Hasta Luego Espana!

Very lucky girl...

Three months to the day of arriving in this wonderful country that has taught me so much, it's time to say good bye and Gracias...

Where do you begin? actually there is so much to say that it's too much, so in a nutshell....

Spanish people by and large are absolutely beautiful, not with standing the grumpy twat at the Barcelona Train station...(although he may have just been having a bad day...)

Beautiful People!

Beautiful moments don't always have to technically be "beautiful" people will still love you if your hair is messy and you need some lippie...   

People and kindness are what it's really all about...dear precious family and friends, shiny new friends and the kindness of absolute strangers has astonished, amazed and humbled me...

The San Sebastian "A" team

If you have to carry it yourself you "weigh" up every purchase on many levels, including a full sized tube of Colgate...

Fresh Milk! is there is a cow in here?

The best traffic lights in Spain are to be found in Malaga (they have a little green man who very considerately counts down from 39 seconds) unlike Valencia, Madrid and San Sebastian that give you three "green man" flashes and turn red...not so bad in San Seb and Madrid, but crossing the Plaza De Aylumento in Valencia which is a about 400ks wide is NOT for the faint hearted...

ATM machines throughout Spain are unfailingly polite and well mannered...

 possibly the loudest waitress ever!

Sometimes "tapas/pinxos" are like a tummy full of marbles, it's great to eat a whole meal on your own!

I am so grateful for the beautiful people that I have met whilst murdering the Spanish Language...

Not learning Spanish...

But without doubt the biggest thing I have learnt...is that most things we worry about aren't really that important AND that you can actually do ANYTHING!!!!

                                   Thank you for sharing xxx

 

San Sebastian...good picking!

relaxing, local style

Am very happy with my own work at the moment, San Sebastian is beyond a treat!

Unbeknownst to moi this week is the Fiesta Semana (aka Festival of Perth) for San Seb, filled with a mass of people and with cultural events coming out of ones ears, concerts and fire works every night, can you imagine there being SEVEN different "fireworks type teams" competing for the "big bang" prize? and not a hint of 94.5 to be heard!

It has now become very clear why accommodation was SO tricky to find!

The food is fabulous, fat and fresh occy skewers, big fat prawns with salsa and my all time favs of fresh anchovies in extra virgin olive oil plus a vino blanco...at Euro 4.60 (damn, I have a "Euro" symbol on my key board but don't know how to make it work!) is heaven on a stick/plate quite frankly...

island in the background, is one of those yachts for me?

 In fact, here the way one can judge a good tapas or Pintxos (as they are called in the North) bar is how many paper napkins are strewn about the floor, yeah baby I've been knee deep!

Monday I went to my new school for orientation, and once again was overwhelmed by yet another group of gorgeous young things, just out  enjoying life! I am so looking forward to hearing more of their stories...  

We had a wonderful day, (it was a public holiday) a wander around the "City" and a trip to a beautiful island for some (not so gentle) uphill walking, but happily down hill was a very civilised little bar...

Gorgeous City, Mountains And the ocean all 7 minutes from "home" :0)

It did take me a couple of "dummy runs" to find the school on the weekend when I arrived, first one, I overshot the mark by about 10 ks and thought, nup, I'm simply not turning up if it's this far away, and then the next day I under shot by a major intersection and probably had the locals on the verge of calling the Police as to why this "stranger" (at a very early hour on a Sunday by Spanish standards) was circling the immediate area looking in a very confused manner at her (obviously broken) map... as it turns out I'm 10 minutes away (and there is a hairdressers in between) happy days!

I saw a brilliant exhibition last night, 6 Billion Others, have a look for it, 5600 people from all around the world interviewed with the same questions and their answers recorded, the answer to each question is set up in a special little "tenty thing", I decided I was too far from home and away too long to explore the subjects like "Family"

"Testing Times" or "Fears and Tears" answers so stuck to the "jolly" subjects 

of Happiness, Making Love Last and The Meaning of Life...hhmmm... I cried like a baby.... 

Once again, life gives you a poke and asks how lucky can we all be..

Picasso, Malaga...

My most pressing issues this week (in no particular order) have been, why do the people in the apartment next door have parrot that does V loud wolf whistles (true story), I don't really like the tea at the hotel and will I pay eight Euro to wash my knickers at the laundromat or should I hand wash... Imagine that being a segue into something by Picasso... 

Lucky?...hmmmmm, I reckon so.....

Clearly it's awful here...

As Always, thanks for sharing xxx 

 

Malaga...

From my Hotel window one morning I watched this being cleaned by Fernando the Fountain boy (cousin of Pablo the Pool boy) it was very pleasant...

