Seville: cathedrals and flamenco

We met Mila and Eli outside their hotel in the morning, and went around the corner for breakfast at Café de Indias. Café de Indias is a small Spanish chain that focuses on tea, but also serves coffee and breakfast items. I'd been there before, and knew that it was OK; we went there because it was easy. But I don't think it was a good idea. It doesn't feel like a very Spanish experience, what with all the tea.

I had a "baguette tosdada" with serrano ham, that is, a toasted sandwich stuffed with ham, made from a short baguette (rather than the usual Spanish roll). Eric and Mila had baguettes tosdadas too — ham and olive oil for Eric, tortilla española for Mila (that is, Mila essentially ate an omelet sandwich).

Eli, on the other hand, surprised us all by ordering the English breakfast ("desayuno inglés").

Eric, Eli, and I had standard cafés con leche, while Mila had hot chocolate (a local specialty), which was almost as thick as pudding. At my advice, Mila, Eli, and I had fresh-squeezed orange juice, too. Typically the orange juice in Seville is made from a tarter variety of orange, and is very refreshing; this juice was I think made from more standard oranges, but still quite yummy. (Hey, fresh-squeezed orange juice! Always tasty.)

Mila went back to the hotel to tend to a somewhat cranky Yelena, while the rest of us went souvenir shopping. Well, really it was Eli; Eric and I only bought and handful of postcards. Eli bought a few nice and/or fun things for family.

For lunch we ate at the recommended Café Restaurant Modesto, also around the corner from Mila & Eli's hotel. It was good but not great, especially for the price. It was also the same place where Eric, Susanne, and I had our first meal in Seville 2 1/2 years ago.

We got a pitcher of sangría — our first and only one on the trip. It was OK. It had a rather strong brandy taste. Mila, Eli, and I opted for bowls of gazpacho, knowing full well that it was the wrong time of year for it. It tasted like gazpacho made with winter tomatoes, I’m afraid, although once they added the chopped peppers, onion, egg, croutons, and whatnot, it was pretty good. Eric instead started out with a roasted piquillo pepper salad. (Piquillos are rather like sweet red peppers with a nice sharpness to them... not exactly spicy, just characterful.) I also ordered, to share with everyone, a plate of lettuce hearts with smoked salmon and seasoned with ajillo (toasted garlic and olive oil). That was quite delicious, even though it seemed to be missing the bonito that was also supposed to come with it.

Mila and I both ordered, for our main dishes, something called taquitos de bacalao, which was described as a typical Sevillian preparation. It was basically chunks of cod batter-dipped and deep fried, sort of like fish and chips without the chips. It came with a little onion relish, and was tasty, but a bit too single-note for a main dish. Also worth noting: “taquito” in Spain means something completely different from what it means in Mexico. I didn’t expect them to be the same, of course, but I thought there might be some passing similarity.

Eric had frito variado, a big plate of various deep-fried seafood items. Eli, after his big breakfast, only ordered an ensalada mixta (mixed salad with tuna) for his main dish.

For dessert Mila had the tocino de cielo (the same sort of custard brick that Eric ordered in Ronda, with a slightly different name), Eric had rice pudding, and Eli had what they called an egg flan, which seemed to be basically a flan. I ordered a fruit salad, but it didn’t come, and I was fine with that.

Afterwords, we had to figure out how to our precious last afternoon in Seville. The cathedral? The Alcázar? Guitar shopping? Buying Flamenco tickets?

We started with the cathedral, which is by volume the largest church in the world. This is sort of a strange piece of information. Who measures a church by volume? It’s not like it’s a warehouse that will be packed full to the ceiling. It was in any event a beautiful church, and quite large. Not as striking as the mezquita in Córdoba, but still worth a visit. The cathedral tower is a former minaret (to a mosque that was torn down and replaced) which has brick ramps leading to the top (so that during Moorish times, a disabled muezzin could climb to the top of the tower on horseback), and it is worth climbing up it. Seville is a fairly flat town, with most buildings no taller than 4 stories; the view from the top of the tower gives you a different perspective on the town.

After the cathedral we had very little time left. We decided to forego the Alcázar in part due to fatigue, and went questing for guitar shops. Unfortunately it was late Saturday afternoon and the guitar shops were not open. So that was too bad. We did buy flamenco tickets, however. At least, we bought two — Eric was going to stay behind and babysit (no children under 4 allowed at the show), but the only show we could get tickets for was the later show (10pm), too late for Mila to leave Yelena with another person. It’s a shame Mila couldn’t come too. I suppose it would have been more gracious of me to forego flamenco, but I had always regretted not going to a show last time I was here, and I thought Eli, being a guitarist, would regret it even more than I did if he did not go. So we went.

We went to a show at a cultural center — a good compromise, I thought, between visiting a real gypsy bar (where you might have an excellent show, but you might also have no show at all), and going to a big tourist-directed spectacle. Actually, our audience was populated by tourists, too, but still it was good, and I’m glad I went.

Before the show we all went for one last dinner together. (Tomorrow we will head off separately.) We ate tapas at a place in Santa Cruz called something like Café Patagón. We all drink fino (Eli had a beer after) and shared delicious croquetas de queso (cheese croquettes), fabulous artichokes al ajillo, lovely Manchego cheese, a rather lackluster patatas a la brava, some highly unspecial fired chicken wings, some extraordinarily good berenjenas salmorejo (spears of fried eggplant served with a sauce of pureed tomato with lots of good olive oil), and two platefuls of green olives.

We walked to the show and said some of our goodbyes — me to Mila and Yelena, and Eric to Eli — and then Eli and I went in and found two seats in the back corner. Not the best seats, but then we were free to stand at will, with no one behind us.

The show started with the singer, Enrique de Morón, and the guitarist, Raúl Cantizano. Morón was quite young looking — maybe as young as 20. He seemed to have a sore throat, coughing sometimes between songs, but his voice was full, powerful, and emotive. The guitarist was very impressive, too. After a couple of songs, the dancer joined them. She performs under the name “La Marquesita” (“The Little Marquise”). La Marquesita came out first in a more traditional flamenco dress (red with polka dots, and a long multi-ruffled train) and a white, fringed shawl. There were many elements of the show that reminded me of other music and dance styles, especially from the Middle East. At one point La Marquesita did something with the shawl that reminded me of a belly-dancing move with a scarf I’d seen Mila do earlier in the day. After the more traditional outfit she changed into a more modern silk vest and black skirt with a single ruffle at the base. In this outfit she didn’t need to hold her dress up for us to see her footwork.

The dancing was sometimes impassioned, with intricate gestures, and sometimes all footwork. Between the foot-stomping, the clapping, and the finger snapping, the dancer also doubles as a percussionist. (There were no maracas in this show, though I understand they can be a part of flamenco.) Sometimes La Marquesita had a sort of pained expression of deep emotion, and other times she smiled broadly as though she were really enjoying herself (which she probably was).

I will refrain from saying too much about the selfish and rude jerk sitting next to us. He was a large, middle-aged Frenchman, who apparently understands neither Spanish nor English (nor context and gesture), and so did not understand when they told us not to take photos. When Eli, I, and the two British women on our other side stopped him from taking pictures, he was very upset, and got it into his head that we were selfish and rude people who had decided by ourselves that he shouldn’t take photos. Did he not think it strange that he was the only person taking photos? Was my French explanation, “c’est interdite” (“it’s not allowed”), not clear? Whatever. He was borderline abusive, but despite it all, he could not ruin this fine performance for us.

After the show I said farewell to Eli and walked back to our hotel through the narrow, half-deserted streets of Santa Cruz.

Labels: journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 11:59 PM