Blogs from Sitges, Catalonia, Spain, Europe - page 3

Habla un poco de espanol. Habla usted ingles? After the euphoria of the Rando Silex cycle race and my birthday the next day (49) the bubble well and truly burst. I call it the “ East- Enders moment”. You know the bit at the end when someone says “ My life couldn’t get much better than this.” The drums play the theme tune and you know in the next episode that everything will go wrong and their life will fall apart. Well you all know the story from the blog. Dads do not go shopping at Iceland now. My mate Simon summed it up in an E mail when he said “I Bet you couldn’t swipe the Icesave card through the cheeks of your arse worrying about the prospect of losing it all.” The prospect of ... read more

What a beautiful city! Sitges is brighter than Barcelona, cuter, and younger. I don't feel like sightseeing here; I just want to wander around by the ocean and pop in and out of shops. One of my favorite things when I travel is to go in local shops and look at the clothes, jewelry, and shoes. I like to buy unique souveniers: barret, shoulder bag, shoes, accessories. I walk towards the ocean, following the sound of the waves. An elderly man jogs down the beach, wearing nothing but a little speedo. I crack up and look around to see if anyone else is amused, wanting to share the moment. But no one seems to notice, which cracks me up again. The Mediterranean Sea is wild and strong and blue. The waves roll over each other, unfolding ... read more

So today is going to get a short entry because it was mostly a travel day. We did, however, do some important stuff today, #1 being finally having a real swim in the Mediterranean! We started the day with a trek to the local “Chinese Store” (apparently a genre around here, as that’s what people called it everywhere) that had everything in the universe at decent prices, including adaptors for a fifth of what we had paid for them the night before : ( I nabbed some decent-looking long shorts, an “athletic” shirt and some sandals and was ready to take on the beach. We booked our tickets and headed out to Sitges, a town near Barcelona which we were told had good beaches. We weren’t disappointed. While the water was a bit cold, the beach ... read more

I took a daytrip to Penedes, Sitges, and Sant Piere. Penedes is only a forty minute drive from the Barcelona city center. Here we took a tour of the Codorniu cava vineyard, where we learned how cava was made. Cava is essentially champagne but it is technically illegal (in the world of wine laws) to call a substance "champagne" unless it’s from a specific region in France. Hence the name "sparkling wine" for bubblies coming from California. In Spain they call it cava. For something to be cava it must have two requirements; first it must go through a second fermentation process in the bottle (this is where yeast is added with the sugar content, making the bubbles) and second it must age for at least nine months once completed. At this vineyard in particular they ... read more

So last Tuesday, February 5th was the last night of a huge festival in Spain called Carnival. Barcelona doesn’t really celebrate it, so all of our teachers said that we should go to Sitges, a small town 30 minutes outside Barcelona to experience it. Carnival is a huge celebration lasting from the previous Thursday to the middle of the day the next Wednesday. It is similar to Mardi Gras, but without beads. I had class till 5:30, so once I got out of class, I went directly home to change and get ready to head out there. I had a cold, so I was really considering not going, but since it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, I felt I had to go. Lauren and I got dressed, and we didn’t have costumes, so we ... read more