Well, after poxy old Toledo, I would have to say the decision to come to Malaga was bang on!
What a fabulous surprise and one that wouldn't have happened if all my plans for August had gone a smoothly as anticipated (or even just gone a BIT to plan...)
Unbelievably, my beautiful cousin and family from Switzerland were on vacation 
an hour away in Torrox Costa, so I caught the bus (I KNOW!)
and spent a beautiful couple of days with them at their big fat resort, with a big fat pool and the biggest fattest breakfast buffet I have ever seen!
How beautiful to meet my little nephew Teo for the first time and to have the opportunity to be on an overseas holiday overseas with my family from overseas, in the words of Tomislav and Tatiana "incredible"... indeed...see you in Zurich soon x

Prerequisite sight seeing before a nice long lunch!

calm before the hoards...

Torrox is the hottest place in Europe, and they are not wrong about that, it was boiling! 

A bazillion tourists but great food and a lovely feel to the place... 

I missed the bus home by a couple of minutes  (I'm sure they left early) and thought "sod it" and caught a taxi back to Malaga...(I KNOW!)

Malaga is a delight, it's fresh it's young it's casual and has the most delicious whitebait...it is also the place that I learnt that you actually can eat Brie cheese for breakfast too often, and in addition learnt that sometimes it pays not to be a whingy pinge when your room key stops working, I came back from Torrox to an upgraded very swanky ginormous room with choccie truffles, vino and note saying thanks for understanding, it was at this point that I thought it was a bit of a shame that Room mate Larios was just the name of the Hotel :0)

We all "see" the same thing, but it's how it makes us "feel" that is different... from a Jaun someone, a famous Spanish Artist from one of the "isms"

I thought that was a beautiful analogy that could apply not just to paintings but to our lives in general...
The Artists were "liberating their palettes" at the time (what a classic statement! :0)

The philanthropy of Carmen Thyssen has extended to Malaga...here in her Gallery was wonderfully, (for me) a special
visiting exhibition of the Impressionist from the Permanent collection in Madrid. Now, I know that Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Miro and Gauguin are like the big Five in Africa, but...I'm a bit of a sap for them all, the boundaries they pushed all seemed so interesting and jolly (despite the fact they were all possibly in varying states of going bananas)

 

I am SO going to get in trouble for taking photos when I shouldn't

So, thanks Carmen former Miss Spain who has indeed done good stuff....
Thanks also to lessons learnt, such as when ones plans go "culo" up...it's a classic situation of one door closes and another one opens, it can just be "hell in the hallway" (to quote my beautiful hairdresser Paula)
Madrid tomorrow and then off to San Sebastian for two weeks of...aye aye aye MORE study! 

Seems such a shame not to when you have at least three family members that speak 24 languages each, that gene must be in there somewhere!



Thanks for sharing xxx

organic plans and not being tear gassed...

Well, I think I will start this Blog kind of "backwards" I have just returned from a night in Toledo (should have been five) it's a gorgeous part of the world, just not my cup of tea, I should have known when the man at my Hotel told me proudly that Catriona Rowntree had done a show from there (I'll bet she didn't stay long) I find her very irritating...

not even a two horse town...

Toledo is filled with shops that sell 
swords and knives (and suites of armour)  
with not very many outdoor cafe's as it is the most up and downy (not in a goose way) place that you could imagine, the tables would just slide away. It is the home town of Pedro Almodovar, and as I said to lovely Trudy earlier today, that's why he makes such interesting movies, there must be a whole lot of stuff going on behind closed doors in Toledo as there is not much action in the streets...
I ran to catch the 10.27 train...The Toledo Shuttle, with apologies to Bozz Scaggs...
                           

Strawberries or marshmallows dipped in chocolate, anyone?

no, no I want the one on the left...

I fell back into the welcoming "arms/foyer" of Room Mate Mario and
took myself off at speed to the San Miguel Markets for six oysters, two fabulous tapas toasts and two big fat stuffed olives (all from different stalls) washed down by a glass of Pommery bubbles, finished off with a wee piece of Creme Brulee... fantastic!

the Chico's

             


Just two nights ago Trish and I were very nearly involved in an International incident, and we were only going out for dinner... our chosen route was blocked off by a bazillion police cars and officers, they were clearing out Plaza del Sol of the student protesters...Trish has a friend who was once tear gassed in Greece, not to be outdone she insisted on having a look at the action. (Personally I had had a very big day having my eyebrows done by a woman from Columbia with the only common word we had being small (mine was a small change, I could only hope that she would understand I didn't mean small eyebrows...she did a great job)  

hmmmmm...

As it happened we got away unscathed (much to Trish's disappointment) even though this is not a very good photo, 
I still believe it was actually the fashion police that we saw :0)
A similar Police/Political event took place in Valencia whilst I was there, the students all ran down the street stripped off and jumped in the fountain outside the school...it was a brilliant distraction from class.

Madrid is gorgeous, not the spunky pretty little Valencia, but a grown up city that is big, busy a little harried but very confident of her place in the world, and seriously there is no time for "mucking around" Even the people that are begging are of the school of "don't fluff about" it could be that there is no sea breeze here...



