uno mas cervesa **fixed**

Alright, I better do a real update before Alec Longstreth and Chris Murray have aneurisms.

I've been in Spain for just over a week with my Dad and Ilka (my stepmom: rhymes with "milk, uh"), mostly in Arcos de la Frontera. Here they are on a side-street in Arcos:



Arcos is one of the White Cities of Andalucia (southern Spain). It feels like it has grown out of the hillside, and on one side it looks out off a sheer cliff over the surrounding areas. This is from the viewpoint at the top of the city, off to the side.



The window on the left is the Parador Hotel (where I am posting this blog, since it is the only place with wireless in the area). The big brown structure is the second-oldest church in Arcos, and the white buildings below are the foot of the town.

Here's my Dad in the Parador (after we all hiked up to the top of the city in the 100+ degree heat on his birthday because the car was being fixed, we stopped in for a beer):




The streets are cobbled with the deliberateness of patterned tiles in an expensive corporate skyscraper. The buildings all feel like they were built at the same time, along with the streets, as if the city were just painted onto the hillside whole. There is a big, privately-owned castle at the top of the cliff, plus another church (the oldest).

I've got lots of pictures of Arcos, but I won't overdo it. You can ask to see them when you see me!

Regardless, the town and the area are beautiful. I have, as my father keeps encouraging me to do, been taking things slowly: living the Andalucian lifestyle. Well, kinda- almost no one here speaks English, so I haven't had a huge amount of interaction with locals. However, Dad & Ilka have some friends who are also foreigners - mostly Brits - living nearby.

Although we go into town just about every day, Dad & Ilka live just outside town, in what is basically a vacation home. It's very cute and very relaxing:

-There is a small yard with fruit trees, so we can pick our own lemons, plums, and peaches. Orange, almond, olive, and pomegranate aren't in season just now.
-There is a view of Arcos which is amazing at night, and really hard to photograph with a digital camera.
-There is a little brandy-cask in the kitchen, and a big sherry-cask out on the patio:



-During an Andalucian dinner at 10 pm on the patio, you can watch the geckos hunt.
-Just about any time of night or day is a good time for a swim (and that little building in the back is full of birds..)




Anyhow, I've been eating & drinking very well, reading, and adjusting to the heat, the lifestyle, and the fact that as far as I can tell everyone is speaking Swahili.
I've also been getting the tour: from the streets of Arcos to a town in the hills called Benamahoma where we filled water bottles from a mountain spring; from a little restaurant in what was once the dungeon of Arcos' castle (with dungeon "tools" on the wall as decoration) to a Flamenco singing competition in the new part of town.

I got some shorts & swim trunks at a weekly outdoor market called "The Cheap" in Swahili*, where they sell lots of clothes with incoherent or just weird English on them: "Do you like my t-shirt?" on a blouse that couldn't possibly be described as a T-shirt. I've been to a few other White Cities including Grazalema, one of the most popular, nestled into a mountainside, where I introduced my Dad and Ilka to the pairs-portrait. Their first attempt:



Was there ever a more perfect pairs-portrait? Yes, and it was taken later the same day. Keep reading.

We ended up in Benaocaz (another White City), where the upper part of town is right next to the ruins of the Moorish city that existed there until the 18th century. Fascinating- it's mostly just old piled-stone walls showing the outlines of buildings, but a couple of them are in use: one is fixed up just enough to keep some barn animals & storage, and another is actually someone's home. They had flowers in the windows. Here's a bit of the ruin, the tiled roofs behind are the city proper. Note the antennae on the right:



After the ruins, we went to Linda & David's (Brits) place on the other side of the city for a small house-warming party. Other guests included Mike (Brit) and a small family: Jo (Brit) with her husband Fernando (Spaniard) and their son Billy (you figure it out). Billy is 3. We were friends right away, for obvious reasons. I told him I only spoke English, so I was going to kidnap the bilingual little bugger and keep him as my full-time translator. He was unconcerned.

This is where the best pairs-portrait ever comes in, of course. This is the only photo I took before Billy got his hands on my camera. He took some glamour-shots of me, which I'm saving for an appropriate unveiling. Billy & me:




This evening, I will attend a bull-fight. We're going early to make sure we get good seats.

Oh, you know how at restaurants, they sometimes give you a bowl of chips or peanuts to chew on for free? Here, even if you just order a couple of drinks, they give you a little plate of really good olives, like the kind you pay $10/lbs for at fancy grocery stores.

-gcb

alright, alright. A few more funny photos:
a thirsty gcb
bimbo sandwich
glamour shots by Billy

* Okay, so it's not Swahili, it's Spanish. But Swahili sounds funnier... I guess I have learned a few Spanish words:
Cervesa- beer
Agua- water
Gratis- free (as in: "gratis cervesa". If you're talking about freedom it's "libre")
gracias, si, no
ola, buenos dias, buenos noches (hello, good day, good night)