Tag Archives: tapas tours

I love tapas interview

11 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in sevilla, tapas, work

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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.

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once bitten…

06 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in tapas, work

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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?