29 Saturday Jan 2011
Today’s Photohunt theme is “standing”.
In Spain people typically enjoy tapas while standing at the bar.
[as usual, Blogger is fucking up and refuses to acknowldege my open ID,
so I’m not able to leave comments and doubt I’ll get back to it later. Sorry.]
14 Friday Jan 2011
The idea to create a smartphone app for Sevilla Tapas has been suggested many times, but so far I have hesitated to seriously consider it because 1) I have no idea how to go about getting an app made and 2) it always seemed to me that there wouldn’t be much demand for an app just for tapas in Seville.
You may recall that a couple of years ago I was considering doing a small e-book tapas tour guide, but somehow never got around to learning how to do that. And now it seems like this idea is probably a bit passé.
Anyhoo, during my last tapas tour on New Year’s Day, one of my clients was telling me that I really had to come up with an app for Sevilla Tapas because it would be the perfect option for people who maybe didn’t want to take a tour but still wanted to have my tapas blog info at their fingertips – and I’d also make money. But you know, who’d buy an app just for info about one city? Well, my client Mike was convinced that it would be a very good seller. And then today I went to a small tapas bar called La Cantina, which I hadn’t been to for awhile, and the girls there told me that since my last visit people had been showing up saying they’d found out about their bar on my blog. They also said that some of them actually pulled out their smartphones, showed them photos of the food and said “I want this and this”. Cool!
So what do you think? Is it time for a Sevilla Tapas smartphone app?
And if so, how would I go about doing this?
11 Tuesday Jan 2011
Tags
It’s been quite a week for Sevilla Tapas! First I got a glowing Trip Advisor review from Tara and Christian, who’d been on my Christmas Day tour, and then a new website called Andalucia Direct surprised me by giving me a free listing.
And today the interview I did this past weekend with Rosana Domínguez (aka Holly Cocina) for I Love Tapas went live!
I’ve been given permission to post an English translation here, which you can read below. You can see the original Spanish version here:
Entrevista a Shawn Hennessey y sus tours de tapas Sevilla Tapas
Shawn Hennessey, compulsive blogger, Twitter addict (with 4 accounts) and long-time Foodie, is originally from Canada but never felt she truly belonged there and so moved to Spain (via Bristol England) in 1992, where she finally found her home. After a year in Salamanca she moved south to Sevilla and in April 2007 started the Sevilla Tapas blog. According to Shawn it all happened by accident while she was out for lunch with a friend on a lovely spring afternoon and it occured to her to take some photos not of just the square and the orange trees, but also of the food, which were then posted on her personal blog, casa az. The response was so positive that she started publishing regular “tapas posts”, which eventually led to a separate website for Sevilla Tapas. Aside from running several blogs, Shawn also writes for travel sites such as Slow Europe, Travel Intelligence and National Geographic, and has recently become the Seville Expert for Simonseeks.
Presently Shawn is working on several projects including her very popular tapas tours, working with local restaurants, managing their social media, and organising special Restaurant & Hotel English courses.
23 Thursday Dec 2010
Just home from a wonderful Christmas tapas lunch with my friend Juan at Albarama. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other and so we made sure to get together during the holidays. It was great to catch up and have some great food and nice wine – I bet even ol’ grinchy Sledpress would have had a good time. Which just goes to show that she’s been doing this Christmas stuff all wrong…
06 Monday Dec 2010
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Never again! Last week I got an email from a guy in Tel Aviv who was interested in booking a tapas tour for December 5th (yesterday) and said it would be for four people. Sounded good to me, so I sent off the usual information including prices and how to book and waited to hear back.
He got back in touch saying he wanted to book the evening tour and that he’d be staying at the EME Hotel, but that he’d never used Paypal before and wondered if we could just arrange to meet in the lobby at 8pm on the 5th. And well, I’d never done this before – the deal is that people have to send me a 50% non-refundable deposit – but the tapas tour was just four days away and thought what the hell, especially as I really needed the money.
Well, you know what’s coming, don’t you? Yesterday it was bucketing down all day and I stayed inside working on some stuff for a new social media client until about 5 o’clock. Then some grocery shopping had to be done and so off I went with Nog and got totally soaked, feet drenched, coat dripping … when I got home I had to take a hot shower to warm up, but instead of being able to get into my comfy pj’s and curling up in front of the electric fire with the cats I had to get dressed up and go out again. And so I headed back out into the rain and was at the EME Hotel five minutes ahead of the appointed time, and I waited in the lobby as had been planned. And then I waited, and waited some more. The clients never turned up. Half an hour later I checked at the front desk and they told me this person wasn’t even staying there. It totally sucked. And so I sloshed back home through the driving rain, got into my pj’s, made popcorn and opened a bottle of wine…and tried to get over it.
I don’t get it though. Why didn’t they at least cancel? The guy had said they were flying to Spain on the 1st and would be in Seville the afternoon of the 5th. In his last email he said they were all looking forward to a wonderful evening in Sevilla with me. I mean, it was bad enough that I got soaked through twice in one day, and was left waiting in the hotel lobby for half an hour, but I also didn’t get paid! If I’d insisted on the deposit then at least I would have had that. Live and learn, eh?
casa azahar 