One Night in Jerez

            Shannon, Claire, Dave, and I took the bus from Barbate to Cadiz, and from there a train to Jerez.  On the train, Shannon and I kept busy by reading the Jerez sections in our respective Spain travel guides (she has Lonely Planet, I have Rick Steves – thanks Shiri!).  Jerez’s two main claims to fame are horses and sherry.  So booze and ponies, perfect for a Kentucky girl.  Those are two things I can relate to.  Fun fact: the word ‘sherry’ actually comes from attempts by English-speaking folk to pronounce Jerez. 

This HUGE statue, called the Minotaur, welcomes you to Jerez as you exit the train station.

            We made our way to our hostel, dropped off our bags, and began the tourist-ey part of our night.  But first, we had an important mission: find food.  We ended up at a café on a plaza, where, after sitting there for about 45 minutes, the girl at the next table turns to us and says “excuse me, are you all here for the orientation tomorrow too?”  We ended up chatting with her for a while and she told us how to find the cathedral and a few other cool sites in the old part of town.

A pretty church whose name escapes me.

Main entrance of aforementioned pretty church.

Jerez Cathedral!

This bell tower is in the cathedral plaza.  I'm pretty intrigued by the blue light at the top.

I don't think this gentleman is actually Tio Pepe, I just thought it looked neat with the cathedral in the background.

A model of one of the sherry aging contraptions you can see about town.

           I learned from Rick Steves that the sherry aging process is pretty complicated.  It’s first matured in a cask type thing until a yeast layer forms on top, then its poured into the top barrel in a system of three barrels layered on top of one another.  Every year, a third of the sherry in the bottom barrel is drained and bottled, then the middle barrel is drained into the bottom barrel until it's full, and then the top barrel drains into the middle barrel so the top barrel is one third empty, and then you fill it up with the stuff from under the yeast layer.  By the time sherry is bottled, its been aging for over 10 years.  That’s pretty serious stuff.  We tried some sherries while we were in Jerez and it’s definitely worth waiting for.  It’s very different from the sweet cooking wine that’s common in the States, but very good.

            We had dinner at a place we happened upon and I had my first bite of patatas bravas since being back in Spain.  Bravas are fried potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce, and they are SO GOOD, one of my favorite tapas.  You can find them anywhere in Madrid, but they’re harder to come by in Andalucía.  The ones we tried were pretty tasty, the sauce was just spicy enough and very flavorful. 

           We called it a night after dinner and headed back to the hostel.  The next morning, we went to our program orientation.  There were about 75 other auxiliares there from all of Cadiz province.  There were some higher ups from the education department there who told us more about the Spanish public education system, the bilingual program, and the auxiliar program.  We also heard from some people who gave us more details on how to get our NIE taken care of, who (of course) made it sound much easier and straightforward than it would actually turn out to be (details to follow in another post). 

  

          The orientation ended with lunch, and we sat with an auxiliar from Ireland who is working in Tarifa.  He ended up walking back to the train station with us, and then on the train we met two girls, one from Scotland and one from the West Coast, who are living in Cadiz.  I had no idea so many people from the UK did the program, and Charlotte was a sad bunny (read: not a happy camper) when she found out that she missed an opportunity to hear English spoken with a non-American accent. 

  

          We ended up hopping off the train in San Fernando, a town outside Cadiz, and meeting with the bilingual coordinator who worked at Shannon’s school until this year.  She was so nice!  She picked us up from the train station and took us to the bus stop, and we all got a drink while we waited for the bus.  We caught the bus back home to Barbate.  First trip success!!