We have seen the oldest flea markets in Europe that have been around for over half a Millennium, can you imagine! 
                         (and some things I'm sure were there from day one)

we should have picked a couple of these up for the other night  

You can buy every thing that you can imagine here, (although I didn't see any fleas) it's stretches for miles!   

Now THAT'S a Gherkin!

 
Trish and I did a mass of    things in our week, this included lot's of Metro trips, funnily enough one day I noticed the Thyssen-Krups name at the bottom of each escalator, I fleetingly wondered what it would be like to be a Thyssen...turns out you could do wonderful things!

Miss Spain of some years ago married Mr Thyssen, she was an avid art collector and eventually donated the lot to the people of Spain, what a fabulous few hours we spent at the Thyssen Museo.

one of our many Metro stops...just lovely!

Such a collection, to see this talent and passion is truly humbling, interestingly though it was very apparent (through the similarity in their work) that Matisse, Monet and Gauguin were all hanging out in the same coffee shops/bars drinking Absinthe with people such as Max Pechstein, Maurice Vlaminck  and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, but this group just never became quite as household "namish" I wonder why...
We saw an extra exhibition by Antonio Lopez, look this guy up, Spanish, so prolific in so many mediums, stunning stuff...

Finally, I want to send a big "shout out" to my dear friend Trish, who left yesterday, the best person in the whole world to catch delayed trains and the Metro with, to drink beer with lemon and eat chorizo and chips at 11.30 in the morning and a top navigator for Team Punto in Italy. A beautiful treasured friend to make memories of a life time with. 
Thanks buddy! xxx


If you made it this far "cheers" this has been another whopper, it's just amazing how much can happen in a few days...

I think it's a SIGN! :0)

Am rather spontaneously off to Malaga tomorrow...(to stay with Room Mate Mario's friend Larios) I can't wait (seriously look up the website it's brilliant) 
 www.room-matehotels.com


What an adventure!


Thanks for sharing xxx

It's a biggun....

One of Antonio Lopez's grand children's heads...

Well, just what can you do in a scant few days...? Quite a lot it seems...

For a start the very last goodbyes to Valencia, this was accompanied by a farewell dance past at our table at dinner on the last night...

Hasta Luego!

Such eclectic choices...

Very sporting of the locals, Gracias guys!

 



Also, after all my time looking at the "Valenbici" free bikes around town stands everywhere, with Trish as my able side kick we gave it a "redhot" blast. 

This is a fabulous system that has just been 

introduced in Queensland (I believe) you pick a bike any bike and ride it around until you've had enough and then stick it back in a bike station closest to you (when you're a bit pooped)...anyhoo in theory "fabulous darlings" but a couple of points to ponder, Sunday morning there will be NO bikes anywhere because people have ridden them to parties and not bought them back, Sunday evening, there may be no where to put your bike back because all the hungover revellers have returned them and taken up all the spaces...We rode about eleventy hundred miles through the Botanic Gardens and then about about two hundred more trying to return the bikes...anyhooo, it was V nice to have a ride in Spain...

Then, it was off to the South of France... we travelled by train (that smelt faintly reminiscent of Fremantle Ports and sheep ships) 

shades of the gates to Valencia

to Pepiggnan just over the Spanish border, we then caught a bus (which in the continuing theme of livestock transport smelt faintly of sweat... what is it with public transport or was it just the name of the town? :0) 
We were delivered safely to a bus "shed" by the side of the road, picked up by my beautiful Suzie and Bill and taken immediately to a little local bar in down town Arles-Su-Tec, where we watch the locals tearing up the dance floor to a bit of ACDC karaoke, all accompanied by a rather "frisky" local rose, no complaints here!

We spent a fabulous few days in a six bedroom four story restored Mill House, with the Pyrenees mountains as a back drop, a beautiful running river at the bottom of the garden and a big fat swimming pool!!!! Brilliant, wine food and reading books, heaven on a couch...

We did venture out to enjoy foie gras and the french accent, seriously they had me a zeee (madame, zee item you seek eez over zzere...swoon) and here was where something incredible occurred...it happens that the locals in this area also speak Spanish, and dare I say it...I was delighted!!! a common form of communication!...I think (despite my shaky grasp of verbs) I may well be on to something!

French Floral

Thank you to a beautiful family for opening their lovely home and sharing a part of their holiday with us! Yet again, I am left to wonder at how lucky we all are and in the words of my beautiful friend Bab's, "What lives we lead"...

We then headed to Madrid on a VERY delayed train, a word of warning, do not trust small Spanish men in an unfortunate shade of green shirt with a badge that says "Customer Service" at the Barcelona train station...they are fibbers...

We arrived in Madrid (eventually) and were welcomed to our hotel "Room Mate Mario" by the spunkiest reception boy who was so worthy of a "Pablo the Pool Boy" title...sadly he wasn't very clever with WiFi stuff, but it was a sight for sore eyes after a big day on the trains...and you dont get arms like that from computer work...:0)

Five days in marvellous Madrid deserves it's own story...coming soon


and as always, Thank you for sharing xxx