Vino, Tapas, y Flamenco ? My Day in Cádiz

I already love Spain!!  This morning I woke up at 6:30am to see the sunrise over the beautiful Spanish coastline.  The ship actually docked around 8:15am and then we were cleared by customs and allowed to get off the ship by 9:15am.  I thought there would be a huge line of people trying to get off the ship, but there was no one waiting (maybe because it was so early?) so my friend, Janae, and I just walked right off the ship and onto the first land we have seen in a week!  It was definitely a little weird to be walking around without the rocking sensation, and I felt like sometimes I was walking funny myself because I was so used to it.  Janae and I walked around the city just wandering the streets – we found a few monuments and walked a little of the coastline before grabbing a chocolate filled pastry in a shop that we found.  We sat and ate it in the Plaza de San Antonio where there were lots of cute restaurants.  It would have been nice to sit and have some café con leche or churros but we didn’t have time because I had to be back at the ship by 10:15am to leave for my wine excursion!

There was a group of 45 students and 2 teachers who boarded a bus for a 30min ride to the nearby city of Jerez.  Jerez is one of the cities in the Sherry triangle which is the only region allowed to put the name of Sherry wine on their product (I know we learned all about this in Napa!).  Sherry wine in Spain is actually called Vino de Jerez because Sherry is the British name of it that came from British mispronunciation of the region.  We had a tour guide on the bus and she was great and told us a lot about the history of the region and the cities we passed on the highway during our drive.

When we arrived in Jerez, we went right to our winery tour at Gonzalez Byass.  The tour was so cool and it was definitely a showy winery with mediocre wine to back it up, but it was still really cool to hear about the process of how they make both Sherry wine and brandy.  We actually got to ride around for part of the tour on an adorable little train through the gardens and statues of the giant Tio Pepe logo (Tio Pepe is the company that owns the bodega I think?).  I’m sure MK thinks the name bodega sounds familiar – well do you remember Bodega the winery dog?  Well I learned that a bodega is actually an above ground wine cellar and also sort of like the Spanish word for winery.  For example, the place we went to was Gonzalez Byass – La Bodega Tio Pepe (aka: Tio Pepe’s winery).  I’m not sure how that can actually be good for the wine because it was really hot outside and even though it was slightly cooler in the bodegas, they were just above ground and pretty similar to the air temperature, but I guess it works.  Some highlights of the tour included seeing how they make their Lepanto brandy and smelling the alcohol content of the brandy in 3 different phases of production, and also seeing the gigantic 16,500 Liter barrel of wine they have in the apostle room where the giant barrel represents Jesus and it is flanked by 6 slightly smaller barrels on either side named for each of the apostles in the order they are pictured in The Last Supper painting.

After the tour we went to the largest tasting room I have ever seen.  There were just rows and rows of 4-person tables with potato chips on them (no bland crackers).  Then they gave each table one small bottle of their wine to try and you could pay extra to get tapas or something if you wanted but we all had box lunches from the ship that we ate.  The wine was really strong and didn’t taste very good so I just had a glass but there were plenty of guys going around trying to get as drunk as possible and finishing any bottles that tables didn’t want.  The professor leading the trip was hilarious and made it really fun.  On the way back from the winery we drove around the city of Cádiz and the tour guide was able to tell us all about the buildings that I had seen when walking around the city earlier.  I found it interesting that pretty much every building in Cádiz used to be used for the military and has now been converted into anything from a university to a hotel.  A lot of the cool old stuff around Cádiz are military fortresses and walls because of its prime location on the very Southern tip of Spain.

Wow, I can’t believe that was just the first half of the day!  We got back to the ship around 4pm then I met back up with Janae and we wandered around the city trying to find the landmark Catedral of Cádiz and some tapas of course!  We were in luck because when we made it to the cathedral (which was beautiful, of course) we also found a cute tapas place called “La Catedral” with outdoor tables right in the plaza in front of the cathedral.  So we ordered some sangria which was so delicious and refreshing after walking around in the hot sun and then we had some trouble with the tapas.  Both Janae and I have high school Spanish so we don’t quite remember everything and our waiter spoke really fast with a thick lisp from Spain and we could not understand a word.  After really long conversation of trying to order (normally you can just point at the tapas you want but since we were outside we didn’t have any menu or anything and we had no idea what tapas they had), we finally told him to just bring us his 5 favorite tapas.  The menu that day was 5 tapas and a drink for 10 Euro so we had to choose 5.  Our waiter just kind of laughed at us but it turned out to be the best decision we made because we have no idea what we ate but it was DELICIOUS!!  We figured out that the dishes were: ham, chicken, potato salad, paella, and some sort of mystery seafood.  We didn’t really care what it was because that meal, complete with delicious sangria, was the best I have had in a while!

There was another Semester at Sea sponsored trip scheduled for that night that Janae had a ticket for so I walked with her back to the ship.  Then on the way I decided that the event sounded like a lot of fun so when we were on the pier I just bought a ticket on the spot and hopped on the bus to head to the Andalucian Flamenco Night!  (Andalucia is the name of the Southern region of Spain).  This trip turned out to be so much fun!  There were actually 5 buses of students and faculty that went on this trip, instead of just 1 like the morning trip, but we still had a tour guide for the bus ride which was really interesting yet again.  We drove out to the countryside (approx. 30 min again) where we got off and were greeted with glasses of Sherry wine for everyone.  Then we all went into a small practice bull-fighting ring where we watched a really cool show.  First they had Flamenco dancing where the ladies danced with a horse and a guy walked beside the horse and pulled the reins a certain way to make his feet do different dance moves.  It was something I had never seen before and was really cool!  After that show we got to watch a test bull fight where a really hot matador-in-training just did some of the cape trick stuff in the ring with a small calf.  We learned from our tour guide that this is like a test for the calf to see if they are aggressive enough to mother a bull for the big-time ring or something like that.  Anyway it was pretty fun to chant along with the music and stuff, and it didn’t hurt that the matador was muy guapo.

After that we all filed out of the ring and they gave us another glass of Sherry wine and then we went into a room full of round tables.  The tables were set with pitchers of sangria and more tapas!  This time there was 1 plate of queso y jamón and another 1 of Tortilla Hispañola (a potato and egg tortilla).  Again, all the food and sangria was delicious!  After we munched for a little bit the dancers started performing another Flamenco routine.  This time since we were inside there was a live guitar player and singer and just the dancers (minus the horses).  They were amazing dancers and the show was a very fun atmosphere!  After they were done they put on regular Spanish dance music and started pulling up people to dance with them (luckily not me because I would have looked like a fool!).  Eventually the whole place was just dancing to the Flamenco music.  Then of course, because we are a bunch of stupid Americans, the place puts on the Macarena so imagine a giant room with like 400 Americans and 5 Spanish Flamenco dancers doing a massive Macarena – it was hilarious and amazing all at the same time!  Finally it was time to depart and everyone just got up and in the mood to dance with the Macarena and the night was over!  Everyone was ready to dance the night away there!  We all just rode the bus back to the ship (I’m pretty sure most people just fell asleep), but it was really cool to drive around Cádiz at night for the first time.

Now I am finally back in my room and I have so much to do before I leave tomorrow for my 3-day excursion!  I apologize for the crazy long and detailed post (a lot of it is for my own memories too!).  It’s hard to believe that I had this much to say after just one day in Spain!  If I wasn’t traveling tomorrow, I could definitely see myself spending more time in Cádiz because it was beautiful and we didn’t even scratch the surface of all the awesome things there are to see here, especially the beaches.  If you made it this far in the post – thanks for reading and congrats!  I will post again when I get back to the ship on Saturday!