Reaching Southern Spain

Monday, May 29, 2017--Seville to Jerez de la Frontera

We were awakened by protesters again this morning in Seville.  Next door to our hotel is the headquarters for Endesa, the electrical company, and that seems to be where they were protesting.  From 8:00 to 11:00, there were whistles, sirens, chanting, etc.  We found an article about electrical company being allowed to increase its rates by 17% on Apr. 1.  So our guess is that these are people protesting the higher electrical rates.

Our train for Jerez de la Frontera left the San Bernardo station (a small regional one which is new and modern just about 5 blocks from our hotel) at 12:47.  The train was modern and fast, but it stopped at about 5 stations before getting here to Jerez.  One of the stations was the Jerez airport which serves this area of the country; it was a small one about the size of the airport in Corpus Christi. 

We are renting an apartment at Apartmentos Jerez while here.  It is a building that dates from 1640!  Our apartment has two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bath.  The entrance to the building comes into a courtyard which has apartments around it on two floors.  It's similar to the El Corral de Flores we saw in Triana as a tourist sight over the weekend.

We wandered the streets of town after getting a sandwich at one of the bakeries.  It's a beautiful old city that has a nice relaxed feel to it.  There are nice breezes (the bay is very near here) that add to the atmosphere.

Jerez is the center for the production of sherry in Spain.  So when we went shopping for breakfast and happy hour supplies, we included a bottle of sherry to sip before bedtime each evening.  We won't be in town during the daytime, because we are making day trips both full days we will be here.  Therefore, we won't get to tour any of the famous sherry bodegas that are here.

We will go back out later after a late happy hour to see the who is out and what they are doing and to explore the older parts of town we have not yet seen.