Category Archives: tapas

granada!

26 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by in food & drink, friends, tapas, travel, trips

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Sitting up at the Huerta de Juan Rana yesterday afternoon, enjoying the view and a cold beer (after the long walk up some cold refreshment was very welcome). Today we will be over at the big orange thing in the background, then a quick lunch and home again.

And speaking of lunch, dragonqueen took me out to a most fabulous place that had been recommended by Agustín – and it really was wonderful. Later in the evening we met up with a couple of Twitter friends John & Gail and they took us to a typical cheap & cheerful seafood bar. Photos below, with the usual warning – don’t look if you’re hungry!

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sevilla tapas updates

15 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in blogging, food & drink, sevilla, spain, tapas, websites

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For those of you who haven’t been over to the Sevilla Tapas site for awhile … a couple of updates.

I’ve rewritten the tapas tour page a bit and at the bottom have included this collage of “happy campers” who have enjoyed tours in the past. I’ve got another tour coming up on Saturday that I’m really looking forward to.

I also updated the Vegetarian Cuisine page, which I now hope will be helpful. A recent visit from a London-based travel writer who is vegetarian reminded me that I’d left this page “under construction” for far too long. In fact, other than restaurant updates, I haven’t been doing much on the Sevilla Tapas page of late so it felt good to spend some time on my baby. Also had a good time yesterday in my English class with Agustín, as we talked about which tapas bars and restaurants to include in my top 30 list for SimonSeeks, which is now what I’m mostly going to be doing for the next three weeks. Next deadline is November 5th…

 

cata de jerez

08 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in friends, sevilla, tapas, wine, work

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[click to enlarge]

Last night Jessica and I went to a fabulous sherry tasting (cata de jerez) at La Azotea Vinos & Más, which was both fun and educational. I’ve never known much about Spanish sherries and so it was great that José Argudo from Bodegas Gonzalez Byass took us through the whole sherry-making process while we sampled ten – yes that’s right, ten!! – different sherries. From the palest driest mosto to sweet musky fino/oloroso blends, we sipped our way through it all, even sampling some lovely 30-year-old wines.

Afterwards Juan brought over a jamón from their La Azotea restaurant across the street and we all had a bit to eat, though not nearly enough for the amount of wine we’d had, so Jessica and I went off to the Alameda for a late night snack, ending up at Al Aljibe.

We had a great time catching up on all our news and I’m really glad that Jess is going to be in town for awhile and not out doing field work in Doñana so much. It’s nice having her “home” again.

[also posted on azahar’s sevilla blog]

somebody has to do it…

01 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in sevilla, tapas, twitter, work

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Since getting back from London late Monday night it’s been a very busy week doing research for my SimonSeeks hotel page and then getting the writing and photos done – still have eight more to go, which should be quite doable by my deadline. Aside from that I had some sad news regarding a tapas tour someone had booked as a 10th anniversary surprise for his wife (along with tickets for yesterday’s U2 concert) … all of which was ruined by the stupid fecking general strike on Wednesday when this guy found out all flights had been cancelled. I actually cried when I got his email because I remembered his previous ones and how excited he was about doing something so sweet and special for his wife. Anyhow, I tried to help him sell his tickets (no luck) and will return his 50% deposit – this is usually non-refundable but considering the circumstances it’s the least I can do.  As a result of all this I was free on Wednesday evening to meet up with Australian travel writer Shaney Hudson and her Dutch boyfriend Chris (both now living in Rotterdam) and we made a night of it…

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mr sevilla

20 Monday Sep 2010

Posted by in food & drink, sevilla, spain, tapas, wine, work

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Meet my stand-in … Mr Sevilla.

In the past few days I’ve received several requests for tapas tours with three of them asking about tours while I am in London – figures! I thought I would have to say no but then I thought to ask Nog if he would like to try doing a couple of tours. At first he wasn’t sure but we talked it over and I said I would help him organise everything and explained it wouldn’t be any different than when we’ve taken out visiting friends here. And so he’s going to do it! First we thought he would just have one tour taking a couple from London out on Saturday, but then last night I got a confirmation from six lawyers from Liverpool ( ! ) for Friday which should be fun. I’d actually love to be doing these tours myself, but at least now I don’t have to let anyone down and – also very importantly – we will make a bit of extra cash this month. Plus I think this will be good experience for Nog. He’s really turning into quite the Sevilla Expert himself, helping out with my SimonSeeks research, and of course he knows all the tapas bars (and tapas) as well as I do, having been with me since the inception of Sevilla Tapas. And he even sucks the brains out of giant prawns (see above) which is something I’ve never been able to do.

So wish Nog luck this weekend! I know that he’ll do a good job and I suspect he is also going to have a great time. I mean, what better work is there than meeting interesting people and taking them out for tapas and wine?