I got to Jaen at 6pm Friday and we went out for a walk around the "city." Jaen has a population of around 100,000, which makes it a small city, but four times as large as Priego. To me, this was a much larger place than where I live, so I thought of Jaen as huge. They have a train station (with service to Madrid, Cordoba and Sevilla), a Corte Ingles and museums/theater events/CULTURE!
We went to Corte Ingles where I bought chocolate soy milk (juice box sized for travel) and corn tortillas. We also went to Jaen's library so Jolinda could return, and take out new, CDs. Their library was small, but made Priego's look doll-sized. Saturday we went to a farmer's market and made soup during the afternoon. Then we walked around Jaen and tried to go to the hilltop castle. We never made it because it got too late (the sun was going down) and our Lonely Planet directions were pretty terrible. We spent that evening watching Mad Men.
While walking, we stumbled upon this group of people practicing for Semana Santa. During Holy Week, brotherhoods get together and parade through the streets with floats/statues on platforms supported by the people's necks and heads.
Sunday I went to a few museums and restored arab baths. The baths were cool, but looked like similar ones I had seen in the Alahambra (in Granada). The Museo de Arte Naif (Museum of Naive Art) was interesting because it had a small collection of paintings from the 1960s-1980s which were colorful, some even had purple mountains with pink trees. They looked like something a child would do. Additionally, there were framed cross stitch and needle work pictures on display, which I had never seen before in a museum. Another thing that struck me was that most of the art was donated to the museum by the artists rather than by donors or art collectors.
The other museum I went to housed a special exhibit of Eugenio Chicano's paintings. He takes traditional still life paintings and adds computer icons to them. In doing that, he mixes art history and modern technology. I really enjoyed the exhibit and asked the guards if there were any brochures with more information on the artist. They only had the exhibition catalogue (a decent sized-book), which they gave me for free! I was really surprised and excited about this.
One of Eugenio Chicano's paintings.
That afternoon, Jolinda and I went for a walk to a new park. Everything was really colorful: the track was red, blue and orange. Purple fences separated different play areas. It was very architecturally modern, but not so well-built. As we walked, we noticed the track was inclined slightly (literally we went downhill on onside and had to come uphill on the other). There were also exercise machines on either sides of the fountain (in the middle of the track). Next to the fountain was a big balance machine. It was almost like a bridge where people stood on one cable and held onto another. The entire contraption swayed depending on how the people organized themselves. Basically, adults and children were on either side of this contraption and could have fallen at any moment because people kept getting on and off shifting the balance. (This would never fly in the US.)
We stumbled upon a place serving "cerveza sin gluten" (gluten-free beer), which was odd for such a small city.
All-in-all it was a good weekend. I wound up eating healthier than I normally do because Jolinda is basically on a raw foods diet. She prefers to eat raw fruits and veggies, as well as sunflower seeds, only. She doesn't eat anything with preservatives because she doesn't like what they do to her body. I ate well, but had a big bowl of cereal for breakfast when I got home this morning!!
I finally tasted chirimoya, which was a pain to eat because of all the seeds (think watermelon seeds on steroids).
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