In Which Team Pants Circumnavigates An Itinerary

Ole, Seville!

We are back to the United States. Currently we lounge in respective comforts at Soggy Acres, the name of my parent's property in North Carolina. We chose to break up our international travel with stops in Durham allowing us to adjust to time changes and process our journey. I believe we chose wisely. Plus, they have a hot tub.

Our last post found us in Granada, pleasantly enjoying the provincial hospitality of our expatriate friends' villa. From there we took the high speed train across the Andalusian plains towards Seville. Upon arrival we made haste to our pension, located in the heart of the old city. After checking in with an adorable and ancient senor who had the high voice of an old woman, we made our way to more foods and thence to the cathedral.

I must find a way to encapsulate the sights and sounds of our travels in a more efficient way than this, for to simply write full sentences and paragraphs skips over so many impressions we gathered. I believe the next post will be just that; a cavalcade of vignettes and impressions, peppered by photographs.

The cathedral surprised us, glimpsing over rooftops as we winded through the bottleneck streets at night. Its height watched us walk the cobblestones between the close walls. When we at last flowed out into the main plaza before it's grandeur we were welcomed by the sounds of a virtuosic classical guitarist. The instrument played off the ancient walls and the monuments. In a mist of natural reverberation and ghosts we strolled away and back again, unable to leave the aural enchantment. We bought his CD. http://www.torkematik.com

I think I could live here, but it would require some frequent visits to the Mediterranean coast, and most certainly to Morocco. Ever since reading Paul Bowles and falling in love with his prose in high school I have wished to travel to North Africa. It is the Moorish influences that attract me most to this part of Europe. I have little in common with Spanish machismo or the fiery passions germane to its natives. I prefer open spaces. I prefer contemplative vistas or complex and graceful architecture. I prefer more fresh vegetables. But to feel the power of this land's antiquity and the relaxing breath of el viento viejo, I yearn to stay.

The morning light is magical. Low, intense, gold and deep saffrons are splashed on everything making the surfaces glow and glimmer. Shadows are long and black. The air is cool, even damp. Breezes are mustered and bother along the streets like sleepless revelers. We take it in and breathe it out. I wish the whole day were morning.


But the days are long and morning only their start. We have learned to ride the ebb of the day's heat during the siesta and plan our days around it's surcease. Upon rising for the second time of the day we feel renewed and as though we have a second morning to explore. A fantastic pace that refreshes and slows our sense of time's passage.

Time is an illusion, siesta doubly so, to paraphrase Douglas Adams. We must press on. We depart Seville early early on a Monday morning. We return to Amsterdam.

In Which Team Pants Click Castanets

Flamenco!

Our hosts, after guiding us through the maze of Granada's street for sumptuous meals, more great drinks and more delicious food, brought us to a tavern in the upper hills frequented by local gypsies. We entered a narrow, white walled, darkly lit cavern with a small stage at the end and were taken to a small table near the front of the room and ordered mas tinto de verana. The crowd's electric buzz created a palpable fission echoing our day's wonder and magic.

A few minutes later, the flamenco guitarist and cantor glided through the crowd to the stage followed by three young dancers in full regalia. They calmly took their seats traditionally placed around the edge of the stage. The guitarist begins to strum with a measured fervor. Someone else claps, beginning the pulse so characteristic of the form. As the beat and music took over the hall one of the dancers, as though vaguely possessed by the rhythmic strain, her face pained with a look of sorrow or lost love, began to slowly stomp and spin her body, flaring the scalloped folds of her long dress. Her eyes opened. She stared into the body of the crowd like she was taunting a slave or teasing a suitor. Her glance, as she danced, occasionally dropped to the floor. Then with a laughing smile, looked up with just her eyes. So dark. So sensual.

We all felt the passion of the dance, the notion of placating tourists for cheap dance dollars now gone from our heads. These people were there to perform something they felt was a part of their souls. They threw their bodies into the dance, the music, the song. The tempo would abruptly rise with the command of the dancer's footfalls, speeding to a crazy rapid blur, and then slow to a beautiful and dulcet pulse. When the dancer sped to the final climax of her dance, all whirring and clacking contrasted with the svelte gyrations of a passion, her triumphant pose seemed more statuesque than any actor I've witnessed. A real source of passion somewhere in these hills, I mused to myself.

Three more dancers, each lovelier than the last, took their turns turning and carving the floorboards of the stage with their heeled shoes. Enchanting and haunting, their eyes might occasionally meet ours and chills would blossom like goose flesh.

A brief pause before the next dancers took the stage. This time we would witness bailaores, male flamenco dancers, who's abilities put all others to shame. He finished his extraordinary dancing with a flare and finish that was soaked in a gentle and graceful humor borne from serious competence. Flawless.

We left the evening singing down the streets, my fingers working the beautiful castanets I purchased from a gypsy outside. Percussing and laughing a staccato, we all danced our own personal flamencos on our way back home.

In Which Team Pants Kick Ass and Take Names

Upon waking in our pension, the alley below comes into aural focus like a distant television set left on overnight on the Noisy Malaga Street channel. The Andalusian sky; a crystal azul mocked by solitary clouds who defy the expanse of sun-filled sky. The day is ours. We've left Holland behind. The snow, the wet cold, and the mistakes. Oh yes, we made mistakes in Holland. I am a savvy traveler, made all the more so by loosing my wife for forty-five minutes during a snow storm. But I digress...

The autobus North to Granada passes between the small mountains which separate the town from the Mediterranean. Some hills are covered with scrub. Scruffy Brillo pads bereft of greenery, balding like middle aged Greek man in a brash sun. Occasionally we see the ordered olive rows, but I wonder where the grass grows? There is none. The scenery looks like California, and then I remember the spaghetti westerns filmed here, and I say, "ah." "This land was designed by Hollywood executives and producers to appear Old West, without the fuss of paying union wages!"

Arriving in Granada appears much like arriving in Mexico: cheap buildings with advertising written in that machismo font that gives me hives. Until descending into the valley, one might believe it all looked like that. The Franco-inspired, near communist grandeur reflected in the monumental fountains and architecture suggests otherwise. It only hints at a regime's belief that all this ancient city served to highlight their impunity and divine right. But the ancient withstood the brief shadow of dictators as easily as the reigns of caliphs and catholic demagogues. Here are the baths fed by aquaducts still in use, built over one thousand years ago. Here, a catholic church is easily recognized as Muslim in style, bells replacing the muezzin's voice in the arched windows of the tower. Each most likely built on the backs of the poor or enslaved.

Our host's house is magical. Shaped like a U with an open courtyard in the middle, the stairs bring you upwards to a rooftop patio under the gaze of the Alahambra. Upon arriving, we quaff mas tinto des verana (i've butchered the spelling in favor of phonetics) and I get a lesson in slicing Iberian ham. It's placed in a convenient stand and shaved to produce paper thin, succulent slices. These hams are curred three thousand meters above sea level in the dry air of the sierra nevadas. The rare air produces rare flavors and savory "tops" to beverages.

The drinking continues until one in the morning. We weave the streets taking in pubs and tapas, bars and wines, savoring the different scenes as we eat and drink our way through the night.

We sleep like dogs.