13 Monday Jan 2025
Posted in casa azahar, sevilla
I want to live in that top floor one on the right side…
is that too much to ask?
Actually, not sure how long this link will last but one of the top floor
apartments was listed for rent recently.
12 Sunday Jan 2025
Posted in music, sunday song, video
Tags
Sam Moore 1935 – 1925
Legend ❤️
11 Saturday Jan 2025
Posted in casa azahar, cats, caturday, home
10 Friday Jan 2025
Posted in birthdays, bitesize sevilla, friends, gastronomy, restaurants, sevilla, spain
My third (and final) birthday lunch. Well, you never know, but at least this is the last one during Birthday Week. I need to take some time off celebrating to get some work done on Bitesize Sevilla, which has turned into quite a time-consuming project (with a steep learning curve!). But I love doing it and of course the hope is that it will eventually start becoming a new source of income (I actually have three paid subscribers now!!!).
Anyhow, I had mentioned Beirutina as one of my top new openings for 2024 (both here and on the Bitesize Substack) and so Fourat got in touch to thank me and said she’d love me to come over and try some of their new dishes. Great! I’ve known Fourat for about fifteen years and we are neighbours as well as good friends. I was thrilled when she opened her little Lebanese brunch-lunch spot just three months ago, literally a stones throw from my house (I can see it from my balcony).
We got there early to find a little window table reserved for us and, well, it was fabulous. Although I’ve been here several times now this was the first time I got to try both Lebanese beer and wine and I loved them both. Fourat knows I’m not keen on sweets so for a birthday treat at the end of our meal she brought us a couple of her nutty Lebanese biscuits (also new on the menu) one with pistachio and orange, the other with peanuts, with a small bag of them to take home as well.
We had…
09 Thursday Jan 2025
Posted in sevilla, television
This could have… should have… been better. Directed by award-winning director Alex de la Iglesia and shot mostly in Madrid and Sevilla, with a very good cast, this slow-burn serial killer mystery series ran into trouble in the first episode. Well, it did for every Sevillano watching. The first major faux-pas was when the main characters emerge from the Santa Justa train station and there’s a tourist horse carriage parked outside. Like, wtf? Has never happened ever. Later on it shows a pre-Semana Santa costalero practice session, where 30 burly guys carry the “paso” frame (parihuela) through the streets late at night, loaded down with bricks and sandbags to replicate the weight of the sacred images that will be placed on top during the processions. Well they got that bit right, except they were accompanied by a band and a parade of nazarenos (penitents) in full gear, long tunics and pointy hats… another thing that has never happened ever. When the costaleros practice at best they have a boom box on top of the bare bones parihuela playing a few marches. These were the most glaring (and insulting) misrepresentations, but it did feel like de la Iglesia has a very narrow-minded opinion of Sevilla and sevillanos and decided to go with straight up caricatures.
This may have been saved by a gripping story but it actually started fizzling out early on. I finished the series just because I love watching Sevilla on film, and it wasn’t awful. Just a bit disappointing.
casa azahar 