And so it goes...

Jump in! View of Gironda, Seville.

By now the alert reader will have noticed that we have set into a bit of a comfortable routine on our unscripted and far too brief journey. We approach a town in the afternoon, dive into the nightlife with both feet and absorb as much of the native flora and fauna as we can, catch a few hours sleep and then explore the major sites the next day, then start driving in the afternoon and begin the whole cycle again.

This strategy served us well and we never felt rushed or if we had missed anything fundamentally important. We established a wish list in case we are fortunate enough to ever visit again.

We found a road west and started towards our next stop Sevilla, southern jewel of Spain and the most beautiful city that I have ever seen.

The trip was relatively uneventful but we did pass a beautiful geothermal tower catching reflected light from a gigantic mirror system that was glowing brighter than anything I had ever laid eyes on short of the sun. Like an alien spaceship from Close Encounters.

Spain is all in with solar, with no evident problems, humming along quite well. Plumbing fixtures are nicer than ours too. it is too bad that the solar technology doesn't work in the western hemisphere. I am confident that the problems will be solved when the big corporations finally succeed with nascent technology that will allow them to tax sunlight.

I think that this is the time in the sequential narrative when I shall get off the road for a moment and shpiel, pontificate and do a bit of what I usually do on this blog. I am writing without notes and three days back and the previous two weeks events will all start to fade and blend together if I can not capture them quickly.

I think that this was the most pleasurable trip I have ever taken. While my africa excursion of the late 1980's may have rivaled it for sheer primal pyrotechnics, we ran into a little trouble when we got the open jeep filled with the youngsters we had commandeered on the tour stuck in the middle of the Masai Mara mud puddle. In the middle of a 28 lion pride. I had to get out and push. You talk about adrenaline. The parents wouldn't speak to us for the rest of the trip.

And I was traveling with the wrong woman back then.

Traveling with Leslie is different, throughout our life together and our journey's together. We are two peas in an onion free, purple and green pod and mesh very well back to back and front to front. She is a bit more open, loving and emotionally wet while I tend to the dry but we are an exceedingly good fit. We both scream a lot but also heal incredibly quickly.

I believe that the reason this trip was so enriching was because it was in so many ways so difficult. The language, the customs, the spontaneous and unplanned nature kept us constantly on our feet. And because we had to work for it, it paid off in hearts and trumps. There is no way that the five star route could have delivered the bounty we received. We had yet to pay over 70 euros for a hotel at this stage of our journey and the food in Spain is incredibly cheap. We had great meals for ten bucks total. The wine is cheap as well. And people looked at me incredulously when I tried to tip them, like what is this? If you do tip, 10% is quite sufficient.

The world has many axis. There is an anglo axis, a chinese axis, an islamic axis and a hispanic axis. A stupid axis and a smart axis, gay axis, straight axis. We are sometimes blinded to our own trajectory and then when we hit a different paradigm it is a little unsettling.

Spain is the mother country of a huge range of influence. Once the greatest naval power in the world, its tendrils reached deep into north and south america. We met many Chileans, Columbians, Argentinians, perhaps a few Mexicans. The coast is full of Brits and the Irish, vacationing in the sun and seeing an entirely different country perhaps than we did.

You will go many places in Spain where the people speak no english. And it is comforting in a way. That there is actually a place where our influence stops or is at least impeded a little. The young of course are starting to sport our worst exports, the requisite lip, nose and eye piercings, the oversized ear washers but the tattoo epidemic has not reached American proportions yet. When this generation takes over there is sure to be a Ministry of Piercings in every province. It is a club, but what happens when every last individual has joined the little club, what will you do then? Hard to wash the stuff off.

We met a couple in Sevilla who recounted a harangue by an American at their hotel at the audacity of the people to not speak english. Americans are perhaps the most ignorant and xenophobic people in the world. We treat the whole world when traveling as if it a theme park built for our own personal amusement.

The couple told us of meeting an American couple looking for the subway. After directing them to the metro, the couple said no, they wanted to eat at Subway. This rises to the level of a crime in a country that has as much to offer in a culinary sense as Spain.

A fun couple, from Britain, sixties rockers. I talked of my love for Steve Marriott, she, Randy California, preferring the California acid bands. Flip side counterparts.

As I have mentioned repeatedly, Spain is a very hot place. The average July temperature in Sevilla is 96 °F. Cordoba is a tad higher. It is a lot like Fallbrook this year, we left a week of plus 100 and it actually pulled a 110° in Oceanside one day recently.

Resting pope

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The Spanish are a very handsome people with a lot of admirable personal traits. We found them helpful, engaging, warm, gentle, friendly and quite solid. They dote on their children. I heard no profanity or hostility the whole trip and never witnessed a single act of anti social behavior. I ran into one lout, but the interaction was swift and temporal. I was driving high on the narrow road in Toledo when a huge young man walked across a red light in front of me with his family, daring me to challenge him with his eyes, his brutish bulk being his only apparent virtue. He sneered but I remained non emotive and nonplussed, not willing to grant him the least bit of satisfaction.

