Olé!

Andalusia is the home of flamenco dancing in Spain, or as we say in our family, Flamingo dancing. Hannah and Bronwyn were dying to see some of the real flamingo dancers in action (I can only imagine what Bronwyn was expecting) and so one evening after dinner the two older girls and I went off to the flamenco cultural centre of Seville, which is set inside a Moorish courtyard, off of one of the twisting narrow cobblestone streets north of the Cathedral. This being Spain, where kids are treated like royalty, the girls were placed in the front row, on their own, so that they could see everything.

At first two young Spaniards played the guitar and sang. The music was beautiful and haunting and sounded like it had crossed the Strait of Gibralter from the deserts of north Africa long ago. Then, a young Antonio Banderas showed up and danced alone, harder and faster than anything I have ever seen. His stomping and clapping and kicking was so intense and ferocious that Bronwyn looked seriously concerned. The highlight for the girls, of course, was the beautiful Spanish girl, who was everything they had dreamed of. (Unless the dream had been about a pink bird on long legs). After the show, which ended at 10:30pm, wickedly late for little Canadian girls, we ran through the streets of old Seville where the bars were just filling up and the tapas-hungry crowds were starting to spill out onto the cobblestone streets into the warm evening.