Vejer and the White Hill Towns of Spain

Over the weekend, we headed south where Bruce and Nick wanted to played golf and where we could see the Rock of Gibraltar that I showed in my last post here.  

It was perfect timing because we escaped a heat wave and it was nice and cool at the Bay of Gibraltar.  Below is a photo during our drive back north with Africa behind us and the Strait of Gibraltar. 

Nick made reservations for dinner at a quaint little hill town that we passed call Vejer de la Frontera and it turned out to be the most wonderful time yet.  



Vejer has very strong Moorish roots and has a very distinct Moroccan (and Greek Island) flavor to it. How can you NOT love that!   The Moors were muslims and lived in Spain for 800 years until they were forced out for political and religious reasons in 1492.   They resettled in Northern Africa but you can still see their mark in much of Spain from the remains of their mosques, architecture, art, sophisticated irrigation systems that they expanded and improved upon from the Romans, and their whitewashed villages.  The towns with "de la Frontera" in their names were established on the front line of the centuries-long fight to recapture Spain from the Muslims.  There are probably about half a dozen hill towns in Spain worth visiting so we were lucky that Vejer was on our route.  Most of them are further inland in Spain. We loved strolling the quaint little alley-way streets of the town while we killed time before our dinner reservations at 7:30pm.





                     

The town was pretty quiet at this time.  Like I said before, most people in Spain do not eat dinner until at least 9:00pm.  Here is a photo of us at the town square around 6:30pm when we first arrived in town. 

And here is the town square after we ate dinner at around 9:30pm when everyone was out and eating dinner.  It was quite the bustling place. 

                
Nick has visited this town once before, as it's only 45 minutes from his house.  But he had never eaten at the Moroccan restaurant here called El Jardin Del Califa which he'd heard about from co-workers so this was his chance - good old mom and dad visiting!  We sat outside at a sidewalk cafe while we waited for the restaurant to open at 7:30pm.
                

Bruce and Nick always enjoy a nice cold beer and the server automatically brought out a dish of Spanish olives.  I ordered Moroccan green tea that I've had at Moroccan restaurants before and love it.  It's like the southern sweet tea we drink in the south except it is hot and only slightly sweetened. 

           

                  

Moroccan tea is a combination of green tea, spearmint and/or peppermint tea and a little sugar.  It's a perfect combination and so refreshing. 

Once we got inside the restaurant, we discovered that it had a really nice courtyard with tables to sit but in order to get to it you had to wind around corridors with very steep, uneven stairs (very common in Europe), very low head clearance with multiple levels.  It's a hill town remember?  So everything is built on a slope.  I bumped my head a few times getting to our table so you can imagine how Nick felt being 6'5".  I think he's use to it, tho.  But once we got there it was so wonderful. 

                      

Here is a shot of an indoor table on another level that looked so cozy with candles around it. 



I immediately ordered another Moroccan green tea.  I just love how it is presented.  



I ordered a traditional Moroccan dish called tagine made with meat and dried fruit; mine was with slow-cooked lamb and dates but the dates were cooked so they were just part of the sauce which wasn't lumpy so you couldn't even tell there were dates in it.  They just added to the flavor of the sauce.  They had about 6-8 types of tagine on their menu. I'm a very happy person right now...

Moroccan dishes use a lot of spices like cinnamon and cardamon but in small amounts so the flavoring is very subtle.  All you know is that you want to lick the plate to get every last bite.   They prepare tagine in a special terra cotta-type dish like this.  ( Bruce and Nick helped me finish up my dish after they finished licking their plates...)

The dish for tagine is also made by placing a lid such as these over the dish for it to cook.  Mine had a bread top sort of like pie crust over it.  I don't know if this is a different version or what.  I have a lot to learn about Moroccan cooking but all I know is that I like it. 

After dinner we walked around the town more and suddenly there were a lot more people out.  The heat of the day was over, siesta time was over and everyone comes out.  The sun was setting and everything was lite up that made it look even more spectacular.

I'm not sure which I like better; the day or the night.  All I know is that it was hard for us to leave this magical place.