A Suddenly Social Weekend in Priego (Day 2)

Saturday morning we woke up and Cecilia and Erin finally got to try churros and chocolate. A common breakfast treat here, churros are fried dough that people dip in cups of liquid chocolate (more concentrated than hot chocolate). We’re always to busy on school mornings, so they had been trying to get some each weekend. The problem is that the churro carts are only open in the mornings, probably just from 9 or 10 until 12 or so. We never seem to walk by one when it’s open. They said it was well worth the wait. I had a bite….not my thing.



We also went to another church. It was one of the ones I had tried to go to the previous week, but was closed by the time I got to it. This church was so small; it could probably only fit 20-25 people inside. Even so, it was ornately decorated, much like the other churches in Priego. We then walked around some more and went home to get ready to go back to the peña.



Saturday at the peña was much more crowded because many of the members of the flamenco society had come to listen to the professional singer. Mari Cruz was so excited to see we had come back. After we went to say hello, she told an entire table of people that we were Americans and we had come the previous night and it was so wonderful we came back. At another table a woman from our gym was clearly delighted to see us. We had never seen her with make-up on and it took us a while to figure out who she was. She came up to us and kissed our cheeks and then went back to her table to tell everyone about the Americans from her gym. (Here it’s custom to kiss people cheek-to-cheek on both cheeks.) We stood near the bar and watched the first part of the show.



Then during an intermission, everyone went outside to the courtyard and was given a plate of (free!) paella, which was absolutely delicious. Mine had shrimp, clams, and calamari in it.



We went back inside for more music and this time we sat with Mari Cruz and some of her friends. The singer was so into his music that his entire face would turn red and we swore his bulging neck was cause his necklace to break. He also stomped the ground so hard I though his wine glass (which was on a stool in front of him) was going to smash to the ground. This show was different from the first one in that the men were sitting on a small stage on Saturday and there were many more people in the audience. Even though the quality of the music was better on Saturday, I liked the atmosphere of Friday night better.

Saturday evening we went to Mari Carmen’s apartment, which is actually down the street from Erin and my school. She has a really nice place. It’s much newer than our apartment and her kitchen is huge with a dishwasher! She had prepared a ton of food and there were a whole bunch of people at the party. It was especially nice because everyone was older (late 20s, early 30s) and no one smoked inside the apartment (rare for Spain). Her friends had also made foods and brought them. They were interested in talking to us and told us all about the places they live. Almost all of them are originally from Priego, but live in other parts of Andalucía. We were at the party for a few hours and then went to a bar because everyone wanted to get a drink (Mari Carmen only had beer and tinto de verano, which is a wine cooler). The Spanish are very social and like to go out for “una copa” (“a cup” aka a drink) all the time. We didn’t stay long at the bar because we had plans for Sunday morning.