21 Wednesday Jul 2010
Posted in blogging, food & drink, restaurants, sevilla, spain, tapas, travel, trips
My post as guest blogger for Travel Intelligence…
many thanks to Ben Cooper for suggesting it!
18 Sunday Jul 2010
Posted in food & drink, sevilla, spain, tapas, work
I’ve been busy working on my revamped azahar-sevilla main page, which will soon (I hope) become a comprehensive and useful Seville info page. Hence I have moved the Sevilla blog over here, and by doing so have also started posting more day-to-day stuff there. Anyhow, most of the work I’ve been doing is still “behind the scenes” and unpublished, and includes a lot of first-hand research visiting places with my trusty camera. So yesterday morning Nog & I took a walk over to the Feria Market, which I hadn’t been to in years, and we had a very nice time. It’s actually Seville’s oldest market and although it was tempting to get some very inexpensive fish we decided to stick to vegetables as we still had lots of errands to run and didn’t think the fish would survive long in the 45º HEAT.
And of course there were tapas involved…
12 Monday Jul 2010
First off I should say that I’m not actually interested in football, though I’ve occasionally watched important matches. The UEFA Cup final in 2003 comes to mind. And so last night, just before the Spain/Netherlands World Cup final began I suggested to Nog that we go out and find a bar showing the game on television. We first tried Cervecería Giralda across the street but it was packed out. Then I remembered that when I was giving a mini tapas tour the previous week I took my client to Casa Roman – there was a match that night too and all the staff were standing around like meerkats, eyes glued to the telly. So we went over there and, sure enough, same scene but not overly-crowded. In fact, we even managed to pull up a couple of chairs quite close to the “action” and grab a couple of beers. The match had begun.
As football matches go, it wasn’t a very exciting one. But it was fun to be in the midst of a small yet exuberant crowd who were very vocal about, well, everything. In fact, I was enjoying their reactions more than the match itself. But then as they went into extra time I started to get excited too. Could we win? Hell yeah, we HAD to win. I found myself perched on the edge of my chair and when Spain scored their winning goal I was up on my feet laughing and cheering and yelling with the rest of them. I’m so glad I went out to watch this with friends and neighbours – it really felt wonderful sharing all that excitement and happiness. On the way home we stopped by the fountain in front of the Cathedral as I was sure it was going to be full of crazy revellers – and I was right.
2010 FIFA World Cup Final
Spain 1 / Netherlands 0
26 Saturday Jun 2010
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[click to enlarge]
Today’s Photohunt theme is “purple”.
Jacarandas in bloom last May in Sevilla.
I notice almost everyone, including myself, is doing flowers for this theme.
When we had this same theme last year I did something quite different.
23 Wednesday Jun 2010
Posted in food & drink, Malaga, restaurants, sevilla, spain, wine, work
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Quite a full day yesterday, what with getting Loki fixed in the morning (and a haircut for me!), followed by an afternoon here with Victoria working on some social media stuff and then an evening of wine tasting. Victoria was in town for a meeting with her wine distributor and came over here afterwards. We even tried making a few short videos and zoomer will be pleased to know that this has inspired me to try editing again … we shall see. Later on we made stops at two of my favourite places – La Azotea and Puracepa. I’d previously talked to them about Victoria’s wines and they were keen to meet her and have a tasting.
We got to La Azotea a bit late and it was quite full, so Juan & Jeanine couldn’t spend much time with us, but we opened the bottles, had a few tapas to pair with each wine, and left the rest for them to sample at a more convenient time. At Puracepa we did the same but Felipo was a bit more available because, although the place was quite full when we arrived, it soon thinned out and once again we opened the wines and ordered some food to go with them. Manolo (of Málaga apartment fame) joined us there and somehow we ended up closing the joint.
We had a great time and Victoria mentioned that she might like to do this about once a month because connecting with present and prospective clients on a personal level like this is something she’s very interested in. And well, I am quite happy to source two suitable bars/restaurants, as not every place would carry such exquisite wines. And now that we’ve had a trial run I know I would be able to organise the next wine tasting day much better.
Click on the wine bottles above to find out more about them. And if you have ever tried any of them, please leave your own comment/review (it’s a new thing we’re trying out).
I love this job! 🙂
casa azahar 