Zambomba!

I took more artistic pictures today, but they can wait for the Flickr album -- this is the most entertaining part of the day. Tagged BCDecHol for the community challenge!

It wasn't actually raining this morning so we started with a visit to the Torre Tavira: a tower with a camera obscura and views all over the city. A pity it was so hazy. After that we headed to the museum, since it was still hardly beach weather. It's a pretty bog standard old-fashioned museum with glass cases full of objects. However the Phoenician items were beautiful, especially the jewellery. I hadn't really known anything about the Phoenicians until now. There was also some lovely Roman pottery and glass.

Lunch was a a trendy bar recommended by Rick Stein in his programme on Cádiz: Ultramar&Nos. It was fine (I recommend the chicharrones with lime and sea salt), but not nearly as good as La Candela and more expensive to boot.

Yesterday we'd got a leaflet from the tourist office about zambombás. I'd heard the word and didn't know what it meant. "Flamenco and Christmas carols" said the lady in the tourist office. Often they are outdoors ... it was raining again. We identified one in a bar at 5:30; it was some distance away, but we slogged up there.

Well, what can I say? It has nothing in common with flamenco apart from the clapping. The idea appears to be a couple of singers and a guitarist whose task is to take a room full of adults and turn them into 5-year-olds in the space of half an hour. We'd only been going to stay for a short while but soon we were singing carols, clapping, making waggly donkey ears with our hands, and playing silly word games along with the rest of them. Merriment abounded, especially as anyone who got a word game wrong had to drink a shot. That said, no-one was drunk, they were just having fun in company, in the Spanish way. At first we were the only guiris, but after a while a very clearly English couple ventured in; they'd got the same leaflet we had. We had a short chat with them before they sagely left.

From there we headed back into town through a very atmospheric barrio we hadn't seen before. The bar we intended to have tapas in wasn't open yet, so we ended up as the first customers at last night's Casa Lazo, where we were greeted like old friends. We had a tapa of delicious berza (chickpea and bean stew with ham) and then walked along to La Columela. Here we had to queue for a table. Another quite trendy and touristy place which we didn't like as much as ArtyFartyAnnie's picks. And from there, cinema again: a rather silly thriller, Legado en los Huesos, based on the second volume of Dolores Redondo's Baztan trilogy. It's safe to say the Navarra tourist office won't be happy with the image conveyed of this beautiful part of Spain. Home: after midnight.