well as the spectacularly yummy little boutique hotels she picked – a 100% strike rate, each one was better than the next and all just fabulous. I also think the reason I’m gushing so much is that it was all so unexpected…. One of the only holidays where I haven’t organised anything apart the flights (all I did was call and confirm the bookings and pay for stuff as required) and so had no idea of what was planned or for that matter where the hell we were going (apart from Sevilla), so it came as a wonderful surprise and each little town was so distinct in it’s geography and the stuff we did there so it was an double whammy of the unexpected and the charming and quirky.
But before I launch into my enthusiastic account of Andalusia, talk about frenzied hosts.. ever since Ma & Ba arrived, i.e. since 29th July, we’ve had guests non stop! First then Mimi, and we left the day after they did and got back to have Sachin come stay with us while Mimi & Rahul were just leaving…. Phew! Never ending stream.. guests galore!! Just got back from lunch with Marnie and she even mentioned that I looked so pleased with myself and very relaxed J but then again, she also thought I’d lost weight and had to ask one of her colleagues where Andalusia was!!! But, I digress….. still, it was such a satisfying holiday and I’m in such a great mood, it’s a real bummer to have to come back to London and then to work!! First things first… Sevilla (that’s pronounced ‘Sayveeya’ – double l’s are a y and of course the ubiquitous j as a ‘h’ sound J). Anyway, Sevilla was hotter than hell! We got in, in the morning, and it wasn’t too bad, although you did feel the difference the minute you stepped off onto the tarmac – our hotel, the first of Mimi’s little gems was in the old town and if the taxi driver hadn’t known where it was, we’d have never found it!! The Amadeus as the name suggests is a very musically inclined hotel, with the ground floor being devoted to comfortable seating and a host of mint condition musical instruments. There have a quite little room with seating around a table (perfect for a romantic breakfast) where there is an upright piano and a guitar – this room has a door, so presumably it’s for those that are musically inclined but not necessarily talented enough to inflict on the other guests JJ and outside, is a gorgeous grand piano and a harp!! Each of the rooms of course are named after a famous composer with Mozart having the place of honour at the only suite the hotel had. The keys were in the shapes of musical notes and notations J, and here’s the best bit. While checking in, we were told that breakfast would be served on the terrace between 8 and 2!! J - of course we had to check with each other to make sure we’d heard right…
The rooms were quite charming, tiny, but with attached bathrooms and nice fluffy towels. The best part was that each room had a CD player with a collection of classical CD’s that you could swap around. Also, they had a small library on the top floor with a selection of books, in various languages. The roof terrace was also lovely, but it was just too hot to even think of hanging out there, so we decided to explore the old town a bit and set out armed with a map, which really didn’t’ do any good… still, we managed to get around and come to a relatively large, picturesque square with a fountain in the middle and seating along the periphery under the shade of trees and we hung around there just chilling and eating our ice creams. There were a couple of restaurants around the square, so we selected one with a fan blowing cool water J - a feature that was irresistible to every single passer by, who’d stop and wonder and inspect it before moving on. The food here was probably the worst of the entire trip – very mediocore, although Mimi’s pork chops were rather good. Aashish and I shared the paella (remember, that’s Paeya), which was ok. Of course, in true tradition, we had to go back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta – none of us had really anticipated the heat (went up to 42 degrees!!) plus we’d had to leave the house at 4 am that morning to make our flight from Gatwick. We stepped out again in the evening, and this time ventured towards the shopping district (and it was still bloody hot!!), and after having actually given up on finding the Mango store, discovered it on our way back J. Our first splurge….. of course, I’d already identified some flouncy, frilly flamenco aprons that were must buys and loads of t-shirts with bulls on them. Saw a lovely sleeveless one that I’d wanted, but of course, couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d seen it….like a fool, I left all my souvenir shopping for our last day in Sevilla, which I hadn’t realised was a Sunday!! So net, net, got nothing from there!! And there was this gorgeous shop selling ceramics and hand painted fans (everyone in Seville carries one, no surprise…..and the ladies actually wear them as accessories), and I thought maybe I’d spend some money and buy a nice fan and not the usual tourist crap…..aaah, next time J
Oh – forgot to mention… the roads in the old town are a joke!! They are so narrow its hard to take them seriously – barely enough room for a grown up car to pass through, and the street our hotel was on….. to even call it a street is making me smile, but it did have a street sign, but it’s so tiny, there isn’t room for 3 people walking abreast!! Naturally, all these little ‘calles’ as roads are called, are cobbled and muy romantic J. It’s funny how the buildings are so close together, but it works, coz it keeps the street in the shade as much as possible, so walking there is bearable, and then the houses open into cool and usually verdant courtyards, and it’s impossible to tell what a house is actually like just from the way it looks outside…..
Dinner was at another little square, but this time we opted to sit indoors. Since we were feeling hungry earlier than the normal Spanish dinner time of 10.30, all the restaurants were empty… this one had some people, and it turned out they were a tour group J. Had paella here again (they only do it for a minimum of 2 people) and this time, we had a winner!! Quite easily the best paella I’ve ever eaten – quite ‘jholly’ and with these HUGE red prawns or ‘caribinera’ as they’re known locally. Utterly scrumptious and they were most generous with the crustaceans. The next morning was our trip to Granada, so we didn’t linger for long, and went back to the hotel, to be greeted with the unexpected treat of a virtuoso pianist in full flow… this young chap (egged on by this older chap) was at the grand piano in the lounge and was doing bits and bobs of different pieces, but what a superb hand. We stood around on the 1st floor hanging over the railing and enjoying the free concert – what a lovely and unexpected way to end the evening. Of course, Mr. Velkar set the alarm and for whatever reason, it refused to go off… so we were late!! But it’s funny, coz dawn in Spain is at 8 am!! Not surprising actually when you consider that they’re physically behind London and the GMT, but for whatever strange reason, follow the rest of Europe on the clock, which puts them an hour ahead of London!! Go figure, these Spaniards I tell you! Still, we made it to the station without any trouble and picked up our car and breakfast and headed for Granada and the Alhambra - none of us really wanted to go, but we’d already bought the tickets online and booked the car :P:P)– cursed by our own efficiency J. All 3 of us would have rather spent the day just pfaffing around J. Hoist by our own petard as it were.
Anyway, got to the Alhambra without too much trouble, but that’s when things got excited. At the carpark, while doing my usual stretching exercises to get a parking ticket (I finally got it right on the last day while coming back to the airport carpark to drop off the car!), oh – incidentally, this lady passing by took pity on my gyrations and actually walked across while I was trying to unbuckle myself to pull the ticket out of the machine and give it to me J. Jolly friendly people these…. Anyway, while all this was happening, I managed to stall the car… and then, after this nice lady handed me the ticket, I couldn’t start the blasted thing again!! The battery was totally dead and there we were at the entrance to the carpark blocking everyone else…. But totally stuck!! What a situation! Had to get out and push – well, poor Aashish did most of the pushing, coz he only had Mimi to help coz I was still in the drivers seat (now you now why the driver’s seat is used to convey the aura of control and power :P), and we just got into the closest carpark, where Aashish almost broke his back trying to push it up a slight incline into the lot, before I turned around and we went downhill – and yet again, these Spaniards, this young girl who was just at her car, leapt forward to give a hand with the pushing of the car to get it aligned right…. What a friendly bunch. After several calls managed to get the number of the Hertz helpdesk, and had to wait ages before they found someone who spoke English, but once we crossed that hurdle, it was cool – no problemo!! They’d send a tow truck and if the car couldn’t be fixed, they’d tow it away, and order us a taxi to their town office and give us a replacement car…
Now, for the next rather unique bit of Spanish characteristics… (the first being the friendliness of the people of course!) – these people are so hung up on timing it’s not funny. The Alhambra has restricted timings for the palace inside, as well as the main entrance and we had afternoon tickets, i.e. they will only let you enter after 2.00 pm!! We almost made it in before the security guard realised that we had the ‘tarde’ ticket and sent us out again J. So since we had time to kill, we did lunch and called Hertz back asking them to send the tow truck…which came and duly took the car away… of course, there was some confusion coz the driver thought we were going back with him, and we thought we were staying and having a taxi sent for us later.. one of the security guards from the carpark seem to take a keen interest and was helping the in the arm waving exchanges that were taking place, and coz we had split to be able to finish lunch and get the car sorted out, he even most helpfully caught my attention to tell me my ‘amigos’ had arrived from the carpark….. incidentally, lunch was a Spanish omelette or as they are called in Spain, a tortilla (don’t forget the double l rule… that’s tortiya to you!). When we went in for the second time, the guard recognised us, and gave us a big ‘Hola!’ J.
