Jerez de la Frontera

An early start for us the day we went to Jerez. We arrived at the station, bought our tickets at the machine, we are getting experts at this now and had time for a coffee before the train arrived. It was only a short hop, 12 minutes but a chance to see some of the surrounding countryside. On arrival at Jerez we were impressed by the facade of the station.

Whenever we arrive in a new town or city we always head for the tourist information office to get a copy of the town map so that we can find our way around but for some reason this proved to be a bit more difficult. We located the tourist office only to find it had "moved" so we then had to start again.  Eventually we found the "moved" tourist office, got a town map and then had difficuty getting away from a very enthusiastic tourist information officer (or maybe she just wanted to practice her English!) At last we were on our way - We decided to start our tour of old Jerez with a visit to the Alcazar, a 12th century fortress. It was very interesting and in the palace's tower we took the opportunity to attend a presentation of the camera obscura which provided a live panorama of Jerez which was something neither of us had seen before and was quite fascinating.

We also undertook the historic walk of the town, this is a picture of the town's Cathedral which was completed in the 18th century.

Wandering around the back streets we could hear flamenco music being played and came across the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco (Andalucian Flamenco Centre). The town was extremely busy despite it being a public holiday. Most of the shops were closed but the bars and restaurants were full and I'm sure come nightfall the place would have been electric.

By late afternoon dark clouds loomed overhead so we decided to head back to the station and return to the van - a wise decision as it turned out, as not long after we got back the heavens opened to a crack of thunder and we had a "little rain".We chose well with our pitch, others were not so lucky and ended up in a mud bath.

We shall potter around here for another week and then we are moving on to a place called El Rocio which appears to look quite interesting. Not too sure when we will be on line again so it may be a couple of weeks before the next blog.

But until then lots of love

Kath and Harry xxx