Moving On From Vera to Almería

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

This morning I said good-bye to my very special B&B people--Jilly and Dave...they were so kind and accommodating, (the pictures don't do them justice at all)

and I said good-bye to....

my little writing room,

and the lovely town of Vera, catching the bus at 8:30 pm for Almería.

As I travelled I reflected on a few things that I will remember that may come in handy back at home, or that I thought of being quite sensible.

One thing that makes sense are the beaded curtains they use at the entrance of doors. It allows them to leave their normal wooden doors open in the hot weather, but the bead curtains keep out the flies and insects for some reason. Not sure if this would work in mosquito season back home or not. (Speaking of which, I still have remnants of the mosquito bites from Egypt. Also still the marks of a scratch down my leg from "Angel" the black lab in Cyprus at the apartment where I stayed.)

The second thing was that when they caught a group of young boys who had defaced a wall with grafiti, the police and the parents stood behind them while they repained the entire wall. Besides having the whitest wall in the whole village when they were done, people decided that this must be something that

kids want to do, so they have built and desingated two spots in the town where the kids can go and graffit to their hearts content.

The town's people turned something potentially very negative and destructive into a positive, so don't waste their time continually monitoring stray walls and they've had no trouble since.

One wall is by the huge sports complext below, Jilly & Dave's bed and breakfst. The sports complex has a skateboard park, a football field, basketball court, indoor swimming pool, etc. And so on to Almería...

I arrived here by 10:00 am, caught a cab and was able to get into my hotel room right away. I dumped off my luggage and headed out to explore.

I’m staying at the Hotel Torreluz III , which is located right smack dab in the middle of Almería in the old section of the city, kind of in a square with the II and IV versions of the hotel across the way. (not sure where number I is.)

Literally right around the corner to my left is an old Catholic Church…The Church of Santiago was built in 1434 and was one of the parishes that city was divided when they converted to Christianity. Beautiful inside, but of course, photos not allowed, and the church is still very much in use.

I also wandered up the streets until I came to the outskirts of the city where I could see the ruins of another old building way up the hill squashed between some newer apartment complexes. To the forefront once could see the remains of other buildings built into the side of the hill. I couldn’t see a logical way to find my way up to either of the ruins without rock climbing gear, so I turned back to the city, passing a carpentry shop.

Wandering through the shop-laden streets, I came to The Order of Saint Clare Convent Church , which turned out to be around the corner from my hotel in the other direction. The work on it began in 1719.

Eventually I decided it was time to have a little lunch so I went into the Taberna attached to the hotel. The long and the short of that experience was I turned out not to be as smart as I thought I was in interpreting things. Even when they gave me a menu translated into English and I'd ordered, I had no idea what I was eating. Not sure who did the translations, but it wasn't even close! How could I have got it so wrong?

One thing was quite literal and that was a salad made of tomatoes and garlic. Little slivers of garlic on quartered tomatoes that were partially green and liberally, very liberally, doused with olive oil, garnished with two white spears of asparagus and several green olives. So much for watching my calorie intake... I still want to try some paella, but I've found out that it is not made very often, except in private homes. If one wants it in a resaturant, unless it's a special on the menu, one has to pre-order it the day before, because everything is done using fresh seafood.

I tried again tonight when I found a place with it on the menu, but he laughed and said
mañana (man- yan- a - tomorrow). Maybe I'll have better luck in Madrid or Barcelona....at least I'll be there long enough to pre-order it.

In the meantime, finding some place to have supper before 8 pm in Spain is very difficult. I was advised I would only find 'fast food' at the pubs. By that they meant sandwiches, or tappas, but even those were not available, I found. The places often close mid-afternoon and re-open for the evening, so there's a foud hour stretch in there where you have to go to patisteries (bakeries) if you want to eat something. So far I have not seen a McDonald's or any of the other fast-food chains in this country. Yahoo! Although I must say that many people here are definitely over weight...must be all that olive oil they drench everything in! Then again the weight loss shops here are plentiful and they are certainly doing a booming business. They're practically on every street corner. If I were here longer I might check it out.

I wandered around for ages and finally found a little sidewalk café that was serving evening meals. No paella, alhtough it was on the menu, but I did order 'lomo' (pork loin). It was okay, but the typical no butter for bread, fries with grilled meat, and a plate of green olives to start, which I immediately sent back. I don't eat the olives or fries and am trying to cut back on bread...oh, well...once I get to Madrid I will see if I can find some salads minus their olive oil dressings. At least the waiter was fun, posing for the photo.

While I was out and about, I found some other old buildings, one was a palace, and right across the street another much older building,

along with an 'enchanting' butcher shop (at least the exterior was interesting).