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Time out succeed time and again with their city guides, with loads of spot-on information on where to eat, sleep, go out, visit, everything in fact for the visitor to Spain’s big cities. Having lived in Madrid for 7 years, Time Out is the guide I always push into friends’ hands when they come to stay in the city. Check out the full range at: Amazon.co.uk (Europe)  Amazon.com (USA)  |
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Author: Ben
Live from the Rias Baixas, the fjord-like inlets that strike inland along Galicia’s Atlantic West Coast. Starting in Carril, in the Ria de Arousa, then on to Mogor Beach in the Ria de Pontevedra, and finally to Vigo, where we watch the Ostreras preparing Oysters on the Rua de Pescaderia in the Barrio de Piedra.
Notes: Berberechos (pic above) are in fact Cockles. And if you are driving around Spain, follow the green-highlighted roads in the Michelin road atlas.
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Many travelers find this an invaluable aid to traveling in Spain, especially when coupled with a more extensive listings guide like the Rough Guide. The appeal of this book is the incredibly wide selection of photographs, drawings and maps. Not only does it allow you to get a real feel for the country before you visit, but the street-level city plans are well detailed and an enormous help when navigating from site to site. Plus, this is a book that looks great on the coffee table once you get back! Pick up a copy at: Amazon.co.uk (Europe)  Amazon.com (USA)  |
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Great podcast
Great podcast here on a woman who lost her house in New Orleans flooding. Well worth a listen.
I get a few e-mails from Americans asking about working in Spain, so here are a few tips I picked up from a recent chat with an American girl who has been working out here for over two years with no EU citizenship and no problems whatsoever. (Of course these rules apply to all non-EU citizens.)
One: You can work! You will find work, mostly English teaching, then bar work and maybe tour guiding. Employers in these fields are prepared to pay non-EU nationals – in cash. But don’t worry, you can open a bank account in Spain with no trouble at all. Bigger cities will have more opportunities, so if in doubt start with Barcelona or Madrid.
Two: The return ticket. Arriving at a Spanish airport from the US with no return ticket is likely to be an expensive mistake. You will probably be forced to buy one there and then, in the airport, at a hugely increased price. You may be able to get a refund afterwards though, so it might not be the end of the world.
Three: The 90 day rule. In theory your entry visa is good for 90 days, but don’t worry, if you spend longer in Spain you will not be thrown into jail or banned from coming back when you try to leave. Just have an excuse handy (“My Spanish studies lasted longer than I had anticipated…”, for example…)
Four: Spending. Don’t turn up with travelers cheques, they are a pain to convert into cash. Just your regular cashpoint card is fine. Match the symbols on the back with those on Spanish cashpoints if you get confused! (Is ‘cashpoint’ only British English? ATM’s then…) And be prepared to spend. The dollar is better than it was but many a traveler arrives in Spain expecting the cheap country it once was. Times have changed…
Only 4? Well there isn’t much more to it than that. The situation is pretty much as I expected, having met many Americans working in Spain with no trouble at all. Just get over here and start having fun: enough excuses already!
Any comments, suggestions, criticisms or refutations welcome, just use the comments link below. Or click here for the Tips archive.
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Who said…
…the Spanish never travel beyond Spain.
And on a completely unrelated not, if you’re going to be in Madrid before Jan 8th, then see the exhibition at the Bellas Artes that includes this iconic photo:
And of course there are thousands more photos of Spain on Flickr… (Beware, Flickr can be highly addictive!)
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Puntos Negros – Accident Black Spots
Back with the death on the roads theme… The Department of Traffic has a web page where you can look up accident black spots. Now what’s the point of that? To make you drive extra carefully in those spots? Should we all be checking where we are most likely to wipe-out before we get in the car? I thought the idea would be that once they know about them, they should do everything in their power to identify the problem and stop these stretches of road from being black spots permanently.
Then again their latest slogan is ‘No podemos conducir por ti’, we can’t drive for you, so they probably think that just telling us where to be careful is enough – we can do the rest.
Click here to see the black spots and stats for one of the busiest stretches of motorways in and out of Madrid (40 kilometres of the A6). And keep a real eye out as you approach Valencia on the A3! Scary stuff.
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Diminishing coasts
Costa del concrete – an interesting blog post on a subject dear to my heart – the endless over-construction of the Mediterrean coast.
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Sorry, off-topic, but this is so WRONG.
So this is a famous case and every single one is just as important, but two things are so wrong about the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams. First of all the death penalty is just so crazily ethically corrupt – especially in a country run by a religious zealot who ought to set some store by rules particular to his religion such as ‘Thou shalt not kill’…
And secondly because the man perceived to be behind this decision, even if he is only a puppet figurehead, is ‘Arnie‘, a once famously slightly ridiculous muscle man who somehow made it into politics.
Anyway, Amnesty International explains the rights and wrongs of this far better than I.
Here’s the story in Spanish.
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98 dead in usual holiday traffic horror
So, the double December bank holiday week is over and we have the usual figures to contemplate: 98 dead in 80 traffic accidents – an average of 10 deaths a day. A third of those that died weren’t wearing a seatbelt, and 45 % of the accidents involved excess speed. No figures on the involvement of alcohol yet but I’m sure it played a significant role.
I still believe that a bit of ‘mano duro‘, no-messing discipline is what’s needed here. A year ban for drink-driving on any scale, and higher fines or bans for everything else. Many Spanish regularly drink and drive, speed like crazy, and drive 2 feet from the car in front. Up the punishment and double the level of enforcement, and maybe these figures will fall to rest-of-the-world levels one day.
Meanwhile, in related news, 5% of drivers that died on the roads last year had cocaine in their system, double the figures from four years previously.
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 