Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Calcotada









Hello! I think I've explained what calcots are before - probably two years ago. My first visit to the farm was for a calcotada. Anyway, here they are again for those of you who have forgotten - there kind of likes leeks but you bbq them and dip them in an almond sauce. They gorgeous! The weather this weekend was also gorgeous - note the short sleeves! I think I even caught the sun on my face. The climate here still amazes me - catching the sun in January is just fabulous when you think that its only a two hour flight away from home.


We had the calcotada with David (Jose's younger brother - the world cup pitch and putt champion) and his girlfriend Marta. The day after Javier and Jessi came (my other brother and sister in law) with lots of Jessi's family and they set up a calcotada all over again. We opted for a Paella that day as we didn't really want calcots again - considering we had a calcotada last sunday in a restaurant and that we are going to a friends bbq calcotada in her farm next sunday. Tis the season see!

My steals this week from the farm were oranges, lemons, broad beans, artichokes and the worlds most enormous coliflours (a green one and a white one). I've just made a wonderful soup with the green one and some blue cheese (as recommended by Jo).

We actually did a bit of "giving" to the farm as well just "taking", as we usually do! Jose has been banging on about bouganvillias for about 2 months. He really wanted to buy three massive pots and grow bouganvillias up the three pillars of the terrace ......so we did. He has since spent each day wondering if they will be ok and if the old guy Ramon will be watering them correctly in his absence. I'm sure they will be fine. We'll have to see how the "growing them up the pillars" idea goes though. I'm not sure how succesful we will be at trainng them to go where we want seeing as we are not there the whole time. I'll report on that one in due course.

I'm still in the Barcelona flat and I am surround by the 50 boxes that I have packed over the last two days, somewhat covered in dust and unable to have a bath or a shower. The dust is related to the unavailability of the shower. As we are renting out this flat we want to leave everything tickety boo so that we don't get any moans from tennants and so that tenants don't make any minor problems worse. Well there was a minor problem in that the grout between the mosaic tiles around the bath was not strong enough - the wall at the other side seemed to be damp. So, my father in law has sent some of his workmen to rip off all the mosaics and put up slabs of marble - so that there is far less surface area of grout and so that the grout is all newly done. Thats been happening today, and will be finished on thursday........as they have physically taken the taps off there is no way of showering or bathing. So I'm dirty and can't do anything about it! Jose couldn't shower this morning before work but manged to go to his parents house at lunch time for a shower as he was visiting a client over there in Tarragona. Don't know what he'll engineer tomorrow. I'll just carry on being dirty - all I'm doing is staying in the house packing more boxes and cleaning the flat so it doesn't make much difference to me. My gym membership has run out so I can't go there for a shower - before any clever clogs emails me with that solution.

Right I think its time for some coliflour soup . That spelling doesn't look right but its coliflor in spanish and I can't quite think of how it is in english. oh well, me da igual!

S xx

Monday, January 22, 2007

New Flat in Valencia 2





hello again,
Ok so here is the building from the outside, our street and then a lovely garden just a 30 minute walk away.
At the end of the street you have the old river Turia - which is now all park area. There is alsorts down there. Its amazing. You could walk for over an hour in both directions and it is full of things for the kids to do, running tracks, tennis courts, fountains, exhibition halls, the Palce of Music etc etc. I walked for half an hour towards the beaches and I arrived at the famous hemispheric buldings and many other notable modern architectural delights, including this covered garden. This of you who have visited the olympic stadium in Athens (pictures somewhere on this blog) will notice that the arches in this garden are very similar to the arches there in Athens. Thats because they are both works of the same architect (or so says Jose).
Valencia has so much to offer and we are so excited about moving there. The new flat couldn't be in a better position. I can be in Corte Ingles and all the other lovely shops in five minutes on foot, or in the Turia gardens in a similar time. Jose can walk to work in 2 minutes. The train station for the Euromed to Barcelona, Alicante or Madrid is ten minutes walk away. The airport is a 20 minute drive away, the beaches 10 minutes in the car and the best bit is that it seems that our road in particular has a plethora of interesting restaurants. The area in general seems to be the cool bar and restuarant area. If I were to liken the feel of the area to an area in London I'd say Primrose Hill -because its very residential with no commercial shops (but with those five mins away like in Camden) but with restaurants, bars and little private shops dotted around and lots of accesible green areas. You will all find out when you come and visit me! Give me time to buy some beds though. We are moving down there with no furniture at all - not even one bed. Thats because we are renting out the barca flat as a fully furnished flat, and starting again in Valencia. So, it will be a little awkward for the first couple of months.
Right I'd better get one with my snagging list for the owners!
S xx

