Blogs from Tarifa, Andalusia, Spain, Europe - page 4

I am alive... I swear. After a long winter break of travel with the fam and Brendan and then some couch bumming in Laura´s flat, I am back to the semester life. This semester I am staying with a family in a house near where I lived last semester in the dorms. More will come soon on my house. We just finished our three week intensive period and I celebrated by traveling to that funny little tippy thing at the bottom of Spain. That is TArifa! We decided to go to Tarifa because... well... we needed to get out of Sevilla. Sevilla is just starting to get super beautiful again and we are all falling in love with it all over again, but how can I ,miss it if I never go away, right?! So we ... read more

My initial thoughts on riding along a Spanish beach were mixed, as despite the fact that it sounded pleasant, I couldn’t shake the image of riding a flea bitten mule along a dirty beach, as can be found in any seaside resort in Britain. What I found however was altogether different. We saddled up our horses at the stables next to our hotel; I had selected a large, elegant horse named Don, who was nothing like the old donkey that I had pictured. We mounted our steeds and before I knew it we were off on our hour long adventure across the picturesque Spanish beach. We began by splashing through the waves at a very gentle trot, just so we could get used to the horses. I sank back into my thick Spanish saddle, which was ... read more

In Bolonia, bent double under the hot sun, men were working hard clearing the soil of plant-life. Why, we wondered was so much effort being put into weeding, when litter was still so prevalent along the coast line? I have frequently queried the Spanish sense of natural aestheticism and this seemed to be merely another of these occasions. I recalled that when living in Torviscon in the Alpujarras mountains, I witnessed the complete obliteration of the only patch of green grass to have struggled to life in the parched landscape by locals hellbent on eradication. Watching more pointless plant destruction, therefore was not that much of a surprise. A few days later my indignation was pacified by an informative sign I noticed whilst watching the kite surfers on Playa de los Lances, 4km from Tarifa. It ... read more

Monday 28 January 2008 After six hours of travel our train arrived in Algeciras (photo), a port town on the south coast of Spain. With no map to speak of, we wandered out of the station looking for anything that either looked like a bus station or looked like it pointed to one. We found the latter and soon after we found the bus station. All advice we had received had advised not to really bother much about Algeciras at all. Barbara felt this may be a little unfair on the small town and didn’t feel it right to just pass straight through it without taking a look. Therefore, with a couple of hours to wait until our bus, Barbara decided to go for a stroll around town while Michael minded the luggage. Trying very hard ... read more

Back to reality (for a short while).... sitting in a cold Amsterdam while yesterday at this time I was having lunch in a 35 degrees hot Seville !!! The last week was spent in Seville and Tarifa in the sun, sun, sun. Julie and I were heading down to attend Lorries birthday party (who used to live in Amsterdam but has now moved down to Madrid) which she had organised with her friend Rick, who also was going to celebrate his 40th. Little did we know that the planned Saturday party would turn out to be a week of great parties and meeting lots of interesting people from all over the world. Their friends and family were flying in from literally everywhere to attend !! Tuesday we were a small group that took the ferry over ... read more