Viajes con Los Padres: Jerez

We stayed in Jerez for the first two nights of our week, using it as a jumping off point to go to the other towns. Jerez has a nice area that is the old city, but it is surrounded by not so picturesque modern buildings that Mom calls "the icky stuff" outside the city. We stayed on the outside the older area and it was always an adventure to drive in and attempt to make our way around.

While we were in Jerez we hit up some of the major tourist attractions. We did a sherry bodega tour, specifically Gonzalez Byass, which makes Tio Pepe, with a tasting afterward. It was very cool to see the grounds, with many different bodegas housing barrels of sherry. When you walk into them it's very cool and dark and has a sweet, woody smell. There are barrels upon barrels lined against the walls.

We tasted four types of sherry, two sweet and two dry. Of course I know nothing about sherry, but I didn't like the dry ones at all. The one we liked was called Solera, which was made with raisins.

We also visited the Real Escuela Andaluza de Arte Ecuestre to see a dressage show. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the show, but the grounds and track were very grand. It was incredible to see how well trained the horses were, they could prance, trot sideways, rear up on cue...amazing. I couldn't help but feel a little bad for them for the hours upon hours of training they must go through.

Our other tourist destination in Jerez were their Arabic Baths. Mom and I went to check out the experience. We showered off and then went into the dimly lit bathing room; there are 3 baths, one very hot, one warm, and one freezing cold. We were advised to do the cycle as many times as possible. We managed to dunk into the cold one, but definitely couldn't spend much time in it, then floated a bit in the warm one and moved onto hot, then repeated a few times. Then we were called in for half hour massages, which included a face massage! Something I was not expecting. It was a very cool experience.