25 Monday Oct 2021
Posted in food & drink, gastronomy, sevilla, spain
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Last Monday it was the special wine tasting event with Bodegas Mustigullo and this Monday it was an invitation to try the Mediterranean tasting menu at the new Saona Restaurant in Triana with other invited INFLUENCERS. Gotta admit I’ve never warmed to this idea and still think of myself as an accidental influencer, but in the end it was a fun afternoon. Very good food paired with wonderful wines from Valencia, and also fun meeting up with a few friends I hadn’t seen in ages.
22 Friday Oct 2021
The deed is done. Or undone. WHATEVS. The most important thing is that I never have to think about this ever again. It was exactly two weeks ago when I went to the Registro Mercantil with my recently stamped and paid for deed from the notary, dissolving once and for all the never-needed limited company that I set up in 2005. You’d think that after having forked out 200€ to the notary he would have told me that my deed was useless unless I had the all important MODULO 600, but no. And thus commenced a rather unpleasant week-long email war with this fucker. Apparently he hadn’t given me a Modulo 600 because I hadn’t asked for one (don’t.get.me.started) and then said it could be done as an extra service for 50€. Well fuck that shit.
I got back in touch with my lovely “gestora” Sandra, who has looked after my taxes and other bits and bobs for the past few years, and she sent me a link to the one-page Modulo 600 which could be filled out online in about ten minutes if you knew what you were doing. Me? No. I just looked at it and my brain went numb and I wanted to cry. So Sandra said, not to worry, she would do it for me. Bless her. She’s been helping me out with a few things since lockdown. Obviously no real accounting since there has been no work, but just taking care of some things such as filing year end forms saying there was nothing to declare, including with the stupid limited company. While she was preparing the Modulo 600 she informed me that I had to pay a 30€ tax, but so as to not hold things up she had paid it herself. Oh, and it turned out I only had 30 days from the day the Dissolution Deed was signed to present the papers to the Registro Mercantil. Did my shitbag notary tell me that? Did he fuck. It was Sandra who filled me in on everything I needed to know. So when she gave me her bank account number so I could pay back the 30€ tax (whenever you can Shawn) I added on the 50€ that the slapdash notary would have charged me. And she was so happy, saying she wasn’t going to charge me, and so we both felt good about that.
I walked into the Registro Mercantil with copies of EVERYTHING and handed over the documents. Five minutes (and another 200 euros!) later, I walked away a free woman. Apparently I will receive an email in a week or so confirming that this is indeed all behind me. And so to celebrate… well of course, we went out for pisco sours!
21 Thursday Oct 2021
Posted in sevilla, tapas, tapas bars, tapas tours
The other day on Twitter I saw that two mutual friends, Tim and Rachel, had seen their friend Suze was coming to Sevilla and was looking for recommendations, and both of them recommended that Suze and her family take a tapas tour with me. That day Suze got in touch and in no time at all we had the tour booked. And THEN she sent me this when I asked if there was anything I should know about food preferences or allergies…
I eat meat and seafood but not fish.
My parents eat seafood and fish but no meat.
My aunt eats meat and fish but not seafood (prawns and mussels ok)
And then my head exploded. So I decided the only thing to do was Venn diagram this because I honestly couldn’t keep all this info in my head without visual help. Then I sent the diagram to Suze. Ha. She loved it.
It’s actually not going to be that difficult, only with things that people usually share (obvs). But that’s the great thing about tapas. You can either share or not, and there is always something for everyone. EXCEPT… when people have a serious allergy or are celiac. I’ve had this happen just before booking and I have to tell them I can’t take on that responsibility on a food tour. I mean, a bit gluten intolerant? No problem. But if you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock if you come into contact with a few breadcrumbs… nope. Also, vegan? Again, can’t do it. Simply because I am all about showing people Spanish culture through food and wine, and vegan is not at all Spanish. Anyhow, just saying that it’s good to know all this stuff before we get to the booking stage.
20 Wednesday Oct 2021
If there’s one thing the latest holiday long weekend (October 8-12) has shown it’s that nobody gives a fuck about so-called sustainable tourism. What l saw in the bars and in the streets was total greed in action and it was not pretty. Visitors desperate for an “experience” and a tourism/hospitality industry that only cares about massive profit. All backed by the government that miraculously discovered the Covid data it needed to justify the elimination of all restrictions just in time for the biggest national holiday between summer and Christmas. Coincidence?
Most people appeared to have thrown caution to the wind in terms of Covid (no masks or social distancing AT ALL) while hotels were crowing about having a 90% occupation rate, and many bars were allowing way too many people inside… back to normal! What short memories we have. And how stupid we are to blindly believe that we are safe at “Level 0” when just a few days previously we were not. I get it, sort of. People are tired of being locked down, shut in, etc. Except most people haven’t been. They just haven’t been able to go on holiday abroad without testing or pack themselves into tapas bars. Boo fucking hoo.
I truly see this sudden return to “normal” in Sevilla with cheap flights, hordes of mindless (and maskless) tourists milling about everywhere, streets clogged, bars and restaurants overflowing, as not only a special kind of hell, but also a reaffirmation that people, at heart, are basically selfish assholes.
I mean, have we not learned anything during these past almost 20 months?? Have we not learned to re-evaluate what is truly valuable to us? Have we not given one thought to the idea that our past NORMAL was in part what caused this most recent global catastrophe? Apparently not. And even though there has been a lot of press about the concept of sustainable tourism, it looks like that is just so much lip service. No such thing exists at the moment.
19 Tuesday Oct 2021
Posted in decanter magazine, sevilla, wine
On Monday I had the pleasure of being invited to a wine tasting led by Toni Sarrión, winemaker/owner of the fabulous Bodegas Mustiguillo (which also gets a mention in my latest Decanter article about Valencia). Not only delicious wines but also a lovely setting on the river front at the posh Abades restaurant, once again being swept up in Toni’s passion for his wines and his process. He’s a bit of a rebel. And I have certainly had worse Mondays! 🍷
casa azahar 