The Raven and the Writing Desk

Exceeded Expectations

- Plaza de Espana



- live flamenco performance. All of the artists were phenomenal. With the women's dancing, you could really see the influence of the Indian classical dancing and the belly dancing, and with the men's dancing, unlike many other forms of dance they still managed to look masculine doing the dancing.

Good

- Plaza de Toros. Our guide gave a good overview of the history and art of bullfighting and told a few off-colour jokes. I was especially interested in the links she pointed out between the bullfighting and Roman and Greek era traditions like the cult of Mithras.



- agritourism - tours of the sherry bodega and the olive ranch, complete with the history of how the products were made, how they're made today, and a lesson on how to properly taste test them. It's very interesting to see how these products were made. The olive ranch was so beautiful I was ready to sign on as a hired hand.

- the Alameda of Hercules, which was where we spent most of our free time. It had a great local feel with lots of kids and dogs running around and playing, and the weather was so great that you could sit out halfway into the night nursing your gelato.



- although the archaeological museum was small and a bit run of the mill, there were a couple of things I had never seen before, like the votive offerings of footprints to Isis and the bronze tablets of the Roman civil law, and things that I have seen reproduced in the SCA but never seen the originals of, like the Roman military diplomas (which I learned about from ya_inga's process pictures of her scroll for Arminius' knighting

- got to see the tomb of Manuel de Falla in Cadiz - a favourite composer of mine

Amusing

- our local guide had a good, slightly ribald sense of humour, but she had a couple of speech idiosyncracies, so at the bullring we learned that the matador has to "introduce" his sword to a particular spot on the bull's spine to kill it quickly, that sometimes the bull is triumphant if it manages to "introduce" one of its horns into the matador's chest instead, and that the matador has a special member of his team whose job it is to help "introduce" the matador into his tight pants.

- among the theories put forth by our guides about the origin of the word "flamenco", one was that there was a link with the Flemish nobles and artisans that came to the country after the Reconquista. Diverting as that theory is, I'm not convinced that flamenco is a Flemish style.

- at the sherry bodega, it was apparently a tradition to leave out a glass of sherry and some tapas for the mice, complete with little ladders for the mice to reach their treats



Bad

- the hotel was plagued with all sorts of minor inconveniences that are the epitome of what quixote317 has called "First World Problems" - there was no wi-fi in the rooms, you couldn't have the bathroom door and the closet door open at the same time, the water from the shower splashed out on the floor, and my room was on the third floor of the back 40 with no elevator. It was simply atrocious, dahling.

Ugly

- in Cadiz there was a cruise ship with a jumbotron so large it could be seen from street level, so that presumably you could lounge around in the pool and watch trashy talk shows instead of getting out and touring around an historic town in the beautiful sunlight.