Rear View Mirror: Reminiscences on Andalusia
-An early morning in Seville. As my darling wife slips back to sleep, I stroll down the stairs into the street. The sky is an intense electric blue. I take a new direction through unfamiliar alleys towards the gardens promised on the map. I detour towards a cafe near the garden's entrance. Inside are four well dressed middle aged Spaniards, each with toastadas and cafe con leche. The waiter is tall, elegant, and efficient in movements as in speech. He comes to me. "Digame" he says. "Talk to me." I order my tostada, my coffee. He nods and is off to work. As he makes the order, the other waiter walks by with a large bowl full of freshly washed cockles, still in shells. When my waiter brings the toast, he presents it like a bull fighting torreador, his free hand gesturing in a subtle wave of pride. It is delicious.
-We dine on paella, sip tinto de verano, watch the people walk by. It is a reverse sort of sight seeing, waiting for the sights to arrive rather than seeking them on foot. It is how I prefer to see a city. To wander until you find the right spot for the city to wander past. Here, in the shade of newly leafed trees we lingered at our table. Our adolescent server, between his duties, flirted with friends hovering on the polite outskirts of the courtyard. The day grew hotter. It is Spring, after all.
-Salobrena: A city by the sea. Less than an hour's drive from Granada, the Mediterranean coast holds this hilltop town in it's green plain palm. The castle at its peak is the golden apple we enter the maze of streets to find. This Moorish outpost served as a garrison to the Alhambra; a sort of pre-lookout in the early days of Iberian Homeland Security. The Moors, it seems, had some enemies. If the town's buildings and roads had been in place when the castle's original occupants were alive, no one could have ever found their way up to the walls for siege. We made a few erroneous turns before we were able to visit what we dubed "the Alahambrita". The view, a 360 degree panorama of the Spanish foothills and Mediterranean coast, enjoyed our mostly silent regards.
...more to come...
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