Overall, the Alhambra was a bit disappointing… mostly because when you come from India where Islamic architecture has had such a great influence, it’s nothing fancy when you see it again on a much smaller scale.. I mean, hey, we have the Taj…. And while this is rustic and suchlike, it’s ok, no great shakes. What’s really nice is these orange trees in the courtyards with huge oranges hanging down (and this is all over the place – we even saw them in Sevilla, in the main square of the Giralda, except we thought they were lime coz they were green!!). here again, we had the 2.30 – 3.00 pm entrance for the Nasrid palace and we got there about 10 minutes before but they wouldn’t let you in till it was exactly 2.30 pm! So we just hung around and draped ourselves on the side ramparts, watching them let in the 2-2.30 pm ticket holders and deny the 2.30 holders… right up to 1 minute before the stipulated time.. who’d have thunk it!
The palace itself was also just ok, a couple of nice features, gardens, but like I said… impressive if you’re European and haven’t seen much Islamic stuff. I didn’t particularly want to see the generalife gardens, but since the ticket included it, we did a quick tour – extremely dumb!! But I did manage to sort out the taxi pickup to the car rental, and Mimi chatted with some kids and their parents from Barcelona who were practising their English on her J. Mr. Velkar of course, rushed us to the roundabout where the taxi was supposed to pick us up from (we eventually followed panting and puffing with Mimi threatening to have a heart attack imminently) and then spent the next 10 minutes cooling our heels! Still, when the taxi came, it was a cool one – this dude had a screen for the back seat showing music videos with great surround sound. Very cool!! We drove for quite a while and we were actually wondering if he was driving us all the way back to Sevilla (some 250 km away!!), but it was to the airport – coz that was closer. Anyway, we got an upgrade on the car, and another full tank as well! JJ so net, net, apart from the cost of the phone calls (which were made on the office phone J), we made a profit on the car rental :P. We also managed to get back to Sevilla before Rahul’s arrival (the jerk was upgraded twice on his flight, all the way to First class, and actually was offered a night suit to change into to enjoy his slumberette experience even more, and even had some minor celebrity babe travelling with him a la pyjamas) and we popped out for some tapas. Sevilla has loads of tapas bars, but can’t say I was overly impressed with what was on offer. Their pork is exceptional – they must have really contented pigs in Iberia!! But the rest was ok.. still, quite a feat getting the stuff ordered in a crowded, noisy and wholly Spanish bar.
Here’s another apparently Spanish trait that I’d never thought of… they seem to be serious animal lovers… somehow, that’s not the image one has of Spaniards.. I mean you say English, and you think of horses and dogs… but the Spanish love their dogs and there are so many people with pets, and of course, they take them everywhere! At the tapas bar, the next table (everyone stands coz there’s hardly any seating) had this fluffy looking dog who was looking around hopefully for scraps, and even the day before, we ran into so many dogs, mostly rather silly looking, accompanied by proud, but sheepish owners JJ. There’s this particular breed of dog, that I think is indigenous to this region at least and he’s all wolly and furry and wrong for the climate… but you see this creature everywhere! But it’s lovely to see the dogs romping about everywhere, peering from doorways and just being silly. The next day, we took a horse carriage from the Giralda square and did a tour of the city… the real city of Sevilla, i.e. the modern bits is across the river while we were in the picturesque bit. We drove past the river, saw the bullring in the distance, then went inside the palace gardens (Maria Lousia gardens I think they were), then onto the Plaza de España (which after travelling to other bits of Spain we figured out was as prolific as our very own M. G. Road in India…. Every single town/village boasts a Plaza de España) – this was on a grand scale and most impressive, but being the afternoon, utterly deserted!! This is where one of the Star Wars (new lot) scenes between Aniken and Amidala was filmed as well…..
After that relaxing jaunt, we decided to exert ourselves and check out the Giralda, and I’m very glad that I did… it’s the biggest gothic church in the world and the 3rd biggest church in the world after the Vatican and St. Paul’s – most impressive. The interiors are magnificent, and the sheer scale of it all takes your breath away. I’ve always loved the Notre Dame, but next to this one, it just pales into insignificance – imagine that!! It’s also where the tomb of Christopher Columbus is kept, and they also have a section for private services and we were lucky enough to witness a wedding… well, the guests arriving at any rate J and it was cool to watch everyone in their finery… what surprised me was that a number of the women were wearing trousers – somehow hadn’t thought that would be a popular decision for a wedding particularly in church and in a country like Spain! Goes to show how much I know! Of course, the ladies all had matching hand fans that they swished and clicked open J, and there was this one dude with a bright orange waistcoat who stole the show J. What was really funny, is that the wedding photographer, even took photos of all the tourist that were gaping at the guests J. Imagine your wedding being a tourist event. But what a superb place for a wedding. Of course, Rahul had to go and say that it reminded him of Afghan Church!! So naturally, I will have to make a trip there to verify his claim. Anyway, after gawping at the guests for a bit, we made the ascent to the tower of the Giralda. Hmmm – have I mentioned, this was originally the site of a mosque built by the moors in xxxx, but was then razed to the ground to make way for the church? Anyway, the tower is 17 floors high and thankfully there are no steps, but just slopes all around, but still, you do arrive panting to the top, but when you get there, the view is quite incredible… Sevilla is quite a white town itself (white towns are specialities of Andalusia, done primarily as protection against the heat – where all the houses in the village/town are painted white and it’s really picturesque). While we were up there, the bells rang and it was enough to make one jump out of one’s skin!! Talk about resounding!
After that Aashish and I felt too lazy so we opted to go back to the hotel and just read and catch up on a bit of siesta, while the intrepid explorer and her beau went back to the Plaza de Espana, visited the Real Alcazar and whatnot. We hooked up again after dinner to catch the flamenco performances at Los Gallos (yes, that’s Gayos and means rooster). It’s a tiny little bar with a small stage and baby chairs and tiny tables… and very difficult to find!! But find it we did, eventually…. and got there just in time for the start of the performance. What can I say!!?!?! It’s was brilliant – think it was a family effort (between the acts there was a baby crying upstairs, where the dancers were descending from, and every now and again there’d be gestures and chatting with someone upstairs from the stage J. There were two primary guitarists each accompanied by a pair of male vocalists and clappers, and then there were 3 women dancers, 2 men and 1 older lady who did the singing and just a wee bit of footwork. It started off well enough, but each successive act was better than the next and they finally built up to a crescendo with all of them taking the stage. The first dude who came up was this young, skinny boy, but oh my! He was simply breathtaking with his footwork. At one stage, he was doing this tippy toe flamenco thing like a running train and it almost felt like he was just going to fly off the stage!! Quite incredible….and then of course, he did all these most impressive spins. I’ve never seen such an incredible male dancer before (and that reminds me of Sergei Filin of the Bolshoi in Bright Stream, but that’s another few pages ;-o) – actually gave you goosebumps just to watch JJ. Then there was this rather cross looking young woman who was a super dancer, followed by this much older woman who did the crooning along with some token dancing, but she was quite the character, with her faces and gestures and funny thing she did that looked like she was lifting her boobs back up J. But my favourite was the last female dancer, also an older woman, but still so beautiful – what I’d call a perfect idea of a Spanish beauty who did the flamenco with a fan and then castanets and for me was the perfect blend of skill, charm, beauty, character and verve. At the end when they came together on stage, all of them.. oh – before that, the second male dancer came on stage, and he was pretty good too, and Rahul kept insisting it was the same guy – FOOL! Well, it wasn’t and in the end, they all wound up on stage and it became like a fiesta atmosphere with the women chatting and the cross looking one looking quite lovely when she suddenly broke into this huge smile and the place resounded with Olé’s and claps and it was just so much fun!! I really wish we’d gone for another performance to another flamenco place just to see how it would compare… I know, I know…… next time…. J
Oh – forgot to mention, the waiters at the bars and restaurants are most relaxed and easy going – they hum and even actively sing while they work and this one dude even had a cigarette dangling from his mouth when he was clearing up (of course, in Ronda, I saw a horseback policman with a cigarette while on active duty…..viva Espana!). anyway, my point was after a couple of days, we got used to well, service being uniquely Spanish, when suddenly at breakfast at one of the café’s we were shocked by a show of English efficiency!! The waiter of course was English, and kept bustling about while the two other Spanish boys just had a gait that moved to the beat of a much less purposeful drummer JJ. After breakfast we headed towards Cadiz and our first pre-booked meal destination at El Faro. This turned out to be our first navigational challenge, as within the silly little town, there were no decent road signs and we just couldn’t find the blasted railway station. The original plan was to hire a locker and leave our baggage at the station as the port town has a reputation of things being stolen from parked cars… anyway, after going around the same place a couple of times without any clear signs for the station, we took a call to just head for the restaurant and deal with the bags when we got there. Found the restaurant a damn sight easier than the station and it was in this really narrow road, choc a block with cars parked on both sides!! But wait, miracle of miracles…. They not only had valet parking, but a huge empty enclosed parking garage!!J of course, we realised later on our way out that, that was the back of the restaurant J.
