Blogs from Spain, Europe - page 1091

Seville is the capital of Andalucía, and the center of bullfighting and flamenco...none of the former and lots of the latter for us thanks! We arrived at Seville’s San Pablo Airport late at night and the intense haze of cigarette smoke just outside the airport doors befuddled us into catching the wrong bus into town. It wasn’t a major disaster, and it was really a little lucky as we wouldn’t have otherwise caught a taxi and experienced a ride with a craaazy-wanna-be stunt driver. The hotel was only three blocks away as the crow flies but apparently 10 minutes via all the very small crazy one-way lanes. The driver did every possible thing he could to scare the life out of the travellers on their first night in Seville...and just when I thought he was going ... read more

Yesterday we took a day trip up to Figueres to the place where Salvador Dali was born, where he died in 1989, and also where his museum was built in 1974. He was quite an intelligent, eccentric, and egotistical man(slash)aristic genious. He was quite proud and a bit arrogant about his accomplishments. I love this quote,by Salvador Dali himself... "Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali." or another one..."I don't do drugs - I am drugs." Well looking at some of his art you would think he did take drugs though. But, he allowed much of the subconcious thoughts come through in his art. His biggest inspiration was Gala, his lover and later wife. She is in many of his paintings and he was quite obsessed ... read more

Hello all of you out there that are still reading my blog! I am giving you an update finally! So as you read in a previous blog, you saw I went to a little town south of Spain (El Puerto de Santa Maria) for a Spanish immersion course. It was a great experience and I picked up a good amount of Spanish since I was immersed in it. The school only allowed Spanish and I was staying with a family who spoke Spanish. Also, the other students wanted to practice so outside of class they spoke Spanish. It was fun, but quite exhausting. I left El Puerto on the 13th to take a train to Barcelona. I headed to Barcelona to take a one month TEFL course. I am going into my last week next week ... read more

Last night I watched peanuts for an hour and a half. Laurel and I heard about this Valley style (by Jesuit) movie theater where they play older or underground movies for 2 euro. (Which, deceptively enough is not just two dollars.) We looked up the movies online that were playing there, and found we had a choice between a Spanish documentary on Woodrow Wilson and some animated movie called "Gritos en el Pasillo." For obvious reasons, we took our chances on the latter. We got to the theater right as the movie started, and so missed out on the first couple of minutes on the movie, so you can understand our confusion when we saw a bunch of dressed up peanuts on the screen. The humor was reminiscent of Thumb Wars (a spoof on Star Wars ... read more

Sant Joan, Ibiza, Spain Almost winter in the village! The birthday boys (all foreigners in their 50's) just came back from the famous Benirras beach, having enjoyed the sun and a few beers, happy to be alone in paradise...not at all like the almost 3000 (!!!) on a certain drumming Sunday in August!! Winter indeed! there is hardly any parking and the sun is shining, while some of us are sitting in the Vista Alegre, connected to the world with Wifi and good conversation! The tea and the excellent café con leche cost 1,20 euro's and the chickpea soup (filled to the brim) 4 euro's...some quick and easy sustenance! There are fewer people, despite the parking shortage, so the contact and communication is improved, parties are private affairs and we are going Paintballing on Sunday! People ... read more