Osborne sherry tasting disaster

This blog should have been written yesterday, but I just wasn't up to it then.
It all started very well as we had booked in on the English speaking tour of the Osborne Winery. They don't do many non Spanish tours so it started at 10.30am, possibly a little bit early in the day.
The tour was good, lots of huge casks of sherry and brandy quietly maturing in dark cool warehouses. Our guide was amusing and friendly, and the tour went off without a hitch.
He then took us to the tasting room and showed us our table. There was nine of us in the group and after a quick pour and swirl demonstration he left us with four full bottles of sherry and lots of nibbles.
We started with the dry sherry and that was okay, the second one was not so good, but bottles three and four were excellent. Our guide recommended that we try all four and then have a full glass of our favourite, which is what I think that I did.
Fairly quickly the rest of the group left and we were left on our own. I don't know what happened after that but it seemed a good idea to take a lot of photos, eat all of the nibbles and probably have a couple of extra sips to make sure that we had made the right choice.
We then filled up our empty water bottles with the remainder of our favourite sherries before staggering out into the sunshine. (We thought we might as well take it home as it would only get thrown away. Honest.)
Once we got home I collapsed on the settee and stayed there for the rest of the day.

Ferry to Cadiz

We caught the ferry across the bay to Cadiz this afternoon. First stop was for a gigantic pile of churros with chocolate sauce. Churros seem to be made of doughnut mix, but instead of being round they are shaped like long sticks that are deep fried then covered in sugar. They are so tasty, but I think that we have overdone it a bit today and I might avoid them now for a day or two.
Afterwards we staggered a few steps over to the main square to join a guided walking tour of the city.
Cadiz is the oldest city in western Europe and there are beautiful ancient buildings at every turn.
Pic two is the cathedral that took over 100 years to build and pic three shows our little group walking through a pleasant square where people were crucified during the Spanish inquisition.
There was an interesting fact about pic 4 but I can't quite remember it, but it was something to do with a tsunami in the 1700's.
We had a great day in glorious sunshine and tonight we are stepping out to watch James Bond at the local cinema.

James Bond, Spanish style

We were very pleased with ourselves today as we had worked out that the local cinema was playing the new James Bond film in English at 9pm.
We went out this morning, had a fantastic breakfast at a little cafe and went to check that we could find the cinema as it was was quite a long way from the campsite.
On the way we stepped inside a beautiful local church. A nice friendly guide gave us a psalm in English to read. Mine was about red hot coals, fire and sulphur being rained down upon the wicked. Daz's also had a similar theme.
Afterwards we located the cinema, and were happy that we were all set for tonight.
We arrived and took our seats at 8.59pm, bringing the total audience figure up to seven. By 9.05pm we were wiggling in our seats and wondering if we were in the wrong show.
By 9.15pm a Spanish guy sitting in front of us said that it was strange that the show hadn't started but that 'we were in Spain now'.
Eventually an employee turned up and told us that they couldn't get the film to play as they didn't have the right code!
Apparently it might work tomorrow or on possibly Thursday so he has given us replacement tickets. We are crossing our fingers in anticipation.

Lazy sunny Sunday

We got up this morning, watched Strictly and then sat about reading the Sunday papers.
The weather was gorgeous and we decided to walk into town to visit a gallery.
We had never heard of him, but Rafael Alberti was a poet and artist who was born and raised in El Puerto de Santa Maria. Our audiotapes had excerpts of him reading his poetry in Spanish, accompanied by classical guitar music. Strange, but it really worked.
Afterwards we sat outside in the sunshine drinking sherry and eating olives.
Later in the afternoon we walked to the local harbour, Puerto Sherry. We came here last year and it is just as nice as I remembered. The harbour was full of yachts and the backdrop to it is huge brightly painted concrete billboards.
Daz gave me a leg up to pose for this shot. Not sure why, I just couldn't help myself.

Sanlucar de Barrameda

We are down in the south of Spain now and enjoying the nicer weather.
We stopped overnight in the pretty little seaside town of Sanlucar de Barrameda. It is famous for its horse racing that takes place on the beach, but unfortunately in August and not November.
Darren went for a little paddle while I decided to stay up on the promenade. When he came across a stream which ran out into the sea, I got ready with my camera. As luck would have it the water only came up to his ankles, but it looked worrying for a while.
We saw two pretty good castles today, the first in Sanlucar de Barrameda and then we drove about 25 kms along the coast to a second one in El Puerto de Santa Maria.
We nearly went inside the first castle, but I was really keen to visit the second. Of course, two in one day is just too many, but when we got to the second one it was closed. So we didn't get to see either, but never mind, they looked great from the outside.
We are now settled into a great campsite that we found last year and have already made friends with the neighbours.

Monsanto, Portugal

Today we took a trip across the border into Portugal to visit a place that we have been eagerly and impatiently waiting to visit.
In the 1930's Monsanto won the title of 'Most Portuguese village in Portugal'. I think that is quite a strange title, but I suppose that in England we have quite a fixed idea of what an English village should look like - thatched cottages, roses round the door, duck pond, cricket pitch, etc.
My vague opinion of a Portuguese village was nothing like the description that we read about in a magazine, so we just had to see it in real life. The weather was very unkind, but it added to the eerieness of the place.
Monsanto is near to the Spanish border, is very isolated and built on a steep hill amongst enormous granite boulders. The boulders act as floors, walls and occasionally roofs to the buildings, as you can see in my photos.
Above the village is a ruined castle that dates from around the year 1,200. It successfully withstood at least two sieges, but unfortunately in the year 1853 it was destroyed by an accidental explosion in the munitions storeroom.
Today it was completely covered by cloud so the place was a mystery to us. Some of the walls were still standing so we climbed up on to ramparts and rocks. We lost each other in the fog for quite a while until Daz suddenly appeared on the highest most dangerous looking wall.
We also found a very scary looking derelict church with what looked very much like open coffins carved into the rocks around it.
Nothing about Monsanto was how I expected a typical Portuguese village to look, but a very interesting day.