This was the place where the booking was for Señora Calling and her troupe, but luckily he didn’t ask for my name, and just led us to a table when I said we had a booking J. We got to the restaurant at 2.30 pm, but it only started filling up after 3 pm in true Iberian style, and there were still people enjoying a leisurely lunch when we left at 5.30 pm!! We had the caribinera here as well, but on hindsight, they were not value for money at all – I mean they were delicious – absolutely superlative, but then so were the prices… quite outrageous! But the restaurant did have the best octopus salad on offer, and a lovely waiter, who of course spoke no English, but was most entertaining, especially when Rahul just sat through the first three courses with an empty plate causing him much consternation, and when finally when he agreed to have something put on his plate, the dramatic sigh of relief was quite funny… we started of with the grilled prawns and then went onto the octopus salad, which is served with potatoes – I know, a very strange combination, and one I would have thought that was doomed to fail, but it was just superb! The octopus was meaty and tender and the potatoes divine and it all came with this slightly piquant dressing and olive oil – muuah. That was followed by these delicate, feathery prawn tortillalets that just crunched themselves into oblivion J. Rahul had one of these much to our waiters joy and oh yeah… everytime he’d come with a dish, someone would pick up a fork, and he’d go.. ‘no no.. a mano’ J and no, that’s not like the American mano à mano aka man to man, but rather, by hand :P:P. The last item was pimentos stuffed with crab smothered in cheese and baked, and that was Rahul’s and of course, drew another series of sounds from our waiter when he realised this time around, none of us were eating and it was only Rahul :P – sort of a cross between a spitting cat and a tired befuddled one J. Still, we did sample some and I thought it was quite delicious J…. Yep, next ime ;-o. finally come time for dessert, he says he’s only got Spanish menus, so we say, no problemo… and of course, once it’s there, we have too many questions, so when he finally comes to take the order with a flourish and a pretend lick of the pencil stub, we ask for the carta Inglese JJ - his deflated expression was really hilarious. Needless to say, that we were all feeling jolly sick after dessert!
Eventually, we tore ourselves away and headed towards Vejer de la Frontera, our next stop for the night. The directions we had were really precise and accurate to a ‘T’ J. Vejer is this small ‘white’ town up in the hills, but close enough to a beach (some 12 km away) and it’s the only place where the roundabout leading to it has a big fat VEJER sign (byt the way, that’s pronounced VEHER and Frontera is Fort, so effectively there are a lot off little town built around old forts). Naturally the roads are narrow and two way and winding… but we made it without too much drama, although getting to our hotel in the old town was quite exciting – cobblestoned roads, parking on one side, and barely enough space for 1½ cars with of course 2 way traffic J. Our first hotel Casa del Califa had a magnificent view of the valley below and parts of the white town and while the rooms were nothing great, it had these most intriguing stairs and little passages and nooks and crannies and an amazing terrace sit out. Luckily we had a room just off the terrace, and used it as a private terrace most of the time J. They also had a cosy little cave like room which was the games room – with trivial pursuit, chess, monoploy, a huge jigsaw (and all the corner pieces were white!! That it – just plain white!! Talk about patience required to try and figure that one out). The hotel also has a restaurant El Jardin del Califa (which translates as the Caliph’s garden) which is really popular, so much so that we couldn’t get a table there that night, and had to book for the 2nd night J. So what did we do for dinner??? I can’t remember – oh dear! Let me think. Oh yes! The hotel’s bang on the main square… and you wonder, could it be? Is it really? Plaza de Espana??? Of course it is!! J it’s got this fountain in the middle of the square with these rather large lubrigous looking frogs (4 of them actually) and seating all around. But before dinner, how could I have forgotten to mention the parking… naturally the square is packed and there’s barely enough place for a single car to go around the plaza, but the hotel has parking a ways down the hill with steps allowing you to come back up. After dropping the bags off, Aashish and I went to park the car, and my oh my – was that a challenge J. We went down this really narrow and steep, and what I hope was a one way street) throught the old town, barely saving the sideview mirrors from scratches, and then had to go up this really steep unpaved slope to get to the carpark. Most exciting J. The trudge back up to the hotel however was not quite as exciting!! Not true really, coz we passed peoples house and they were on the steps sitting and chatting with their neighbours and it felt like we were in a fairly story rather than real life!! Really an incredible experience… and these were like regular streets in the town with proper street names et al, but so tiny!!
Dinner was nothing spectacular, but it was outdoors and in the square so we got to see the action… for a small town, this place sure has lots of traffic. Even when I was waiting in the car while the others checked in, there was a non stop stream of cars going around the square. Most peculiar and then of course, this car comes up and parks besides me, and a manner which in any other country/city would have earned an instant ticket, and the driver kept saying ‘pas possible’ while his cohort kept insisting it could be done J and voilà – it was!! Anyway, even while we were having dinner, loads of cars kept whizzing past, some of them slowing down and stopping in front of the restaurant and you had to wonder if they did take away J, and then I think the cooks mother paid a visit, coz this car with an older couple stopped and the chef came out for what looked like an exasperated chat JJ, and then some younger kids come up to confirm plans with one of the waiters J all in their cars, going around the fountain. My theory (arrived at the following day) is that all these cars come up to the plaza coz that’s the only place to turn once you’re up the mountian JJ. After dinner we went back to the terrace and enjoyed the moon for a bit before retiring. Oh – and yes, the hotel had a couple of cats that meandered about and kept you amused, and there was a rooster in a distance that was probably crowing in the evening to signal the end of the siesta time ??? J. Incidentally, you can bring your breakfast up to the terrace and enjoy it there. The only thing was that it was really windy – which was a lovely change from the heat in Sevilla, but totally unexpected and dinner was quite a challenge to keep things from flying off before you were good and ready. We then made sure of full ‘paisa vasooli’ by hanging out and playing trivial pursuit in the games room before packing it in for the night. And oh – they also have a map room, where they have a computer with internet access J
Breakfast was at the restaurant, outside in a lovely garden area, compelte with speakers hideen in birdhouses, a decorative well, and whatnots. Quite a good spread too, with cold cuts, cheese and fruit in addition to cereal and breads and loads of jams and suchlike. The plan was to go into Tarifa where we had a whale watching scheduled and incidentally, Tarifa’s the place that’s supposed to be windy….. but my oh my, the wind that persisted through breakfast, was a mild ‘phoooo’ compared to the storm whipped up here…… hmmmm. So much for Chicago’s claim… they should really visit this region to understand the true meaning of Windy City!! Anyway, we got to Tarifa and Rahul got really excited coz he thought he’d get either some kite surfing or wind surfing going… we had an enormous, and I mean ENORMOUS lunch… portions in Spain, well, Andalusia are large to start with – very hearty, but this place was just ridiculous. We asked for a salad, and this huge bowl come out.. Mimi ordered grilled prawns and they came with a loaded plate with a dozeon of these good, solid sized whole critters – enough for 3, I’d asked for a swordfish steak,and I kid you not – it was almost a foot long – just crazy!! And shockingly, the prices were most reasonable… one of our cheapest meals, but oh so much food!!! Unfortunately, after driving through the old time and managing to locate the whale watching office, we were told the watching was off coz it was too windy! The gits were supposed to have called us, but of course no one did, and before you start rolling your eyes at the Spaniards, let me hasten to add that this was run by Swedes….. but that also expalined why Rahul had no luck with the wind/kite surfing school and why we couldn’t see anyone at all on the water….
