between places

Dropping the girls off at the airport today

Rummage !!

Visitors in town = obligatory trip to el rastro

Panda Kids

Painted up for WWF international "Hour of the Planet" in the park today. These kids looked too funny

The Life

This Friday morning, (the last of term thank goodness), was mostly spent eating and talking about peanut butter in a cafe down the road from school, marking exams, and then disputing the answers.

safe and warm

Baloncesta

I went to play basketball for the first time in years last night. They called me EL PEQUENITO - "The Small One". If I go back I'll need to get a lot better ...starting with the vocab!

Value

My sister is visiting for the next few days which is very exciting. I rushed out earlier to buy a few essentials for the house, including an extra towel. What I came back with is probably the worst quality towel for sale within a 5 mile radius of my house. But who cares about purpose when you've got a design like this!?

Spring Colour

people vs. animals

Las Ventas Bullring

La Crema

A bunch of friends sat on a van watching one of the fallas go up on the last night of the festival.

This year: burn the rich !!

One of 100s of giant "Fallas" burnt last night as part of the annual festival in Valencia. Each neighbourhood spends the year making its own gruesome design, which (from what I gathered) is supposed to symbolise a cathartic burning of what's wrong with the world and society. Many, like this one, finished up more or less as 10 metre high three-dimensional political cartoons. As well as these aritstocrats; the Real Madrid football team, Spanish television companies, and the Prime Minister (driving a sleigh of unemployment!), are just out of shot.

Sol

The famous Tio Pepe sign in La Puerta de Sol

letras

atocha renfe

you say tomato

Instead of going for the super red, perfectly round style you'll find down Somerfield (known here as cooking tomatoes), the king of the Spanish kitchen for straight up salad eating tends to be the most funny shaped and patchy coloured possible. Green varieties go down a storm, as do weird purply ones. Yummy !

barrio el carmen

camera shy

My little flatmate hiding from the papparazzi

Innovation

"Together at last! The best pizza dough with exquisite Spanish omlette. Thousands of years to discover something so delicious"

At 23 years you think you've seen it all. Not true

bad people

Having lost my camera and wallet once already in this city, witnessed passengers (+security) chasing pickpockets through carriages on the metro, and had my mum fight off a sandwich (one from each side) attack on the escalators - I can tell you that the above sign from the no.27 bus is not to be taken lightly !

high contrast

G L O W

Ikea: taking over the world one bedroom at a time

En Casa

Vanilla Shakes

'Peggy Sue's American Diner'

Great place to pretend you're in a Tarantino film

bad day for washing

Looking down out of the kitchen window to the patio below. I'm the only one in the house who dares hang their washing out in the patio. Everyone else says the restuarant below makes your clothes smell of fish. I take a risk. Watch out!

Breakfast

Toast with tomato and olive oil. Es Etypical Espanish !

Columbus

Controversial historical figure who watches over my bus stop for work

cross town traffic

street art

Scores of these giant iron figures have been sat guarding the city's main traffic artery - El Paseo de la Castellana / Paseo del Prado - for the last few months now. Its kind of refreshing to see such strange alien beasts out in the open with so much ordinary life going on around them. According to the artist's blurb they are supposed to make us stop and think about civilisations gone by, and thus 'contemplate the fragility of our own times...'

216

Yuppie o Clock