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Notes from Spain: Ben Curtis on Travel, Life, Culture, Spain
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Podcasts and comment on travel, tapas, learning Spanish and living in Spain, plus a lively forum and beautiful Spain photos.
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Greatest Tapa(s) In Spain – Gros Beach, San Sebastian
We spent a few days in my favourite city on the planet this summer, San Sebastian (how can you not love a city where one of the main forms of transport is the skateboard!), where we discovered the finest tapa known to man. It was just behind surfy-cool Gros beach, which to my mind is [...]
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The Destruction of the Spanish Coasts…
There is an important hold-the-mirror-up-to-reality article in El Pais about the well-advanced destruction of the Spanish coasts. You can read the original here in Spanish or try your luck with Google Translate, which gets things totally the wrong way round sometimes in its English version, e.g. “by 2030 the entire Spanish coast is untouched by [...]
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The Joy Of Spanish Intercambios!
If you’ve read Errant in Iberia you’ll know that the whole intercambio (language exchange) process was fairly instrumental in the fact that I planned to only spend one month in Madrid… and have now been here nearly 12 years! My intercambio lead me to a wife, and a life, in Spain, so you can imagine [...]
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Inspiring Asturian Dream – Posada Del Valle
Quick point: we don’t do paid or sponsored hotel reviews, in fact I hardly every write about accommodation, unless it is exceptionally recommendable, as is the case here… With that in mind: There’s nothing like going on a holiday that leaves you with a feeling not just of relaxation and rejuvenation, but with a renewed [...]
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Campeones! Spain Win The World Cup!
I knew it! They won! And didn’t I say the other day “Doesn’t that Iniesta look like a nice young man?” – Nice enough to blast the world-cup winner into the back of the Dutch net! Things did finally calm down in Madrid about 4am, but I imagine the country will be wild with this [...]
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Siesta-Shafting Supermarket Showdown
It’s one of those airless, heat-wave-hot Madrid days when the pavements empty at 3pm and the air coming up off the street burns… Baby wouldn’t cooperate with his parents desperately needed siesta plan, so I take him for a walk around the neighbourhood, hoping some pram-(stroller)-time will send him to sleep… …but it’s 38 degrees [...]
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Here Comes The World Cup Final!
From the celebrations in the street, that went on from the final whistle around 10:30pm, until at least 4 am, anyone would be forgiven for thinking that Spain had already won the World Cup Final, not just the semis against Germany! We live in a fairly residential ‘barrio’ near the Retiro park, but things were [...]
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Hot Here, Green There
As Madrid settles comfortably into the mid-thirties (day AND night in our flat – never buy a top-floor flat in Madrid!), I dream again of the green north. A friend sent me an interesting link of different walking routes around Asturias – even if you think you might never do the treks, the photos are [...]
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The Sudden Magic of Spain
We met a friend last night who had just spent a few nights in Granada, one of the few places she had been able to visit in Spain. She was staying in a cheap hostel (21 euros a night! In 2010!) overlooking a typical Granadan Plaza, with an old church at one end. At midnight [...]
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Los Gazquez – Notes from Spain Podcast 77
Download audio file (nfs77_los_gazquez.mp3) [Download MP3] This past week we headed to AlmerĂa to polish up my art skills, and talk to Simon at the Cortijada Los Gazquez, an incredible restored country house in a wild Natural Park in Almeria. The house is totally off-grid, has some amazing eco-enhancements making it almost entirely energy and [...]
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