Intrepid explorers that we are, we carried on undettered to the beaches, driving quite a bit to get to Bolonia which is a popular local beach and very lovely,.. the sand is grainy, which is lovely when it’s still, but when the wind picked up it was like being whipped JJ. Quite an experience!! Thankfully, all Spanish beaches are topless so managed to get an unbroken tan while the others squealed (well, only Mimi and then me when I was urged into the bloody freezing Atlantic!!! When are these people going to realise that’s why we have the Mediterranean?!?!?!) and splashed about in the water. Keeping with the pet friendly policy there were random dogs strolling about enjoying the wind and water and whole families bravely battling the wind for their day at the beach. It was great fun to just sit there and watch all the goings on. A real local family beach, with everyone but us and another set of American tourists who paid for the umbrellas and chair, and they brought their own chairs and umbrellas – a sight which sent us into convulsions in Tarifa. Every single person on the road was either carry a beach umbrella, or beach chairs, or a cooler or pushing a baby stroller!! Without fail – the entire stretch of very long promenade JJ. Eventually, the wind just got too much for us, so we decided to try another beach on Mimi’s list, La Barrosa which naturally was in the opposite direction! Well, we got there, and I can’t tell you how much it reminded everyone of Florida! Neatly manicured green spaces, clean palm tree lined streets, older people with pot bellies, posh beach houses – rather bizzare. The complete opposite of Bolonia. This one had only tourists, no locals (or if they were, the well to do ones), the beach had strings of hotel owned chairs and umbrellas, soft white sand, and NO dogs!! And well, don’t remember seeing any children either! Most sterile.
We drove back in time for drinks on the terrace before moving down to dinner at El Jardin del Califa, and I must say, I can understand why you need to reserve a table. It was one of the best meals we had during the trip and best of all, unplanned and spontaneous! Thankfully, we were sitting inside so no wind to deal with, and this is the oldest part of the hotel, where they used to store grain and was used as a cistern. It’s really charming and old world and done up most evocatively. we started off sharing a mezze platter which was excellent – I particularly liked something (no, I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s like a ‘bora’) and the babaganoush (morrcon version of begun bharta) was superb. Rahul had ordered some kebabs as well, while Aashish opted for a salad loaded with fruit and nut and very nice. After much agony we decided on the main course, and Rahul did the pork, Mimi went for the lamb tagine, Aashish went for something called Mijoli which was rice with begun and kheema and cheese while I was lured by the lamb with okra – haven’t had bhindi in ages!! Well, in the vein of the starters, the main course didn’t disappoint – Rahul’s pork was exquisite – quite easily the best pork I have ever tasted in my whole life and he looked like a most satisfied hog himself after scarfing what he called his best meal in Spain (poor chap – a bit hard on someone who’s not a seafood freak), Aashish’s thingymajig was also very interesting and my lamb was butter sof and delicately spiced with ginger and sadly too much for me to finish!! Rahul’s cup ranneth over when he found out they had Haagen Dazs as well J. Our waitress was lovely, to look at and service wise and it was a fun meal all around – especially since we’d all been merrily drinking since 8 pm J.
The next morning, the plan was to check into Escondrijo our second hotel in Vejer before wandering out. What can I say.. the best laid plans… Escondrijo is run by this English couple Netty and Nigel (who’s called Miguel locally…. Don’t ask why!) and they’ve turned their home into such a beautiful place to stay. Like El Casa del Califa, it’s got several levels and their office (which is a small desk and the dining table J) and 3 rooms are on the same floor with the pvt. terrace room upstairs and the library along the steps and then going down from the base floor into the sub-ground area where breakfast was served, along with an open bar, den housing the CD collection, a piano and the TV and a small internet room. Unbelievable! It’s really like your own house, excpet a damn sight nicer, and with big, fluffy towels, and crips sheets and someone else keeping it all clean – how much more perfect can it get?? The terrace was much smaller and the view not as exotic as the Casa del Califa, but enough place to lounge about and chill. In residendece are also their dog Duena, and their 2 cats – we only met the first called Pinky for some strange reason. This one is that cat in the ‘curiosity killed the cat’ phrase. I’ve never seen such an inquisitive cat!! Every sound, every gesture, every movement…. he’d be there inquring about JJ. Well, it was just too perfect a setting to waste, so we just lounged there the whole day – reading, listening to music and messing about with the animals – that cat was just hysterically and I had such a good time just playing with it’s mind. The rooms I suspect are forbitten territory for them and they’re just desperate to get in. This cat was in reality just an overgrown kitten who is apparently fascinated by these vases with long reeds that were in our room and just coulnt’ keep her head out of them and was so intruiged. It’s such a lovely thing to be able to have pets to amuse you and play with, but not really your responsibility to look after J. What a holiday!! Pure bliss. Oh – we did step out for lunch – to this little café overlooking the valley and had our first taste of Cazon, a local speciality which is dogfish lightly spiced and with lemon and then batter fried. Excellent! This café also had the best sangria we’d had so far (well, it was the best we had period!) and we went through 2 harras JJ - coz Mimi and Rahul decided it was a lot better than their Cerveza’s! (beer). By the by, harra is a jug, and our fst experience was at the indifferent restaurant where we began with ½ a harra, then had copas (copa = glass), but towrads the end it was always as full harra to start with J We actually went here by default, coz we went exploring for a restaurant close to the Escondrijo, but everything was shut!!! Opening at 6 pm only, so we eventually meandered our way thorugh the old town, saw the sights, did some souvenir shopping – where this shopkeeper chappie kept up a constant stream of chatter in Spanish about a myriad range of subjects…. J. So truly a most satisfying day.
We split up for dinner coz I was starving by 8 pm, and the sloppies were too sloppy, and went back to the restaurant that was open from 6 onwards.. of course, we were the only people there barring another young American couple. Dinner was good as well – almond soup to start with followed by pork for me (almost as good as the Califa’s) and a huge bowl of mussels for Aashish. The restaurant was on the ground floor and upstairs seemed to be the owners house coz there were kids screaming and running around – but it was more of a novelty than a nuisance – even an adult thumping about chasing themJ, and then they came down 3 off them and started palying on the street outside, running around JJ. What a great life!! Dessert was a bit of a bummer – the menu said wild strawberries with cream and what came was funny berries with custard JJ. Must remember English strawberries and Andalusian wild strawberries are a whole mindset apart! Of course, Mimi and Rahul came rocking up at the fag end for their dinner, so we hung out together for a bit, before we retired… after a bit of a meander through town. I stopped at this little shop selling shawls and wall hangings that was still open, drawn by the sight of what seemed to be a working hand loom, and the lady there spoke English so had a rather long and interesting chat with her… it’s her mother that weaves and some of the pieces were hers, but the rest from a co-operative. What’s more, her sister visited Hyderabad many years ago to learn about spinning and weaving and came back with some lovely textile printing blocks and was now actually visiting her in Vejer, but they hadn’t been able to go to the beach because of the ‘levante’ or the wind! When I told her I might stop by the following day, she warned she might not be there coz if the wind had eased up, she’d be at the beach JJ. Good life, wot! Send Mummy to the shop instead.
