When we were sitting on the beach in Zahara de los Atunes, we looked up at the 2:00 pm sun and saw this incredible phenomenon. The sun was surrounded by a dark black circle and surrounding the darkness was a beautiful rainbow. This phenomenon I later learned is called a solar halo and it was eery in the sense of awe and wonder and also had many of us questioning if it were the end…
We’ve been to Spain. Yes, that’s what the tickets say but it seems as if we have been living parallel lives from our regular one. There’s the getting used to each new place, there’s the schlepping baggage filled with god knows what – diapers, incense, books, computer, clothes, make-up, pills and such. There’s been different food, different routines, different people, different modes of being and at the end of it all – there we are.…
There is a restaurant in Zahara de los Atunes called Restaurante Pradillo but most people refer to it as “The Geishas” because Rodrigo and Oscar make you feel as if you are being pampered in regal style. Estefa is the bartender and she is solely to blame for hooking us on gin tonics. Her cocktails are made with love and with spices and with flare. Her new technique is to pour the tonic slowly through…
I have a friend in Spain who I met the first year we vacationed in Zahara de los Atunes. I looked forward this year to returning and walking on the beach with her to catch up. There are few people you meet at a certain point in your life who you truly feel connected to – as if they were always there just waiting for you to arrive. We took the ferry to Tangiers together…
The Spanish have a saying – te voy a comer de besos – I will eat you with kisses. And the our friends’ kids are just those types of kids – the ones you want to eat with kisses all day long.
Spain adopted a motto for tourism that said simply Spain Is Different and it is. We are now in Zagreb, in Croatia, in Eastern Europe – difference is everywhere, but I digress. I was with a friend in Spain and we walked into a boutique to look at the new fall line of clothes. The shopkeeper who I knew from before was chatting with us and she asked my Spanish friend, “Do you only have…
Tomorrow we leave for Zahara de los Atunes – where we have no WiFi, no internet, no phone, no nada. Woo hoo – hello beach, hello sun, hello the books I have remaining to read. I’m in the midst of Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men, which I was digging until last night when I was going to bed I was reading the prose and it felt so contrived I paused several times to see if…
Tin and I left for Zahara by bus yesterday from Cadiz for a repast on the beach with friends but judging by the way our friends relax, I’d say it was more of a fun in the sun till you drop sort of trip. Along the way, we saw the fields of sunflowers, the bulls grazing on the golden grass of Andalusia, the windmills that forever remind me of Cervantes despite their steel grey color…
We, who live in New Orleans, make fun of our politicians as ongoing dinner conversation and entertainment, and lately with the way our congress, senate and presidential candidates have behaved, we have a full course meal of conversation and jokes. But really I must say that nothing tops what happened here in Spain the other day during a presentation of tough new austerity measures at the Spanish parliament where specifically unemployment benefits were cut to…
I always had wandering my blood – a wandering Jew that I inherited from my father’s almost gypsy blood. Don’t know if it is because he was born to Sephardic parents from Turkey who gave birth to him Cuba and then he came to the U.S. or what. Inherited or not, I got it. I wanted to live in Spain where my ancestors hailed from, then I wanted to live in Istanbul where my grandparents…