Spain - caves and Flamenco

WARNING: take heed. You are about to go up too many hills, get very hot and very, very tired. Join me instead.
This is what we climbed up, in our fancy eating out clothes.

Thankfully, Steve was right and my sexy red shoes were left at home. Instead I wore a pair of cute silver flat flip flops so my ankles didn't turn over on the umpteen switchbacks it took us to get here.

Sacromonte: I didn't read the tour guide. There is currently a connection with gypsies, flamenco and caves.

I believe the caves have been inhabited from eons ago, really until 1950's. The caves we visited were tidied up nicely for the museum.

Probably a lot nicer than the 1950's since the white wash was very crisply clean, and there was very good lighting.

The cliffs are made up of lots of different aggregate stones but the serious amounts of clay keep it all together. Soft enough to hollow a cave out of, but strong enough to not collapse even after hundreds of years.

After cooling off the “cervezas” way, as in putting a cold bottle of beer down my back, we trudged back down the mountainside to go to a dinner and flamenco performance.

The cave that we were having dinner in was pretty cool, both temperature wise and structurally. A lot of the caves that were originally dwellings are now being used as restaurants and businesses. Our meal was fantastic, none of us had ever eaten gazpacho before (I know!) and it was wonderful. The wine was terrific, the entire meal was well prepared, nicely presented and timed perfectly to coincide with the performance. It is a business afterall.

The dancing, well, that's a hard one for me to call. With a degree in Dance, with a study in anthropology, theatre and assorted dance-y whatnots, I found the dancing enthusiastic and energetic. A lot of flinging about of arms and stomping. The guitarist and singer were better than the dancers. But the dancers were having fun and that's very good from an audience's point of view. So all in all, it was a sound amateur event. Our fellow travelers don't have a degree in Dance, so they were less critical and had a marvelous time.

On the way home, we passed along the top of this ridge. The view on the way to the caves in daylight was impressive but after dark, it became one of the romantical lover's kind of moments. Steve and I were trying to love it up on a bench when a group of serious Germans came clashing by. We outlasted them and managed a bit of snogging after all.