We got home to find a cat with rather a fancy diamond studded collar hanging about the front door, so when we went in and I held the door open, she popped in as well. And then promptly followed us to our room J. Then of course, after we'd locked the front door I got to wondering whether or not the cat actually belonged here or if we'd just taken someone else's cat in! Was rather worried about that, but then eventually let it go. Next morning, we heard mewing outside the window and voila - there she was again, so without thinking about it, I just opened the shutters and she was back in J. Thankfully, she did belong to the house and what's more, was just dying to get into Mimi & Rahul's room for some obscure cat reason. When we went out, she joined us and then sat patiently outside Mim's room mewing every now and again and raising a plaintive paw asking to be let in J. Found out later, that she did manage to slip past Rahul's vigilance and duck under the bed causing much trauma to Mimi in trying to figure out how to get her out - I actually had to carry her out of our room at one stage coz she was too comfortable to move J. I do like these cats rather much! Mimi and Rahul did find the bar Janis Joplin (yeah - most bizarre) but it was a tiny hole and empty so they went somewhere else that had a rude bartender who thawed when they asked for some pistachios J
Had a wonederful night in our sumptious bedroom – it was just so cozy. Breakfast was lovely as well with Netty’s sister playing hostess – we started with fruit and cereal with a really tasty yoghurt, follwed by eggs and toast and of course juice and tea/coffee. Very nice indeed. Incidentally the bathroom on that floor is just spectacular! Don’t worry we have photos J
September 13, 2006
Did I mention that on Monday, my first day back at work, Guy (that’s my boss) called, and the phone has caller id, so I knew it was him, but the only thing in my head, was ‘Hola! Que tal?’ and I had my mouth open, but my brain was saying that’s not right, so there I was holding the phone with an open mouth for quite a few seconds while Guy identified himself, and it then came to me, I should have said ‘Apara speaking’ when I answered!! JJ. Today sadly is also going to be a long day at work – have a deadline for an RFP submission tomorrow 9 am. What a sad life…. But on to happier things J. The next day was reserved for lunch at Hacienda Rosalejo followed by a trip to Cabo de Trafalgar…. Of course, we didn’t realised till we actually got there, that Cabo meant cape – we’d been thinking lighthouse, beach, and all sorts of silly things. But first, our adventure to find Hacienda Rosalejo. Mimi had read about this obscure but very good restaurant with a tasting menu that was out of this world, in the middle of nowhere. Reservations were a must coz there was no guarantee that they’d be open, so I had called and then made another colleague call and confirm in Italian/Spanish. So, duly armed with maps, etc. we set out early on and it was a looong drive, but I have to say, a most interesting one – the landscape we encountered was completely different from what we’d seen up to now – rolling hills that on closer inspection turned out to be farmland… with swathes of grain being harvested. After a couple of false moves and losing and finding our way back on the correct road, we finally came across the highway Villamartin, only to realise that we should have been at the other end J. But the directions we had were very precise, and the Hacienda was supposed to be 6.6 km from the start of this highway, and since we’d been driving for quite a while and it was 2.40 pm, the suspense just got ratcheted up another notch to serious tension JJ as we counted off the kilometres one by one and as we crossed #6, the tension was palpable J - and lo and behold, we saw a sign for a hotel/restaurant (the knife and fork thingy), and an executive decision was taken that it didn’t matter what it was, that’s where we were going to eat! But…. As promised, it was indeed Hacienda Rosalejo – yay! Victory!! Well, we pull into the parking lot where there are other cars, but the entire place seems to be deserted, but that’s what the reviewer had said anyway……, and the front door was shut, so we went around the back to come across a couple of men who were of no help at all, and then Mimi found the restaurant, but that too was empty, when this young dude appeared looking rather confused to see us and informed us that the restaurant was shut!! So of course, we launched into our reservations bit, but he just continued to look confused and said they were shut all month!! Can you believe that?? Talk about twilight zone!! I’d actually spoken to someone here, not once but twice and confirmed a lunch booking for that date!! And they were shut – for the month no less!! Poor Mimi was just so upset, and she felt even guiltier coz we’d driven so far…. And she was in tears… which really pissed the rest of us off, coz, well, this is just not done!! Hope she’s remember to write stinker on the blog about the Rosalejo. No wonder the restaurant doesn’t have a Michelin star despite its alleged excellent cuisine!! They were probably shut when they came around J.
We then backtracked to Villamartin to try and find some lunch, except Villamartin is such a tiny village, that everything was shut for siesta… so we then headed for Arcos de la Frontera, where we pulled up at the first restaurant, the Voy Voy J. Thankfully, the restaurant was still open, and we ordered lunch – and had the best Cazon ever!! Oh no – I’m such a nerd – was just re-reading this last bit (it’s several days after it was originally written) and instead of the Kaaazon sound of Cazon, I was thinking of the Kayzon of Star Trek!!! Watanerd watanerd!! :P:P
September 21, 2006
Ok – I’m picking this up after so long, I’m not sure I can even remember what happened next! Aaah – it’s coming back to me now. Had a bit of a frenzied must do situation when we got back…. Well we didn’t go back, but to Vejer but headed straight for the Cabo de Trafalgar and the beach.
in case you're wondering, Cabo is Cape - and diminished holiday intellect only made that connection once we were there! Looking at it now, it's so blindingly obvious - must be the sun and time difference that make you a little soft in the head :-). The lighthouse itself is not very imposing, but rather quaint and has a wooden platform running all around it, but the sea!! Oh my - it was simply grand. So utterly blue and for miles around - quite spectacular. Of course, it was rather windy as well, and it was only after we toured the lighthouse (the next time we go, I plan to spend some more time there, just hanging around on the rocks enjoying the majesty of the cape) and were halfway to the beach, when we saw Mimi and Rahul trudging back - and of course, my first thought was they'd either had a fight or cut themselves on something... but it turns out that beach didn't allow any swimming. I suppose I should just explain this - there is a narrow stretch of road that leads to the lighthouse, and it's flanked by a beach - that was choc full of kite surfers, and there's a small beach just at the foot of the light house as well, which is where we had gone. And I was really please coz I saw a naked woman :-) finally, a nude beach for a perfect tan.... but alas, since I was the only one even remotely interested in a nude beach and the rest wanted to get into the water,. we trooped off to the other beach, only to have a 'no swimming' there as well...... and yes, the soft headed finally solidified enough for realisation to set in.... we were at the bloody cape - of course swimming in these waters was dangerous!!! and not permitted!!!! aaaargh - talk about feeling a right idiot, so we just headed for El Palmar (which incidentally is the closest beach to Vejer - but we were too busy being intrepid explorers reaching far and wide to the other beaches), which turned out to be a rather nice beach. Have I mentioned the great thing about Spain is that all the beaches are topless? We stayed there till the sun started sinking (at around a quarter past eight), and even made it up the hill to our home in Vejer before it got dark J.
Rahul was set on a Spanish Thai green curry dinner, so Aashish and I meandered our way through the old town checking out potential restaurants, but somehow, I just couldn't bring myself to have another meal with the same deep fried fish smell, and we wound up at the French restaurant at foot of the road where our hotel was, and I'm so glad. The food was really good, and I had a lentil soup with Iberian ham, and a most gorgeous smoked salmon and roquefort millefeuille with light as a feather pastry. Aashish had fish and it was a delicious change J.
Next morning we were off to Jerez de la Frontera (hmmm, did you say Herez??) As usual, it was a rushed departure... I went and got the car up to the main square from the car park (and let me assure that was quite a feat in itself coz people had parked their cars in the middle of the car park as well and it took me ages and more backing and forthing that I had anticipated before I was able to manoeuvre myself out of there!! Anyway, loaded the car and headed back for breakfast and suchlike, and of course, now that we're pushing to leave, suddenly both Nigel and Netty are all out chatty.... here I am trying to pay the bill and leave, when Nigel starts chatting about the UK and what we're doing (each one!) and when I told him Mimi wrote for a children's comic, he launched into this story of how he met a someone at a party once who also wrote for children and they had staff meetings to discuss the length of a rabbit characters ears!! :) Too bad really that they picked this moment - it would have been fun to chat more. Netty told Mimi that their 5 year plan was to have this house completely for themselves and buy a new one for the hotel.... and that this winter, they'd be holidaying in Vietnam! Now, that is the life!! I can really see myself doing something like this. Not making pots of money, but enough to get buy and do at least one decent holiday a year, a scrumptious house with silly animals bounding around in a laid back relaxed town up in the hills but 10 minutes from the beach!! Ole!! We finally managed to say our goodbyes and leave, and what do you know!!! Our first parking ticket in Europe.... apparently, those slots at the square come with restrictions - no wonder the place was free when I brought the car up from the carpark! and quite a hefty one at that issued by the Vejer police. It was stuck in the windshield and initially we thought it was a flyer, and were joking about parking tickets.... and well, only took a proper look as we were heading out of Vejer and realised it was a parking ticket. How rude. Of course, then there was this debate about how to pay, rather, Mimi and Rahul were debating in the back seat... the front seat had a wiser approach... say nothing till someone asks you to pay up :) and then of course the discussion went to how I'd be on the 'wanted' list of the Vejer police and I'd never be allowed back in Spain.... Rahul of course was in hysterics with visions of me skulking around the Iberian border in a huge sombrero trying to duck in....
The drive to Jerez was done without any mishaps (well, apart from a huffy Aashish refusing to navigate when we had conflicting directions) - and the directions provided by this lady were spot on! Quite literally - right from the petrol pump on the left of the first roundabout to the roundabout with the headless man and the square with the palm trees :) perfect to a 'T'. When we got to the hotel, it was a flurry of chaos, as we had tickets for the noon show at the Real Escuela and it was just coming up to a quarter too, so Monica who runs the place just organized us - told us to leave the bags and she'd sort us out, called for a taxi, called the school and sent us off... we made with enough time to collect the tickets and be seated before the show began...and what a show. Ok, so I do like horses very much, but it was really incredible how well trained this lot were and how they did those horrendous looking side steps and alternate leg changes to the music. While it was beautiful, a part of me baulked at it - I mean, I'm sure the horses can't be enjoying this at all which is rather unfair!! The arena was packed (when I was collecting the tickets they had already sold out - ours were advance booking and a good thing too!!) and of course you had all the Spanish ladies clicking their hand fans open - such an elegant sight - even in their regular clothes. The horses were gorgeous, especially the darker ones with their gleaming coats and when they did the prancing march, it was just incredible. The carriage act was pretty good too and it was wild to see just how tightly they could turn in a circle, but the finale was really spectacular with the flanks of riders doing their thing - very Ole! Sadly, photography is not allowed, so no shots :(.
