Flamenco

The Jerez-Seville axis is an important region in Andalucía for contributing to the development of flamenco. Indeed, Seville considers itself the heart of flamenco. Yet Jerez’s Judería, the maze of back streets in the gypsy quarter where flamenco grew, was completely quiet. I couldn’t find any flamenco at all.

In Seville I could have gone to any of several flamenco shows put on for tourists—many of which charge €30-€50—but I was looking for something authentic. When I was last in Seville, I went to a little bar called El Tamboril hidden in the corner of the quiet Plaza de Santa Cruz, where I found one of the locals with a guitar and another singing. It was deep, genuine, impromptu flamenco. I headed back again this time but found it closed on Thursday night. I returned on Friday and again on Saturday, and the door never opened. It must have shut down; a real shame.

I tried another place recommended by my Rough Guide to Andalucía, an excellent resource on flamenco, but I found instead a small group playing chamber music. In any case, the place was so hot and stuffy with the hundreds of bodies crammed in there that I wouldn’t have been able to last.

So, in the end, I travelled to the other side of the world to the heartland of my favourite genre of music and was unable to see any.

(Cue Shizuka’s howl of disappointment.)

Booking ahead

Having learned my lesson, I bought my ticket today for the bus to Portugal tomorrow. Apparently, there are two daily buses. When the lady at the ticket office asked me in Spanish which one I wanted, I couldn’t make out what she was asking and all I could answer was no entiendo—I don’t understand. The guy in the queue behind me, impatient, intervened and explained to me that there is a morning bus I can catch at 7:30 or an afternoon bus at 16:30, and she was asking which bus I wanted to take—all in rapid, verbose Spanish. After he finished I turned and said to him, in Spanish, “I don’t speak Spanish.” Somehow, he seemed to think that speaking to me in Spanish would remedy that.

Meantime, the lady at the counter simply wrote 7:30 and 16:30 on a piece of paper. I pointed to 7:30, paid my €16.50, and was on my way, wishing the impatient Spanish man a continued fruitful career in impromptu customer service.

Inter… net?

What is with the Internet in Seville? It is virtually impossible to find an internet café. Generally I need wireless access for my laptop, which is hard enough to find without sacrificing a good tapas meal and eating at a crappy American Tex Mex bar with some Yank hollering baseball on five different TVs just so you can use their Wi-Fi as a paying customer, but this time I need to print my voucher for my car rental in Portugal. I spent half the day going to five different addresses listed in various guides, and there was no trace of any one operation. Apparently they start up and shut down like dot com bubbles here, which is really strange, as if Seville is one place in the world the Internet just hasn’t caught on.

Seville

Of all the Andalucían cities and towns I have ever been to—Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Carmona, Jaén, Jerez, Arcos, Ronda… Seville is the best. I thought there might have been a halo effect, as it was one of the first places Mai Li and I reached on our maiden European voyage in 2007, but having returned I can confirm it. Granada is a must for the Alhambra; Cordoba is equally important for the Mezquita; and picturesque Ronda was a lot of fun because of the fería.  But Seville, though touristy, retains its heart and lives up to all the romantic expectations. It has the cathedral and the Giralda, and the alcázar with its rambling gardens, all in the centre of the Barrio de Santa Cruz—the yellow, salmon, and white-washed quarter of tall, narrow laneways and rose-filled balconies of iron filigree. Though other places have made important contributions, it is the soul of flamenco. I feel very safe in all of Andalucía, but in Seville, at any hour of the night, utterly so. And the tapas, invented here, is the best anywhere, with dozens of bars offering hundreds of kinds of tapas in the Barrio de Santa Cruz alone.

Americans love Seville, too. It is one of the places I have found them the most as tourists, along with Paris and Salzburg. So, they mustn’t be all bad.

Spain: Seville, Granada, Jaén, Cordoba...

Getting access to the internet is a little less easy than I had hoped, not so much for the availability but just the time; we are really moving across the continent quickly. I'll try to keep this updated at least once a week.

We caught the fast train from Madrid to Seville on 07 April, involving a brief scramble at the train station ten minutes before departure as Mai Li ran from counter to counter to get our railpasses validated before we could board.

Seville was beautiful, and is one of our favourite places thus far. The old city is a maze of narrow cobblestone streets and lanes between four-storey buildings. It being Semana Santa, Holy Week, the town was crammed with tourists, all of whom (including ourselves) wandered around with maps looking lost. We had one overcast day and one warm and sunny Spring day there (in fact, much of our time in Spain the weather was overcast and rainy.) There was a bullfight on Easter Sunday, the first of the season and a big one, for which a scalper offered us tickets for €150 each—A$250! We said it was too expensive and he didn't bother to haggle, so obviously he can get that price.

All along we have been helped by the fact that people speak a little English, particularly in the hotels, but nevertheless I have been able to muster enough Spanish for us to get by. Indispensible are my French studies and my Lonely Planet phrase book.

Having recovered from my food poisoning, Mai Li was then struck with a strange, terrible cough, fever, chills and an aching back. I suspect strep throat. On our last night in Seville we went out to see some authentic local flamenco but could only stay for half an hour because Mai Li was too sick to stay.


We drove on to Granada the following day and visited the Alhambra, which on wise advice I pre-booked before we left Sydney, enabling us to saunter past the hours-long queues. The Moorish architecture and interiors are intricate and beautiful, and there are fountains and gardens throughout. The weather held out for our tour and was at times sunny and hot. Granada is a nice city with a bohemian community, but apart from the Alhambra, a fantastic seafood paella at the Méson Gallega, and a €30 extortion for laundry it wasn't the most memorable.


On our way to Cordoba we drove through Jaén and stayed a night in a 12th-century fortress converted into a 4-star hotel. Pleasant, but expensive.

Cordoba has a lot of character, and is considerably older than Granada. Apart from the obligatory visit to the Mezquita, we caught a great flamenco show with this one dancer in particular who tapped his feet so fast it sounded like a typewriter.


We are now in France, but we need to get moving, so that update will have to wait till next time....