OK, so we weren't really fleeing Andalucía—in fact, I didn't even realize we were out of the province until David pointed it out. However, our trip to Murcia was indeed our first venture outside Andalucía since we arrived in Seville last November.
It was a spur-of-the-moment thing: a week ago I found out that Jeff Tweedy, front man for our most favorite band in the world, Wilco, was doing some solo shows here in Spain, and the closest performance was about 175 miles away in Murcia, capital of the province of the same name. Our Lonely Planet guide devotes a scant nine pages to the entire province—compared to 130 pages for Anadalucía—so I can be excused for forgetting that Murcia is its own province.
As you might imagine, given its diminutive guidebook presence, Murcia is not a tourist hotspot. But we found the city (population 400,000) to be easygoing and absolutely charming. The Rio Segura—lined with parks and promenades and crisscrossed with pedestrian bridges—runs through the middle of town. Murcia's cathedral, which was built between the 14th and 18th centuries, boasts the tallest bell tower in Spain and a gorgeous baroque facade. The city's annual fair was going on, so there were food, wine, music and other entertainment events going on in various parts of the city. We arrived on Saturday afternoon and spent a few hours exploring before heading to the show.
As expected, Jeff Tweedy's performance was fantastic; he played the standards we were hoping to hear, along with a few surprises. It was especially cool to discover we have fellow fans in Spain, and Jeff went out of his way to accommodate their song requests. "I don't why I have a reputation for being a curmudgeon," he said after obliging yet another Spaniard's request, this time for "eempossible chairmany."
As a special bonus, the show was held in a concert hall right next to the fairgrounds, so afterwards we dined on fair food. David had a hotdog—which, according to a looped announcement blasting from the stall, was the truly authentic *German* hotdog, Oscar Meyer—while I had the midway standard, meat on a stick, along with some honest-to-goodness choclo (South American corn-on-the-cob with really fat kernels) grilled up by a posse of Peruvian women.
On Sunday morning, after enjoying an especially good tostada con tomate, we took a stroll by the river, encountered a youth symphony setting up for a free concert, and decided to take a seat. They opened with a pasodoble, "Cielo Andaluz," and I was hit by a strange gush of emotion. The music somehow brought to life my romantic pre-trip image of Spain and made me long for that imagined place, while at the same time making me realize, as I heard the clicking castanets and admired the elegantly dressed Spanish ladies, fans aflutter, all around me, "It's real! I'm here!" (You can listen to a performance of the song here.)
We forgot our camera, so—sorry!—no pics. We'll make up for it next week, though, when we hit the Sherry towns and the Serranía de Ronda with our San Francisco visitors Charles, Peter and Kathryn.
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