Across from our apartment in Zahara was a restaurant called Pradillo that was run by a gay couple who the town referred to as the Geishas. Sweetest guys in the world and man could they cook. We’d stop in for a bite and one day we had a soup of garbanzos, carrots, celery, onions, broccoli and it was so profoundly tasty I kept asking what the spices were. It had saffron of course, but they…
I read two books, two short stories, and began a third book on my vacation. The first was recommended on a friend’s blog, Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill, which I found interesting and yet had a little bit of a sour taste from the laissez fare life Athill led by screwing other people’s husbands. Just didn’t sit right with me. The next was Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which wowed me to the ends…
Lena Horn said it is not the burden that wears you down but the way you carry it. I started this summer travel by writing in a travel journal that I brought with me two years ago when I had a sabbatical and went to Hungary and Croatia. The travelogue begins this way: I’m running away from my life. That statement isn’t entire accurate because I love my life and I’m not running away but…
Last year, we went to Portugal to assuage our depression over not being able to adopt the little baby girl about to be born. We took this photograph in the Atocha train station in Madrid. This year, with Tin, we were in the Atocha to head down to Zahara de los Atunes for our summer vacation. We sat in the same place and took this photo:
Because of T’s friend in Zahara we made a lot of friends, people who have come to Zahara for decades or who were from there but who now lived in Sevilla or Granada or Cadiz. Every afternoon the ladies would walk, long walks down the part of the beach that belongs to the Spanish military so there is hardly a soul around. We’d walk into the sunset and then walk back just in time for…
I walked with friends along the long coast line of Zahara while the sun was setting long past 9pm and said on Monday, I’d be back at my computer, be back at work, be back at home, but the sounds of the waves from the ocean and light along the costa de luz would be what was on my mind. August 02, 2010 Taurus (4/20-5/20) Enjoy all of life’s pleasures today, from the greatest to the…
I could sum up these last two weeks with one word – maravilloso. The Andalucians claimed Tin as one of their own and called him “la alegria de la playa” – he was picked up and kissed and adored by everyone in Zahara de Los Atunes and I mean every person, from children to aging adults, male or female, this boy was a hit. In Morocco, the Arab women repeated what the Spaniards had said,…