The Spanish also have a unique physiognomy. It is interesting to see the hispanic root free of the amerindian admixture. A tall people, there is a particular thin and rather equine shape of the face on certain individuals that I don't believe I have ever seen before on an ethnic or national group. The women in the north, especially Catalunya, have light blue eyes, some circled with black, that are extremely striking and as far as I know, exclusive to them. The men have a particular tendency to receding hairline and bald spot but since it is shared equally, it looks good on them.

We witnessed a whole nation of walkers. Walkers who consume a light mediterranean diet predicated on small "pinchas" or bites. Nice way to roll.

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This region of Spain found us sharing roads with and occasionally crossing the Guadalquivir River. I have always had a deep love for spanish literature, especially Zafon and Reverte and now I will have to reread the Captain Alatriste series, which often mentions the Guadalquiver and other locations that I am now personally familiar with.

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When you go to Spain, a little light comes on in your head after a few days and the language starts to make sense. Not just fluency but etymology as well. Because all of a sudden the arab antecedents of the language become enormous and apparent. Casa and cazar, the language is straight out of the south. It is not just a seven hundred year run. It is the fact that for much of historic time, Spain was considered the most northern country in Africa and the saharan and middle eastern imprint cannot be overestimated. These people were not visitors, they formed the lingua. I found it curious that the even earlier jewish culture failed to make any sort of commensurate lasting impact, at least linguistically speaking.

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BigD asked me to talk about my camera and lens setup. I shot with my Nikon D7000. I started off with my trusty 18-135 mm dx lens, non vr. I switched exclusively to my sigma 10-20mm shortly thereafter. I didn't have a good fanny pack for hauling gear, forgot it in the packing maelstrom. Didn't want to lug an extra lens. Love the camera, so light compared to the FX behemoths  not my style of shooting. Fast and light. For some reason I brought no polarizers or filters this trip, experimenting with going bareback. Possibly a mistake but I can do so much now in post production, still there is something cool about a clean signal path.

A few frames before the solar tower I apparently got a hair on the sensor that nailed quite a few photos, none incurable. Couldn't blow it out. I took about 2300 shots, filling two 32mb and one 16 mb cards. No tripod. Hate flash indoors and lost a lot of good shots. Will be much better next time, will bring a monopod. I will be processing photos for a great while. I also should mention that I left an expensive nikon backup battery somewhere behind, probably in the rent a car.

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I think that we should get back on our journey again. I should mention that I wrote no diary or log on this trip, content to occasionally scribble a key word or phrase on a napkin in my pocket for later reference. So it is important that I keep plugging this week, lest I lose the details to my advancing mental declination and fatigue. I also can proudly say, no email and next to no internet. Great to disconnect once in a while.

Alcazar Garden

The trip was really starting to round into form. The language was getting easier, we were easing into a gentle and non intimidated routine. We both mentioned that we could live there, right now, quite easily.

We drove westward into town, had a slightly difficult time finding an area to pursue for lodging but soon found ourselves in the most wondrous park like environment, which extended for seeming miles.

I love Balboa Park in San Diego, designed by architect Bertram Goodhue in classic spanish plateresque (like silver ornamentation) and churringueresque design after Sevillan gardens in 1915. Think Balboa Park times 100. A jewel of a city, verdant and subtropical, the most beautiful city I have ever laid eyes on.

The native plants are also very familiar to those of us in San Diego and southern california. The landscape is dotted with Canary Island Palms, Mediterranean fans, Trachycarpus fortunei, jacaranda and acacia. Sans the allopathic eucalyptus, an australian import to our shores. It looks simply like home. Home that is, if we had the same appreciation for beauty and our environment as the Spaniards evidently do.

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The town is full of stately first class hotels. We found a very nice hotel on Buhaira,  blocks away from the door to the old city Puerto de Jerez. Seville Centre, a luxury HC hotel. Very nice to be in a first class hotel.

The concierge directed us to an international food festival in the park next door where I sampled a galician paella and Leslie swigged a dutch beer.

We walked down to the Puerto de Jerez and entered the heart of the old fabled city. The motto on the Jerez gate; "Hercules built me, Caesar surrounded me with walls and towers, the King Saint reconquered me."

Seville is the only Spanish city with a river port. The capitol of Andalusia, it was said to have been built by Heracles himself.  In myth he is said to have sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar to the Atlantic and founded Seville and Cadiz. History in the city is recorded about 2200 years.

The original Roman name for the city was Hispalis. The city was conquered by the Moors in 712 and was the capital for the kings of the Umayyad Caliphate, as well as the Almoravid and the Almohad dynasties.

The city surrendered to Christian King and conqueror Ferdinand III of Castile in 1248.

The fourth largest city in Spain it has just under a million inhabitants. The Cathedral of St. Mary is one of the largest in the world and resplendent. The jewel of the city for me is the Alcazar Palace, the most beautiful building I have ever set foot in. We trod its corridors. We climbed its towers. We sashayed down the Gran Via. We wandered through its cathedrals. We smelt its roses and toured its gardens. We rode its trams. I will let pictures describe.