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Another busy week! Lots of tapas tours, including flamenco ones. Love my job.
08 Wednesday Oct 2014
Posted in dance, tapas tours, work
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Another busy week! Lots of tapas tours, including flamenco ones. Love my job.
08 Monday Sep 2014
Posted in azahartravels, cancer, cats, change, chemo, hope, tapas tours, websites, work
Morcilla overseeing the printing
I’ve often thought that September feels like the real “new year”, rather than the first of January. Summer holidays are (mostly) over, shops and bars have reopened, there are lots more people out and about. This week especially has a distinct “back to school” feel to it as I get things organised for the whack of Sevilla Tapas Tours booked over the next couple of months and settle back into a routine of getting chores done and going to the gym. Meanwhile I chip away at the iceberg of blog posts and articles that need to be written or updated, including editing the 3000 or more photos I took over the summer. Any spare time is being spent on putting together my new Trip Planning biz, which is pretty much ready to go but still needs fine tuning before I properly launch it.
It’s also a time for taking care of practical matters like tax stuff (ick) and finally seeing the dentist. I had planned to put the latter off until the next PET scan, but after having lost a fourth filling (plus much tooth) last month, another fell out over the weekend and, well, FIVE half-gone teeth seems like too much to ignore. I’ve got my oncology appointment on the 22nd, so blood work will have to be done before that, and then the quite possibly scariest PET scan of all will be sometime in October. So much hinges on this one coming back clean as it’ll mark five years since my last chemo and – if all is well – a change in how I’m monitored. Most likely I’ll switch to having annual PET scans instead of every six months and maybe they’ll even remove the chemo port. Both of these would be such much-needed positive changes in my life (I can’t even bear to consider the alternative) that I’m almost too scared to hope. I’ll let you guys do that for me. 😉
But at least so far, it’s all good this September. Lots to do, lots of new stuff coming up. Very exciting. How about you? How’s your “new year” coming along?
14 Thursday Aug 2014
Posted in food & drink, Malaga, tapas, tapas tours, twitter
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Last Friday I got to meet Jeffrey Merrihue, the founder of Chowzter, which I joined sometime last year as their Sevilla food expert. At first glance it wasn’t the sort of thing I thought I’d be interested in (though I remember years ago saying the same thing about Twitter!) but decided to give it a go as there wasn’t a lot of work required to set it up. And then I met Jeffrey! He is holidaying in Marbella and came up to Sevilla for the day to do a tapas tour with me, which morphed into one of those crazy tapeo extremos… we even broke a record by visiting 7 tapas bars in 4 hours.
Well today I’m off to do it again today in Málaga with Jeffrey and my good friend Victor @welovemalaga. Stay tuned on my @SevillaTapas Twitter… Jeffrey wants to beat last week’s record. 🙂
08 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in geekiness, sevilla, tapas, tapas tours, websites
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Yes, this revamp of Sevilla Tapas looks very similar to my new Azahar Tapas site (all about restaurants and tapas bars in AndalucÃa) that I showed you the other day. My question is… are the pages too similar or is the continuity good for “brand” recognition?
I’m quite pleased with the new photo slider thingy and, with both sites, I’ve opted to include footer widgets rather than a long sidebar widget, which I think makes the Front Page look neater. Positioning of the widget content is slightly different on each page. For example, the Sevilla Tapas Tour and Trip Advisor info is up on top on Sevilla Tapas, and in the footer widget on Azahar Tapas.
Anyhoooo… when you have a minute some feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks!
23 Monday Jun 2014
Posted in food & drink, friends, sevilla, tapas, tapas tours
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One of the best things at the end of the day is looking back and thinking “well I never expected THAT to happen!” (unless of course it’s sprained ankles). It started off as a fairly normal day, first meeting my friend Anna @annalibera for a quick tapita, catching her on the last day of a short visit to Sevilla. Then I went off with Saray @SarayPineda to meet a food writer from Texas and welcome her to town, which was basically a favour as Saray said she was a bit nervous about her English (which is very good). So I said I would go with her. Well, we got to the train station and met Ellise Pierce @cowgirlchef, a Texan living in Paris. Ellise had just got off the train from Madrid following a long overnight flight from the US and was pretty zonked. She was also confused to be suddenly greeted by us as she hadn’t been told anything and thought she’d have a couple of hours to find a WiFi connection and catch up on stuff before the official presentation by the people who organised her visit. But no. We sat down to have a chat about Sevilla and then one thing led to another and suddenly we were grabbing a taxi back to the centre of town for an impromptu tapas tour. There was just time for two quick stops, but they were both excellent. One very traditional – Las Teresas – and the other a more modern take on tapas – Vineria San Telmo. Then we bundled a slightly tipsy Ellise into another taxi and sent her back to her meeting. Phew!
Later Ellise sent me an email saying it was the perfect kick-off to her Spain trip – “spontaneous, girly, giggly, and with lots of ham”. And it turns out that she is going to be in Madrid on Saturday, my last day there, so we are planning to meet up. Saray and I have decided that we make a great team. We’re not sure yet how to use these special powers, but once we do world domination won’t be far off. Anyhow, what a great day it was. How was yours?