The best of the month’s Notes from Spain Flickr Pool images goes to… Greg Gladman! Great images Greg, this one is of Street Lamps in Barcelona’s Plaí§a Real (as suggested by Deecree). A very difficult choice as there are some other great images on there, all contenders for next month’s winner! Keep posting guys! (More from me this weekend!)
The Flickr pool is coming along really well, thanks to all who have posted. I promised that we’d try to pick a favourite at the end of the month, but it’s kind of hard, there are some really great pics on there! Any favourites you’d like to recommend?
Kind of obvious really, but now an EU study has made it official – “The main pull factor that brings people to France and Spain is quality of life.” Oh yes. That and love, apparently.
Meanwhile, Expatica also reports that “Spanish authorities have so far demolished 63 structures along the country’s coasts as part of a programme to return the seashore to its natural state”. There going to have to go a lot farther than that… like taking a bulldozer to Benidorm for a start…
Just a quick note in case you are around Madrid this weekend, and you want to pop in at a “Tapas Festival”. It will be held in a town located about 17 km from the capital called “San Sebastian de los Reyes”, but that is not a problem as there is a train service called the “Cercanias”, which is the short distance train, that connects both cities. The festival will be located in “La Marina” exhibition centre and will be open from 12-16:30h and from 19-23h. It is sponsored by Mahou the spanish beer makers.
To check train time tables have a look at http://www.renfe.es/cercanias/madrid/
If anyone goes please leave a post on the forum to tell us if you enjoyed it!!!!
Check this out on Google Video…
Marina and Ben go for Sunday morning tapas in Madrid, before Marina prepares ‘Pimientos Asados’, roast red peppers, in the kitchen at home.
Pimientos Asados – ingredients for four people:
Three large red peppers
2 cloves of garlic
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Preparation
Wash the peppers, rub them in oil and place in an oven dish. Roast them at 200º Centigrade for 40 minutes, until the peppers collapse:
When they have cooled down enough to touch, peel the skin off then tear the peppers into strips, and place these in a bowl. Next, crush the garlic on top, add a pinch or two of salt and pour on a generous quantity of olive oil (the more the better if you want to keep them in the fridge for a few days). Turn the strips carefully until the garlic and oil are well mixed amongst them, and serve alone or on slices of bread.
Technorati Tags: cooking, Spain, Podcast, tapas, Madrid, Food
Last night, lying in bed wondering how I had managed to spend so much of the weekend in front of the computer again, I made a new rule. This machine shall not be turned on for at least one hour after getting up every morning, and that hour shall be used to make a lap of the Retiro park.
And I did it! A brisk 40 minute walk before tuning into the pc/net has made all the difference to the day already. I feel like I have walked to work, yet here I am back at home not ten metres from where I got out of bed.
The other rule was that I shall turn it off by 9.00 every night… let’s see how that goes. This working from home business is a real learning curve… learning how to actually work, not procrastinate the day away. There are whole websites out there dedicated to this kind of thing – anyone else out there working from home?
NB: This should be 22.40 mins (approx) long. (Some of you may have downloaded a 14 minute version in the first few hours due to a server error.)
Don Justo is a man who has spent the last 40 years building a cathedral in Mejorada del Campo, a village about 20 kilometres from Madrid. Marina and I, accompanied by her mother and (architect) father visit and attempt to describe this incredible building, and tell the story of Don Justo’s life.
Flickr Photo Set Here
Mejorada del Campo on the map
Forum post: Are there any other Don Justos out there?
Technorati Tags: spain, podcast, Justo, architecture, cathedral
I know the forum has been running for just a week, but we have already upgraded it to even better software. It’s now much easier to do things like upload photos and add links, plus the user options are vastly improved. You’ll need to update your bookmarks too as the URL has changed slightly (the addition of an ‘s’), to:
http://www.notesfromspain.com/forums
Users who had already registered before today will have to re-configure their password and their profiles (sorry!), we have emailed all of you with instructions. Any problems just contact us through the usual channels. Thanks and see you in there!
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 