The roasty Andalusian summer that the locals have been warning us about for months is finally upon us. Temps have been in the 90s since last week, and we're bracing ourselves for two months of the same or worse. We're drinking gallons of iced tea—I'm off to the "100 Pesetas" (i.e., 99 Cents) store later today to get some more ice-cube trays—and subsisting mainly on salads. I'm also planning to pick up a blender so I can start making gazpacho, which folks in these parts guzzle like lemonade in the summertime, and my new favorite Spanish dish, salmorejo. This delightful chilled soup—made of pureed tomatoes, garlic, bread
and olive oil and topped with chopped boiled egg and serrano ham—is
one of the culinary specialties of Córdoba, where we spent a few days
last week.
Situated 100 miles northwest of Granada and with a similar sized population, Córdoba struck us as Granada's cleaner and more cultured sister. In the short time we were there, we got a taste of the city's rich history, spanning from Roman times to its era as a major Moorish caliphate and a center of medieval Jewish learning to the age of the Reconquest. The seventh annual Sephardic Music Festival was being held in the city's botanical gardens along the banks of the Guadalquivir River, and we took in shows on Thursday and Friday evenings. The music was fantastic, and it was a pleasant way to enjoy the welcome (relative) cool of the evening after the day's high-90s temperatures. Check out our Córdoba photo set on flickr.
On Saturday we headed down to Lucena, about an hour south of Córdoba, to catch a performance of one of our favorite groups, Los Aterciopelados, who were scheduled to play at the town's brand-new bullring. It was our first taste of small-town Andalusia, and it was a bit of a shock. We rolled into the bus station mid-day, planning to catch a taxi to our hotel, located a couple of miles outside of town—the only one of Lucena's five hotels that had a room available. Suprise! Lucena has no regular taxi service. But after a series of phone calls, which ultimately led David to a sticker on the side of a phone booth, a guy in dented Mercedes showed up and delivered us to Pensión Las Palomas.
Later that evening, the hotel's owner was kind enough to give us a ride into town. It so happened that Lucena was holding an outdoor music festival, with small concerts on various rooftops around town. We enjoyed a tapas dinner within earshot of a high-school band performing pieces ranging from Pachelbel's "Canon" to "Tequila." We then headed to the top of the municipal market just in time to catch the applause of the last number, but it wasn't a wasted trip, as a mostly toothless older gentleman was standing at the entrance handing out tickets that just happened to be for the Aterciopelados show. (Well, truth is, we'd bought tickets in advance, but this at least spared us the hassle of having to pick them up!)
At that point, it was well after 11 p.m., so we began making our way to the bullring for our midnight concert. As we passed by a complex of apartment blocks, we caught the strains of live rock music, looked around and found a sign for the music festival taped to the door of one of the buildings. A couple of kids inside opened the locked door for us and directed us up the five flights of stairs, where we found a band of expats performing a rousing version "Mustang Sally." They even had the small crowd of (definitely non-English-speaking) residents joining in to sing the "ride, Sally, ride..." part of the chorus. It was one of those surreal travel moments—like the time Charles, Peter and I happened into the municipal library in Oaxaca, Mexico on a Sunday night and were plied with daiquiris and compelled to dance salsa with a group of librarians celebrating International Library Day.
The Aterciopelados show was fabulous, as we knew it would be—we've seen them twice in San Francisco—and it was really fun to enjoy them under the stars, in the center of a bullring. It was approaching 3 a.m. when the concert let out (the opening act had showed up late), and when we called our "taxi" guy to pick us up, he regretfully informed us that he was in Córdoba. He gave David another number to call, which we immediately forgot, but just at that moment I spied a couple of guys getting into a car. They looked like nice people, so I made a dash toward their headlights, waving my arms frantically. Turns out they were headed in our direction and were happy to give us a lift.
We headed back to Granada on Sunday—a tedious journey that involved a couple of connections and long waits in bus stations—and arrived back at El Hornillo to find our swimming pool full and our neighbors busy putting in our garden. More on the garden from David soon...
And, since she's too modest, I thought I'd add that she has posted an article about a favorite SF locale: Balmy Alley. Please visit http://www.everywheremag.com/articles/855
create an account and vote for it to be included in the next issue of the magazine!
Posted by: David C | June 25, 2008 at 05:43 AM
aterciopelados!
outdoors?! without having to fight grumbling crowds of drunken fools?!!
holy schmoly.
this is LIVING my friends! ;-)
Posted by: k | July 10, 2008 at 11:13 PM