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
Tags
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?
20 Saturday Nov 2010
Posted in food & drink, photohunt, photos, tapas
12 Friday Nov 2010
Tags
So this is what I did last nigh!
It was another free wine tasting (cata) at La Azotea Vinos & Más, this time put on by Bodegas Habla from Extremadura. I like to go to these because I always learn something and meet new people, and it’s a free night out! I invited María Paz from Bar Campanario and that ended up being a great choice for many reasons. First of all because she is very sociable and talks to everybody, and of course knows a lot of people from being in the biz. And as I’m also rather chatty we ended up getting invited to the bodega by the owner, who said we could stay there and they have horses and blah, blah… and María Paz said no problem, we could go in her car (!). And she repeated that offer when we went over to the bar for some tapas and ran into someone she knew who invited us to Córdoba (!!). Then her two sons Emilio and Alvaro showed up and they got to reminiscing about when they used to take English classes with me (they were 6 & 8 then and are 20 & 22 now), which ended up with them deciding to start classes with me again next week (!!!). So all in all, a good night out, plus I got to catch up with María Paz, whom I haven’t seen in ages. Also got lots of photos and stuff to put in my Seville blog.
The bad news is that I got into a big argument with my landlord as I still can’t pay the rent, which totally stressed me out, but I’m choosing to think about all the positive stuff that happened yesterday and the other good things happening, as it looks like quite a busy week coming up.
How was your day?
27 Wednesday Oct 2010
Karin with Loki last night on the sofabed, giving him a goodnight kiss. Azar was NOT amused by this overnight guest business and spent most of the time sulking in the bedroom.
So Karin (dragonqueen) is now winging her way home – Jean-Marie (ToyBox) left on Sunday – and it’s time to get back to normal around here. Which means catching up on my SimonSeeks stuff and doing a tapas tour tonight with Spanish chef José Pizarro, who will soon be opening his own restaurant in London.
It was a great mini-meet and a fabulous trip to Granada (thanks again, K!). I’ve uploaded some photos though they are still mostly unedited. Click on the link below to have a look.