We made a dash for the entrance as soon as the show was over (I have to admit I was most reluctant to leave coz it was only 1.30 pm and I was positive it went on till 2 pm :P) and were lucky enough to get the first cab - of course, we had a bit of a fight with another lot.. well, not really a fight, more of a 'oi - I say it first.. but ah, we hailed him first...' but were back at the hotel soon enough and sure enough Monica had most efficiently dispatched our bags to our room, and then sorted out the parking for us - we'd parked a little ahead of the square, and as she explained it, up to an hour was fine and to save hassle we bought a 2 day parking card even though we were only there for just a day. Of course, when we got to the car to prop up our parking card, lo and behold!! yet another blasted parking ticket!!! Unbelievable - 2 in the same ruddy day! So we went back to Monica for advise, and get this, she was berating herself for not having asked about the car when we arrived... J. Still, we figured out how to pay the fine (well, had to pay this one coz we were going to be there till the next afternoon!) and then finally headed out to lunch. Mimi & Rahul went off to this 'designer' tapas bar that Mimi had read about, and we just rocked up across the square to this tiny bar, where Moncia said they might have sandwiches (we were kind of sick of the same tapas everywhere by now..), but alas! no such luck and we had to settle for a tapas lunch. Thankfully, we had acted on Aashish's brainwave and rescheduled the bodega tour for the following morning, so we had a chance to just take a breath in the afternoon before heading to the Hammam Andalusia.
Mimi and I had elected to go in for the full treatment, while Aashish chose a half hour massage and a dip in the baths, and Rahul, the cowardly custard (apparently he was traumatised by some Thai massage some time ago...) staunchly refused all offers of a massage and wanted to wallow in the pools. After some instructions (which apparently no one listened to, coz once we were in the changing room, we hadn't a clue about what we were supposed to do, and after much consultation between the ladies and men's changing room [thankfully we were the only people there], and discussions about shoe sizes - huh! weird wot?! who'd wear shoes in a turkish bath?? Anyway, turns out these are rubber feet protectors and you're supposed to wear them in the baths - not sure why... if that wasn't enough, along with the big fluffy towels, we were given plastic elasticised shoe covers which we had to don in the reception before we were allowed into the main bath area! hmmmm - well, we made it to the dressing room, and then as I said, confusion reigned supreme, to take towels or not, which direction, blah, blah. Anyway, finally sorted all of that out, and we crept towards the bath... crept coz everything is very dimly lit inside - most exotic and well, very soothing. We'd been instructed to dip ourselves in the following order - first tepid, then hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold, but in no event stay in the hot (all this is water in case you haven't got it) for more than 10 minutes at a stretch.
Well, the tepid was heaven... the bath has, well all the baths have these underwater lights that change colour every 10 minutes or so, and it's dark with exotically soothing music playing... ummmmmm. Fabulous. Mimi got so carried away she did a bit of swimming in the bath :) - jolly embarrassing! Aashish was the first to take the plunge in the hot and we all followed.... and to my surprise, it wasn't all that bad and after a while, rather comfortable. My plan was to do just hot and tepid, and that was reinforced after Aashish went into the cold pool up to his waist and came back out saying it was just bloody freezing and impossible to go into! But then after a bit, I thought I'd give it a try and I did, and yes, it was freezing, but the shock of the cold was comparable to the shock of the Atlantic at the beach! Also, I didn't wade in slowly like Velu and hang about waist deep contemplating the sub zero temperature, but plunged right in and it wasn't so bad. Ok, so I got the hell out soon enough but felt immeasurably brave after that ;-o. Then coming back to the hot was interesting - your whole body's tingling as you get out of the cold, and then it starts to hurt when you get into the hot! Hmmmm - not good, you say... but after doing this a couple of times, you rather start to enjoy it, and you do feel your circulation going and well, feel rather invigorated :-). But rest assured, there was much yelling and some serious litany swearing the first time everyone went into the cold pool (thankfully we were all alone) along with heaped curses on the sensibilities of the crazy Turks who invented this (Rahul reckons that's why they went to war so often... every time Mummy said go for a bath, they hopped onto their steed and started attacking other civilisations :-)) and those even crazier Swedes!
In the midst of our dippings, this rather strong looking lady took Aashish away for his massage, and the 3 of us really got into the hot cold routine, with Mimi and I staying in for 30 seconds in the cold :) (of course, at the end of 30 seconds it was a very rapid exit coz the cold actually starts to hurt you - like pins and needles). Aashish came out of his massage looking like a zombie... so relaaaasssked that he could barely stand up, and assured us he'd be back after a shower to wash off all the oil. It was our turn for the Hammam treatment after that while Aashish returned and joined Rahul in the bath. But now, onto us... we were both in the same room, and this time there were 2 hefty women. The room had two marble beds on either side an a sink in middle against the wall. The reason for the marble beds is that they keep washing you off with loads of water - much to my indignation; Mimi got sploshed by water poured from a lovely earthen bowl while I only got an aluminium bucket!! Felt like a horse being washed down!! Anyway, we started by being rubbed over with this soap type thing that smelt of the silver coated elaichi (the English equivalent positively eludes me at this time!) which naturally made Mimi feel hungry.. then after been hosed down, we were thoroughly scrubbed with a scrub glove (which we got to keep as souvenirs) and then packed with warm mud and had our faces painted with stuff and then were left to marinate. While we were marinating, we could hear Aashish imparting his wisdom to Rahul and despite several 'bebous' ranging from plaintive to booming, they obviously couldn't hear us.
The ladies eventually came back for us and after another round of hosing, washed our hair and then sent us out - it was really cold out after the warmth of the treatment room, so my masseuse very sweetly got us both big, fluffy bathrobes to wear and we had to dry off before the massage, but were given some lovely sweet tea, served in this ornate silver teapot with little sip size cups. Then, onto the massage room where we were rendered loose limbed and compliant - the best facial massage I've had... although they didn't do our fronts - just our entire backs and then face and shoulders - Velu was oily all over when he was done! Anyway, the boys had already left by then so we went back to the dressing room but decided against washing off, and just patted ourself dry of the oil and headed back to the hotel. It later came out during dinner that Rahul had been thrown out very politely from the baths, and while leaving, he thought he'd left the map behind, and with his atrocious efforts at dumb charades tried to explain it to the receptionist (not the same one who gave us instructions coz she spoke English just fine), and for all his efforts, this dude who was sent it to check the dressing room came out with Aashish's shorts! JJJ. Rahul had the hysterics accompanied by a sniggering receptionist and hurried to explain that's not what he meant and in any case he'd found the silly map... and in the meantime, Aashish who was in the shower (he'd left the shorts on the door I think) doing his feet finishes to find his shorts missing.. J. So he was really flummoxed, and then this chappie comes in most embarrassed with his shorts, and gesticulates and tries desperately to explain that he wasn't really some sort of deranged shorts theif/ fetish man, but that somebody had left something and he thought this was it.... and Mr. Velkar rises to the ocassion by reassuring him thusly, and I quote 'No problemo!' LOL.
Dinner was La Mesa Redonda, a rather good restaurant (complete with Monica's approval!) so we all gussied up and went across. The minute you enter the restaurant it looks like someone's living room with a sofa and table lamps.. and Mimi who was leading was a bit taken aback, but it opened out into a small, intimate restaurant. We were seated by our waitress - an unusual sight, and that too a middle aged lady with whom we had an interesting exchange of dialogue while ordering our meal - first of all, we couldn't make up our minds coz there were just so many interesting things on the menu to chose from! And to add to our confusion, she came along with the day's menu that was also on offer! Of course, that took some miming coz it wasn't written down, but I did get 'paloma' - and even sang Una Paloma Blanca (I'm just a bird in the sky), which I remember as a white dove - not sure that it was dove and not pigeon, but hey - not really that much difference is there! We all ordered starters and mains, while Mimi the brave plumped for 2 starters and a main, and our lady looked at her with renewed respect and said as much :). Here again, the portions were most generous - I'd ordered scallops - quite by accident, coz they call them escalopes, and I thought that was the escalope of flattened meat thingies, so was pleasantly surprised to have a plate loaded with half a dozen humongous scallops! Never I have I seen so many in a single serving - at best you'd get two, but usually only just one of this size, and I was struggling with 6!! Mimi ordered the poached eggs with prawn and they were sublime! Quite the high point of the entire meal, closely followed by the main course of pork stuffed with pate. We also had quite an exotic selection of game - with rabbit and the paloma, and of course no place for dessert. The chef came out to do his rounds and stopped and chatted with us - not surprisingly commenting on Mimi's sheer order of magnitude :-). I don't know how, but she actually finished everything (her 2nd starter was a vegetable lasagne - no pasta, just slices of vegetables imitating lasagne.. and no, the slices weren't thin! and while on the starters, Aashish had a hearty soup and Rahul this little shrimp puffs steeped in alcohol)!! Rahul was more than a tad merry after 2 glasses of red wine, and they had to scrap their plans for a night out at another bar :-) as we staggered our way home.
