Another short semi-rest day, but it didn’t feel very restful. The path out of El Puerto is logged in my memory as areas of former suburban decay being slowly renewed. Then after a section of gravel road through a hilly section taken over by the mountain bike fraternity, we were adjacent to the motorway until we hit the outskirts of Jerez. The route was varying surfaces: paved, formerly paved, gravel, repurposed tile and concrete, and dirt. A peregrino definitely does penance on this section.
The official route through Jerez skirts the historic centre, so we made up our own route, which took us directly to the Alcazar (fortress) and around the corner to our lodgings in the Palacio del Virrey Laserna, which we discovered on booking.com
https://www.palaciodelvirreylaserna.com/history
It seems we are in the ‘new’ wing, but we’re definitely following in the paths of history if King Alfonso XIII and his government stayed here in 1925.
Lunch was the new normal tapas, supplemented today with sherry, ‘cos that’s what this town is famous for. We flew blind with the waiter’s suggestion (his rapid and heavy regional accent had us struggling) and were served a plate of various dried fish, fried and served just with lemon. Delicious…. and certainly not something we’d have ordered without guidance!
We meandered the town after lunch – not necessarily intentional, as there are no straight lines in these ancient cities. By chance we ended up at the Church of Santiago, which is outside the historic centre, but understandably on the official Camino route.
2saunter 