Last Day in Jerez

We decided to spend three days in Jerez.  While there we toured the Gonzalez-Byass Bodega makers of sherry and brandy including the famous Tio Pepe.  It was a pretty inclusive tour.  We rode to several parts of the bodega on a tram.  They do not make their wine at this site but rather distill the wine into the various sherries and brandies.  

There was a tasting at the end of the tour.  We shared a table with a couple of young English women who were on holiday from their jobs with Shell Oil in Scotland.  We had a nice chat together while we sipped several sherries and shared some tapas.

Another thing we did in Jerez was to tour the alcazar (fort/castle) from the Moorish times.  One of the most interesting parts of that visit was a demonstration of their camera obscura.   The camera consists of a large white disk (big enough for a dozen people of stand around it) in a totally darkened room.  There is an opening in the ceiling  leading to a light well in which a mirror and a large lens are mounted.  The angle of the view is controlled by moving the mirror at the top of the building  The mirror can be turned in an entire circle to give a view of surrounding city.  By shifting the disk up and down is was possible to focus on places either near the building itself or on parts of the city many miles away although the relatively simple lens could not zoom.  It was fascinating to see. 
 

This is an photo of a cathedral which was next to the alcazar taken the previous day from outside.

This photo is the image on the screen of the camera obscura taken when the operator focused in on the dome of the church.  The colors were soft but extremely clear.  When we first saw it, there were pigeons flying around which we thought were flies within the room. 

On the web there are many sites which talk about cameras obscura and show a lot of images from them but we were unable with a quick search to find any diagrams which showed clearly the way this particular one worked.  We may try to experiment with this concept after we get home.


The next day we took a quick trip to Seville which we will describe as soon as possible.