Stunning day. We just spent two days in El Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cadiz. It was a funky little port/beach town with loads of history and lots of good sherry and fried fish. We went to visit Osborne, one of the largest producers of sherry in the area. I know it doesn’t sound Spanish at all but I learned the sherry production was more or less started by the British, or is at least a product of British importation of wine and brandy from the area. Osborne (Osborn-ay) was started in 17something by Thomas Osborne and is still a family run company, except that they are now all completely Spanish. Anyway, the tour was pretty cool and we got to see the bodegas where they keep the hundreds of sherry and brandy barrels. At the end of the tour we were left alone in this beautiful old room next to the bodegas with bottles of all of their sherry and brandy. Yum, yum and yum. I had never had a dry sherry, or Fino, and I didn’t know that the grape to make the sweet sherry that we know is actually a different grape called Pedro Ximenez. I always thought Pedro Ximenez some guy that founded a well known sweet sherry brand. Anyway, now I know. After loading up on Osborne products, (as in in our tummies and in our arms) we stumbled over to Romerijo a well-known restaurant in the area that has two locations, one right across the street from the other. In one you pick your fish or seafood out of the glass case and they steam it up, and in the other, your pick is fried! Fantastic! Naturally we went for fried sardines and sea bass, and steamed shrimp and lobster. And we washed it all down with another bottle of fino. Miles was a model child and slept through lunch in his stroller.

Why is it that I can drink like a fish in Europe and never have a hangover but in Denver I can drink 2 glasses of wine and clearly feel it the next day? Is it the altitude? Anyway, I wouldn’t want to miss any of the local food or wine so I’ve decided that as long as Miles is happy and gets what he needs and as long as I can stuff myself into the clothes that I already own, I’m not going to moderate consumption of either.

The next day we went to visit a cool little castle/mosque/church/temple. Actually I should put it in this order; temple/mosque/church/castle. The original Roman temple columns were still intact, the mosque part dated from the 13^th century and three different altars from different periods were perfectly preserved in 3 different parts of the church. It mostly looked like a castle though and apparently Columbus lived there for 5 years while he was waiting to get funding for one of his trips. And on the outside of the castle you could see bullet holes on one wall from where they executed republicans during the Spanish Civil War. God! All this history! It just blew my American mind away. At the end of the tour of the now privately owned temple/mosque/church/caste we were again served sherry! How cool!

The next day we decided to skip Cadiz, although I really wanted to see it, and take off. It was raining and windy and we would have had to take a 40 minute ferry ride over to Cadiz just to walk around and visit the city in the rain and wind. It would have been fine if we could have just put on our rain jackets and fortified ourselves with sherry and tromped through town, but we had Miles to think of. So, we drove east along the coast. This is where the stunning bit comes in. Fortunately the weather cleared up a bit so we could have a clear view. The rolling countryside went right up to the beach, and we were on the Atlantic side now so the sea was really dramatic. The area was barely populated with just a few little farmhouses and cows grazing right next to the sand. Maybe this is what Ireland or Novia Scotia looks like but I’ve never seen something like that on the coast of Italy and it was totally unexpected here in Spain. It was absolutely idyllic. Farmland that butts up right against the beach. Wow. We made a stop in Bolonia, not even a town really, where they had discovered a Roman port town that was supprisingly intact. Apparently it was a center for salted fish and got loads of recognition from some Roman emperor. (Sorry, this is history according to Jane, which is always a bit vague). Anyway, these ruins were right on the beach off to the side of an incredibly beautiful valley where cows were grazing and bougainvillea was spilling over the sides of retaining walls and the 3 houses that were there. We didn’t stay though because it was super windy but we did stop to eat at the only place around which was a shack at the top of a hill overlooking the beach, and the most amazing view, where we ate pizza made by a real Italian. Unbelievable. You can always count of finding at least one Italian and one Chinese in every beautiful spot on the planet. I’ve seen this again and again. One is there for the beautiful view and idyllic location and the other is there to make a buck off of everyone who comes to check it out. Both quite smart in my book.

(Picture taken from pizza place. It doesn't do it justice at all but you can just barely see the Roman town down on the beach.)

Anyway, after lunch we continued down this beautiful coast and soon were shocked by the coast of Africa popping up! It looked so close I thought we could swim to it! I didn’t realize how close it really was. So we now had cows grazing next to beach with the next hill across the water being Morocco. I was totally stunned. Then five minutes later after we rounded the next turn, we saw Gibraltar! And Africa still! Oh my god! All that geography and history! I just couldn’t stand it! It was so cool and I spent the next hour of our drive exclaiming how amazing that was.

The next couple of hours we passed through some more pretty countryside and seaside but it was WAY more populated, if not totally over-populated around Marbella and Malaga, and covered in greenhouses. Then it all came to an abrupt stop again after we arrived in the nature preserve of Cabo de Gata. This is another totally unexpected landscape. It was very dry and rocky with steep rugged hills. Again it reminded me of the western slop in Colorado. There were very few trees and tumble weed blowing around. In fact, loads of Westerns have been filmed here! And the craziest thing is that all this dramatic landscape again drops right into the sea! It was really striking. We stayed in a mostly empty campsite and decided to leave after a couple of days because it was super windy and there really wasn’t much to do.