Hazel decided that for my birthday she would get me a nice night out in Spain – complete with Flamenco Dancing!  This has been something I’ve been really into since I saw a show in Ithaca back in 2005.  So I was stoked!  It turned out to be the perfect evening.  We started out the night at the restaurant “El Buey” – a favorite Hazel found on SpottedByLocals.com, a site that’s half TripAdvisor and half blog with entries by locals from the area.  We love this site!  Anyway, back to our date.  The specialty of the house is cook-it-yourself OX!  They bring 1kg of ox tenderloin sliced thinly (along with patatas fritas of course) and ceramic plates heated to a really high temperature.  Meat goes on plate, and voila!

El Buey

Ox meat is tender and flavorful and we thought it was a really delicious dish!  In addition, the Rioja was fantastic, and their house-made pate was really tasty! (not that I’m a pate connoisseur or anything).  Really neat dinner!

Afterwards we headed down the street a bit to the flamenco show.  On the way, we saw the royal palace all lit up:

Palace

and had a beer to pass some extra time in between:

Beer

and were finally admitted to the flamenco club.  A drink was included with the show:

Mmm scotch

and then the dancing begun.  We had two sets, starting with a duo performance of a famous choreographer and his partner:

Choreographer doing the FLAMENCO

Partner doing the FLAMENCO

and then we were treated to a trio of dancers with a bigger band. I must add that the dancers were great but the musicians were stars!  There were some sections that were just incredible to listen to, and others where the dancers and musicians were so connected that it seemed they had only one set of thoughts between them.

Second Act of FLAMENCO

All the dancing, music, food, drink, and company was perfect that night.  THANKS HAZEL!!!