A quick trip to Jerez de la Frontera

Last Thursday we made an overnight trip to Jerez (locally pronounced "Heréth").   Jerez is city of about 650,000 inhabitants, located about 100K west of Olvera and about 100K south of Sevilla.  For inhabitants of Olvera it is the closest commercial and shopping area.   

We went for the combined reasons of shopping and to visit the old town area. Linda was on the look out for some new sport sandals and I wanted to look for bicycle accessories.  Luckily, we found the stuff we needed at a large "Decathalon" store located in a shopping centre on the outskirts of the city.  Decathalon is something like Mountain Equipment Coop or a Canadian Tire of sporting equipment.

This is the fountain in Plaza Arenal, the main plaza in Jerez

Another typical breakfast.

We found that the city itself is not that attractive. It reminded me of some older Canadian cities where migration of the stores to plazas left unused building in the core area.   This had not been our experience with some other cities we have visited.  The historical centre is quite small but there was a great selection of cafes. 

 In the evening we found a nice cafe / restaurant on a side street. We were ready to eat at 6 pm but, as is common, the restaurant did not serve dinner until 8 pm. but they had a nice selection of tapas.

It is common for the bars to have their daily tapa selection on display.  This works well for us because many of the names of the tapas are obscure.
To the right are the two tapas we selected.  The one front and centre is called albondigas. They are very popular in Jerez.  It is ground beef with onions, pine nuts and a almond sauce served with crispy noodles.  The tapa on the right is goat cheese servered with crispy bread and local jams.  We enjoyed them both.


Friday morning we spent an hour or so at the shopping centre and had a quick bite before heading back to Olvera. The weather here has been hotter than expected. The high temperatures hover around 30 degrees but it cools off nicely after dark.   

Below are a couple of photos taken from our patio in Olvera.    It is a nice place to relax.