New Flat in Valencia






Hola,
This is our new flat in Valencia. I went down there on Friday to take measurements and find a parking space to rent (seeing as we are not willing to pay the 90,000 euros they are asking for the parking space that goes with this flat!!!). Managed to find one two streets away in an underground garage for 110 euros per month - which makes far more sense.
The pictures show the kitchen, the main bathroom the ceiling in our bedroom and a shot taken from the dining room looking into the lounge. The ceilings are like the one shown in the hall, the dining room, the lounge and one of the guest bedrooms as well as our bedroom. The ceilings and the fact that they are very high ceilings are one of the reasons we fell in love with this flat. Its not perfect - no place ever is. I would have like a bit more space - but its in a very very good area so I'm afraid the money ran out at this! Jose will be able to walk to work in all of 2 minutes which will make a huge difference to his working week.
We should really be moving this weekend .....but its not going to happen as there are things that the owners need to finish off before I complete. I predict that we will be in Barcelona for another three weeks. I'll do another post now to show the outside of the building and the street.
S xx

Monday, January 15, 2007

Alcatraz





Here are some photos from Alcatraz. As you can see it has the most amazing view of the city! You get great views of both Bay bridge and Golden Gate aswell. I'd recommend the trip to anyone staying in San Fran for he views alone. We were really lucky though in that it was a perfectly clear sunny day (something not all to comon in San Fran - there is often a mist which makes it hard to see long distances).
I hope you like my expression in the photo behind bars - thats my bit of acting (well we weren't too far away from Hollywood, realtively speaking).
I'm still waiting for Jo to send me the shooting pictures and the beach pictures. I'll post those once I get hold of them. Meanwhile I'll fill you in on life back in Spain: I'm presently sat in teh house waiting for a removal company to come and size up how big a job it will be move our things to Valencia. The removal then takes place in a week and a half - Saturday 27th January. That would be very exciting if it weren't for the slight complications in that: 1. we only agreed a price yesterday on the new flat we are buying and they have yet to install the heating and air conditioning so I don't think we will have completed in a week and a half's time!; 2. I am still waiting for the sale of my flat in London to complete so we can't complete on the flat in Valencia until that happens; 3. we have not rented the flat in Barcelona out yet. we had done but then the Germans that were taking it delayed their new life in Spain until July so we now we need to find someone else. So, summary of all that is that our stuff will be in Valencia but not in our flat - perhaps in Jose's office or perhaps in storage. Jose will be workinf in Valencia but we will not have anywhere to live and I might be in Barcelona showing people round the flat but living here without any of our stuff. Hmmm all a bit messy really. You never know though, it might all work out, somehow.
S xx

Lake Tahoe




On a fairly last minute whim we took ourselves off to San Francisco on the 1st of January. Mainly to spend a week with Jo aka Juanita Banana but also for a spot of skiing at Lake Tahoe - seeing as there is no sign of snow in Spain this winter.
Lake Tahoe is about 3 or 4 hours drive from San Fran, on the boarder of California and Nevada. You actually change states at one point whilst skiing - which is quite a novelty. Lake Tahoe is a lesser known ski resort (outside of America) but its actually enormous. I think it has the largest area for skiing of all the resorts in America. Its not that high, but high enough - about 7ooo feet. There are loads of different resorts (I think about 8 if you count North lake shore and south lake shore) all around the lake area and each resort has about 20 slopes. We stayed at the South Lake Shore area and skiied at Kirkwood one day and at Heavenly the following day. The photo of the lake is the view from Heavenly.
We were lucky in that fresh powder snow just kept on falling. inches and inches of it. I'd never skiied in those conditions before. Its amazing how different it is. You have to jump up in the air quite a bit more on your turns to avoid getting wedged in it. Its great. Jose was enjoying it so much as its been years since he has experienced such great snow. He was doing all sorts of fancy turns and even went down a slope that had jumps on it for snowboarders. Jo and I didn't see what happened down there as we gave that one a miss! We both (Jo and I) did really well though - considering we are still quite new to this game. We were both pleased with ourselves and really enjoyed it. Jo took a bad fall at one point but that was because we took a wrong turning and came face to face with a section of double diamond black slope (the hardest rated in America). I got down it no problem but Jo went absolutely flying, lost a ski, two poles, and spent a good few seconds skiiding on her head. She survived it though - without any tears (good strong yorkshire lass that she is).
We kept intending to go to the casino or out for a few drinks after skiing ......but it never happened. Skiing is really tiring and we are over 30 now! We went out for meals, had wine with meal and one night stretched to one cocktail and then flopped into bed ready for the next day's early start. Our Mum's would be proud.
We actually thought we might be stuck there in lake Tahoe as the day we were due to leave there was a blizzard storm brewing and the news said you couldn't get out unless you had snow chains or snow tyres on a 4x4. Well we had hired a lovely big Cherokee Jeep but we didn't actually know if it had snow tyres on it or not and set off anyway. I think we did have them though because we passed a kind of check point on the road where everyone was pulling over to put the snow chains on and the check point was manned by officials but they just waved us through. So they could either see that we had good enough tyres or they were assuming so! We got through ok though, slowly but surely. I loved driving the Jeep actually. It was very luxurious but quite an animal. I did all the driving because Jose can't find his licence anywhere and if you don't present your licence at the rent a car place then you are not insured, and America is not a place to take any risks without insurance.
I'm going to do individual entries for other things that we did so watch out for more photos and more write ups of San Fran. If Jo is reading this - can you hurry up and send me the shooting photos so that I can do one on that. Thanks Babe.
See y'all
S xx