After breakfast, we headed back in the direction of the Real Escuela for the tour of the Sandeman Sherry bodega and made it just as the tour was leaving... did all the sampling - Mimi & Rahul drank all their fino!! and then while they headed back to town, I persuaded Aashish to check out the training at the Real Escuela and the tour of the stables. The training was cool, coz there were the main riders from the performance who were doing the training with the younger riders on the horses putting them through the paces. We then went for a tour of the stables, and apart from being smelly and completely the wrong place to wear slippers too... it was rather informative. Apparently, it's a 4 year course at the riding school and each year only 4 applicants are chosen out of 80-100. Of course, it's predominantly Spanish, coz the language of instruction in Spanish, but this year they had a Danish girl and previously a Dutch guy. To apply, the students not only have to pass a written test, speak Spanish fluently, but also have a dressage display on one of the horses from the school that they've never ridden, and now there are 5 female students - quite an achievement in a male dominated arena (think we saw all 5 of those women in the training, coz I remember being surprised to see so many women there!). The criteria for selecting the horses are very strict - like all thoroughbred classifications and they stable and train other horses as well. Learnt another interesting fact.. the white horses that you see don’t start of being white...they’re this grey and then as they get older they start dappling with white spots appearing and the older they get the whiter they get! Did you know that? So the splotchy ones are partway there, the dappled greys are young ‘uns and the white ones are veterans! Interesting, wot!
We gave the museum a skip and since we couldn't find a taxi we started walking in the general direction and before you knew it, we were back in familiar territory - yep, Jerez is a small town! I was dying to go the the designer tapas place that Mimi had been to, and we found it easily enough, and though none of the sherry barrel tables were free, we founded a shaded table and did our ordering with my linguistic talents at the fore - forgot the Spanish word for duck, so flapped my arms and quacked at the waiter, and voila, 'magre' was ordered J J. As Mimi had described, all the tapas came with a virulent green sauce or a fluoroscent orange one accompanied by Sali wafers and the fried cheese was fabulous!! Can’t remember if I’ve elaborated on what ‘tapas’ are – basically, they’re Spanish hors d’ouevres and can constitue a whole meal if you eat enough of them, and mostly the locals drink fino or dry sherry along with it. Typical tapas would include pork (usually with garlic), chicken (we had one stuffed with ham and cheese), fish balls, even grilled brinjals with honey!! prawn in poached egg (speciality), fried cheese, and loads of stuff, all served in bite sized pieces served with bread/breadsticks.
Incidentally, this is Spain’s sherry growing region, and the different kinds of sherry is what is drunk here – manzania in Sevilla (which makes me keep breaking out in song – Ill bhangia bill bhangia…. J), but only fino in Jerez (only Sherry from Jerez region is called fino). The other thing about Jerez is that when we got there, well, at least the area near our hotel, all you could see were older people! Mimi claims it’s coz there’s nothing else here but the fino J although, things did pick up on the day we left coz of the feria de Otono (Autumn festival) that was just beginning. We had to leave right after to drive down to Ronda, which we managed without too much drama, even stopping at Grazelema on the way. Grazelema is this really tiny town up in the mountians and it’s really cool to see the changing landscape as we drove down. Right from the Sevilla side which was more barren to the brilliant coast of Cadiz, then onto the picturesque white towns in the hills at Vejer and then the rolling farmlands around Villamartin/Ubrique and now, the dense foliage of the mountains. Most unexpected to suddenly see so much lush greenness but apart from being adorably pretty to gaze upon (no pun intended!) Grazelema is also next to a national nature reserve. While Mimi and Rahul went to explore Grazelema, I took a little horizontal break on the carparking stones but before I couldn't even contemplate a nap, those two were back, so onwards we continued to Ronda. The geography of Ronda is just spectacular.
I’ts these sheer soaring cliffs with buildings suddently appearing atop - quite breathtaking - but sadly I don't think we have a single photo!! L at least, I don't think so. We also didn't have a map from direction we came through for getting to the hotel so after getting further and further away from the town, we decided to call the hotel and check - turns out half the roads are closed for the feria, and we'd have to take the outside road in any case... the directions seemed clear upto a point, but then, we seemed to be going along this narrow road getting nowhere, so we backtracked and tried again, and eventually asked a very friendly barman for directions, and lo and behold - we had been on the right track all along - just gave up too early. Anyway, we found the hotel and a good carpark, and then just chilled by the hotels miniscule pool J. This place is outside town with steep steps leading up into the town, but excellent coz on the other side it abutted a stud farm - and get this, right next to us in a pen was this mare with her new foal - both coal black and so pretty, and then on the gently rolling hill yonder, there was a whole bunch of horses grazing! At when the began it was just a couple of horses on the top silhoutted next to the tree and it looked like a movie set. Very cool to say the least. I spent the evening just sitting there relaxing watching the horses and soon enough there were these bells.... attaching to goats also meandering about in the adjoining area - totally unexpected and such good fun. We had dinner reservations in town, but none of us felt like making the effort of trudging up the steps so we gave it a skip and just ate at the hotel. I really enjoyed my dinner of a super prawn tagine and even indulged in a bit of dessert - chocolate crepe with a berry coulis J. For the life of me I can't remember what Aashish ate, but I do know he enjoyed it. The best part was the tables were all outdoors, 2 on the patio and the rest in the garden with vibrant table settings and as the sun sets at 8.30, you gaze out on the movie set silhouette ahead of you. They also served a complimentary glass of fino along with a tapas before the meal which was a nice surprise.
The plan was to go into town the next, although Velu was content to just stay where we were...but I had some serious souvenir shopping to finish before we left. But after a lovely breakfast where we made an important scientific breakthrough, we just felt too lazy to move, and so the plan was to just lounge about, read - yes, they had a small library as well! and then head out in the evening. But coming back to our breakfast - Aashish had gone down first, but came back empty stomach coz they would apparently only serve all of us... but I think that's just Aashish being Aashish and if he'd asked they'd have fed him! So, anyway, I went down with him, and it was just so gorgeous. Breakfast, this time out on the terrace, looking over the mare and foal and the other horses peacefully grazing away. Breakfast was a good spread too, with fruits (the most fruit I've ever seen in Spain thus far!!), cheese, meats and bread along with different kinds of jams and preserves and honey. I know you're dying to know about the scientific breakthrough, so here goes - bees are carnivores! Bet you didn't know that! A bunch of them that were hovering around took an unnatural interest in the ham plate, and Aashish very sagely informed me that they were only curious and once they'd satiated their curiosity they'd move on.... hah! curious indeed - they were taking chunks of meat and flying off, and they just refused to budge from that plate. They started off with the salami which I think was easier to nibble on and decimate, but they did try the Iberian ham as well.... and not a glance at any of the sweet stuff that was on the table! Very focused indeed - like a good mac/mangy! ;-o. So eventually, we had a little battle of the bees vs. Guha, coz I saw no reason why I should sacrifice my ham for any more scientific research and anyway, Aashish wasn't having his, so I started cutting around the bees and taking away more and more of their sample :-).
If you think that was just a freak thing, I have empiricial evidence to support my theory. When Rahul rocked up for breakfast, I stayed to keep him company and this time, we were well prepared - stuck another plate on top of the ham plate, but one of those suckers manged to find a gap and snuck in and had to be hastily but carefully shooed off and napkins used to pug the leak J. While it was under cover there were no bees hovering, but the minute I opened it to make Mimi's sandwich, it was like magic.... pirhana scenting fresh blood....like moths to a flame………..like bees to honey (NOT!!)…. back again to the carnivore fest! Who'd have thunk it!! Bet none of the vegetarian honey slupers know that this eartwhile production is fuelled by pork products!! JJ
Lunch was relatively meagre, coz they only do a tapas lunch and like I said, we were too lazy to make the climb merely to forage for food! Still, it was quite tasty - very different tapas from the norm - coz it was only vegetables!! Gasp! Shock! Horror!!! and here in Spain - what an aberration! I swear it must be just the garlic that keeps them alive as long as they live :). Mimi & Rahul left earlier on, but we eventually made it to town close to 6 pm, and my oh my!! Am I glad we went! This town knows how to party!! But before that, let me go on a bit about how simply breathtaking it is physically. There's a bridge that goes over the ridge and it's just spectacular... sheer drop on one side, with green outcroppings and even a little waterfall and then suddenly from that point the town extends inland - and I only know that because of the postcards showing an aerial view! It's truly an amazing sight. The bridge opens onto the Plaza d'Espagna (and no, no points for guessing that), and a little further on is the bullfight, Ronda's pride and joy. This is one of the oldest bullrings in the country, and Ronda has produced 2 of Spain’s most worth dynasties of bullfighters, the first being the Romeros followed by the Ordonez family. What we'd never realised is just how integral bullfighting is to Spanish life. Even when we were in Sevilla and Vejer - at least one TV channel was devoted to bullfighting, and then we saw something that really brought this home. In front of the bullring there were statues of Pedro Romero and another bullfighter - can't remember if it was Cayetano Ordonez or another Romero (I think the latter), and not only were there flowers put there at the foot of the statue, people and I mean young people, were taking photos of themselves posing next to the statue!! Can you imagine?? They are like rock stars in this country. Anyway, the 'Corrida Goyesca' is an annual event that is timed to coincide with the annual feria at Ronda. Here, the bullfighters are rigged out in traditional costume and there is a parade through the town as well before the fights. By the time we got there, the fights had already begun, but there were still people thronging outside the door - with hopeful faces waiting for a glimpse of anything if the door were to open at all.
While still in London, I was torn between wanting to see a bullfight because it was such a traditionally, proud Iberian thing to do and so much a part of their life, that well, it was a bit like, when in Rome... (I'd have liked to see the gladiators in action, even though that was gruesome), but at the same time, I just feel so bad for the bulls. A little better knowing that they do get eaten after they're killed, but I didn't like the fact that they were teased... well, that dilemma was resolved when it became apparent that tickets were impossible to get. We discovered just before getting there that the legendary Cayetano Ordonez's grandson was making his first appearance here at Ronda, and tickets had been impossible to get since ages and were outrageously priced when they were available for that brief time. But my point was that despite my squeamishness, the atmosphere is just so electric - the combination of the feria and the bullfight is positively intoxicating and it's just so exciting you want to be a part of it... well I did anyway J Velu looked positively tortured with all the crowds and wanted to run away. Well, we meandered around a bit taking in the party atmosphere our own unique ways JJ me, with a huge smile and Aashish looking pained. The streets were festooned with balloons and lanterns, and all the bars were blaring music, and there were impromptu flamenco's being staged everywhere - have an excellent clip of one of the multitudinous waiters wearing the frilly flamenco aprons doing his thing JJ, but the best bit was seeing everyone all togged up in their best, strutting their stuff. You had whole families dressed in the height of fashion - mummy's and daughters wearing matching, flouncy flamenco skirts, with their hair caught up in the tradition style complete with flowers and fans! Superb!! Even little kids were dressed to the hilt, stuffed in their prams and promenaded. It was just such a great atmosphere - a complete free for all - stalls selling tapas and foods spilling into the streets, people checking out other people :), babies, children, teenagers, grandparents, parents, singles, groups, everyone!! Talk about rocking! We sadly had to leave the hub of the party coz Aashish looked like he was about to cry and went back to the less crowded street looking for my souvenirs. We wandered towards the garden and well, I was very curious about the crowds thronging, so we went in through the other gate and discovered the reason - there was a huge projection screen put up that was broadcasting the bullfight live! Oh my - what excitement, except for I don't know what came over me, and I turned into a complete cowardly custard - every time the crowd roared, I just had visions of the bull being hurt and I just couldn't bear it!! On hindsight that was a bit silly, coz they were probably just cheering a fancy move by the matador, but I just had to leave - Aashish was busy taking photos of the gorge and the noise didn't seem to bother him - typical!! Of course he is totally anti- bullfighting. And here I was wanting to see, but so lacking the stomach to even handle the sound effects.
We headed back towards the Plaza to come across the classic picture of Mimi & Rahul sitting next to each other at the end of the bridge eating McDonald's burgers!! That we do have a photo of. J. Oh - forgot to mention, think the entire police force of Ronda was out patrolling the streets - I mean for a small town, how many people would they have? But we saw police on horseback, on foot, in cars on bikes.... and of course, in true Spanish style, one of the mounted police was smoking J. I definitely have to come back to Ronda, this time with Aashish and enjoy the feria and try and catch bullfight (how - I have no idea!!) - well, maybe I'll start by just trying to watch it on the screen and then move into the ring... Since we had to leave early the next morning to drive back to the airport in Sevilla, Aashish and I went back for dinner to the hotel while Mimi & Rahul make up for our missed reservation the night before. We'd ordered paella, and it was humongous - 4 people could've easily eaten from it and well, it's no surprise that we felt so sick, despite the leftovers!! Settled the bill that night as well, and the hotel very thoughtfully provided us with a 'picnic' breakfast which was left in one of the coolers for us to take. Speaking of the hotel - haven't mentioned it at all. It’s next to the ruins of the Arab baths (baños, being baths - and we never got around to exploring that - quite shameful esp. since we were right next to it). The best feature was of course the patio and terrace and pool areas, but the rooms were rather sweet as well. Small, and the bathroom so tiny the towels were kept outside J, but clean and well maintained, and the best bit - when we went to our room, there was a carafe of water and a plate of rather delicious chocolate chip cookies JJ.
We left the next morning while it was still dark - but that’s not too difficult since the sun only comes up at 8 am!! And made it to the airport without any mishap. Except when we got to the car park, the Hertz section was choc a bloc so I had to park elsewhere and we (and 2 other cars) couldn't find the attendant, but the counter guys insisted they were there, blah, blah. Still managed to get all that sorted out, in time to join the others in the check in line, and then sadly, homeward bound. Oh! Almost forgot. The immigration counter is at the departure gate, i.e. each departure gate has it’s own little counter and ours was presided over by a rather bad tempered old gent, who kept yelling at people when they just whizzed past (not unsurprisingly!! I mean who expects an immigration desk right there?) even children… he was unhappy with my visa for some reason – first said it had expired – again, not surprising coz he was looking at an older one!! And when I flipped to the right page, he kept muttering something, but I didn’t learn enough Spanish in the 10 days to comprehend, but it was clear that he was unhappy with my schengen visa – probably because it was issued by the Swedish consulate and not the Spanish… and only grudgingly stamped it - thank god he wasn’t there on our way in! Of course, there were no stamps to be found at the airport so all my loverly postcards had to be sent from London! But we did find several newspapers with front page leads on the bullfight and Mimi was so excited coz she’d seen them in the procession – yep, they’d seen the whole thing that we sadly missed, so we promptly bought a Spanish paper for the pictures J.
I have to say, this was one of the best holidays I’ve had, and a lot of the credit goes to Mimi for all her hard work in research the right little towns and the best hotels to stay in. Ole! But I just fell in love with Vejer and quite possibly Ronda (although I’m not so sure how I’d feel if we’d gone some other time instead of during the corrida and feria) and will definitely go back. Sevilla was alright, but not a patch on these two which are now up there on my list of places to be in (the other is Montreux in Switzerland).
Of course we were quite knackered when we reached home and while we didn’t have to fly back to India that night; we did have yet another houseguest to reckon with and a most unexpected one at that. But more about that and the sleeping bag later….. first, my old nemesis – Gatwick airport (that’s where I missed a flight back to Switzerland after having checked in, and then having them call my name for boarding after the flight had left [and baggage offloaded], to have the lady at the information desk helpfully tell me that ‘all the announcements here run a little late, love…’), and while we didn’t miss the flight, on the way back, we had to wait for ages before they found a conveyor belt for our luggage…. And one of the cleaners cackled at announcement apologizing for the inconvenience due to a strike, and told us that it was always like this!! But we did have some excitement, in the form of Pink (chart topping singer), and we were alerted to her presence by one of the immigration officers asking if the other knew who Pink was and that she’d just come through.. of course, Mimi got really excited and insisted that all of us stay on full alert to spot her, and well, unsurprisingly the rest of us couldn’t really be bothered, but voila… there she appeared and walked right past us much to Mimi’s incoherent gawking joy and naturally she then berated Rahul for not getting into his paparazzi mode and taking a photo with his famous camera phone (fair comment though coz he took pictures of everything else!!). But it really is the most annoying thing to have arrived at your destination and then have to wait around for ages before they find a conveyer belt for your luggage!! Bloody Gatwick!
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