Christmas Shopping in London……..

…….oh my goodness, what fun!!! Our sole purpose was to go to certain shops….Tackling London has to be planned like a military operation….we had our list and off we went. 25 minutes later we popped out in Liverpool St. and it was ‘game on’…..hit the Spittalfield Markets….not what we were looking for. Back down into the railway station and off on the tube to Oxford Circus..bit of good stuff there…”ker….ching”! Back down to the tube….off to Picadilly Circus…Hamleys – the BIGGEST toy shop in the world. Three hours later we staggered out with booty for 6 grandchildren + 1 surrogate. …”ker….ching.. ker….ching.. ker….ching”! It was amazing, I think we probably paid over the top prices but it was such fun. Now we have to wrap and post.
“Life as a servant” continues to present us with little incidents…..today I was preparing lunch for our employers and guests and was advised “go and get your camera Barbara, Simon and Polly are calling in with the trap”. Sure enough, Davinia (the horse) arrived pulling a dear little ‘trap’ with her people. Rod was asked to offer a ‘stirrup cup’…they downed that and off they went, back down the country roads. A short time later our employer said to Rod “ there’s a calling card on the driveway Rod, wait for it to dry out a bit and then you may like to clean it up”………Of course Sir!
The days are cold and frosty, which we aren’t aware of until we step outside, it’s still incredibly beautiful and thanks to some lovely contact from home, the homesickness has receded slightly. Miss you heaps and really, really wish you here xxxxxxxxxxxx

Spain – Part 5 – Contrasts…….

……….one of the great things about traveling is the ups and downs, but these are only great when you look back in hindsight. We struggled in Spain without any language, even feeding ourselves was a bit of a mission. The old tried and true, smiling, pointing and gesticulating was met with a bored shrug! However, we met Alberto, the “marvelous waiter” in one of the hotels we stayed in. Alberto gave us a glass of free champagne, arranged food he knew we would like and gave us a taste of Spain – we loved Alberto!
We also loved the colour pallet of Andalucia – blue, white, ochre, dusty blue green.
The only time we saw olive trees growing amongst green was in this photo, mostly they were growing by the 10000 acres in brown dusty terrain as far as the eye could see against impossibly blue skys.
Thousands of years of incredible history and stories sit alongside graffiti and grunge – see our last hotel! (We didn’t get any sleep…thought we would be knocked out by the dope oozing into our room from the street….then robbed and murdered…you know how the imagination goes wild when you are sleep deprived…drugged…. and it’s the early hours of the morning!!!)……….that’s it for blogging Spain….. back to “Life as a Servant”!!!!........miss you heaps and know that this homesickness will pass…much love xxxx

Spain – Part 4 – Alhambra……

……if you are familiar with Ponsonby, you will know the Alhambra, bar and restaurant. Probably the only thing it has in common with the real thing are the stunning view across the city. Alhambra looks out over Granada and the surrounding Sierra Nevadas…..glorious. Like so many cool Moorish architectural achievements in Spain, this one was taken over by the Catholic conqueros and huge Christian artifaces were imposed on it not adding anything to the original. The fact that irrigation was designed virtually on a mountain to support the planting of a rain forest and beautiful gardens pays tribute alone to the original design even without the amazing timeless structures and mosaics. We spent two days wandering around with our mouths hanging open………to be continued. Terribly homesick at the moment and wonder what on earth we are doing here!!!!!!!!!

Spain….. Part 3……Plaza de Toros……

……..bull fighting is as Spanish as ‘tortilla’ and so we visited “La Real Maestranza de Caballeria de Sevilla”, I must say I went reluctantly being aware that from the time the bull leaves the farm where it is breed specifically to go into the ring it’s virtually dead meat! Still, while you can’t equate the dead meat logic with rugby, I guess one has to recognize certain cultural differences – do the Spanish play rugby?????
Fortunately the season had finished so it was just a good look around and it was quite fascinating.
The bullring we visited is one of the most beautiful in Spain apparently, as well as one of the most significant in the history of bullfighting. The bull heads on the wall were particularly sad….the last matador killed there managed, as he was dying, to kill the bull and they both died at the same moment – great, crowd pleasing stuff! The other head (and this is the unfair bit I think…) is the mother of the aforementioned bull. It was decided by the – who ever?? – that another bull should not be breed that could ‘kill people’ - uummmmm - I don’t get that?? The chapel is where the matadors pray before they go into the ring. Trivia – did you know that a matador’s costume cost around 25,000 Euros? Also the top matadors are great celebrities and get paid mega bucks per appearance.
The other photo of a bullring is my favourite….we didn’t visit it, but that was the view from our hotel room in Malaga (Picasso’s birthplace) and I think that is probably where that famous photo of Picasso watching a bull fight was taken, that’s my kind of history……….to be continued……..
Miss you heaps………xxxxxxx

Spain Part 2 – Flamenco & Culture in Seville….

…..having experienced an excellent flamenco singing, albeit lousy cook/waiter/barman our first night in Seville we set out the next day to find some more. We encountered a guitar player in the Square around the cathedral and started talking with him. He spoke no English but it just happened that a fellow student of his from the Flamenco School, stopped by to see him. Yuki is Japanese, spoke fluent Spanish as well as very good English! We set up a rather bizarre 4 way conversation around where was the best place to see flamenco dancing, singing and guitar. Yuki offered to take us and show us the venue in the maze of streets around Barrio Santa Cruz. He was fascinating to talk with, a professional guitarist in Japan, had spent 2 years riding a push bike from Alaska to South America and was now in Seville studying flamenco guitar on a 3 year course. That night we went to the place he recommended and it was everything flamenco…. passionate, stirring, romantic. So accomplished and complex is the guitar technique that Rod has given up all hope of learning anything but a smidgen!!!!
The Cathedral, like a lot of Christian stuff in Spain has been built on the site of a great mosque, it’s been added to over the years and is now the largest church in the world and has something like 28 side chapels which are monuments to the wealth and style of successive ages. Christopher Columbus is entombed there. It was impossible to photograph the immensity and grandeur of it, but from the top of the bell tower (part of which was once a minaret!) – you can see the courtyard, which has become a cloister. In Moorish times the worshippers would wash their hands and feet in the fountain before going into the mosque. In the Sacristy are the keys to the city, presented to the Christian Conquerers by the Moors and Jews to keep it all intact – astonishing!! However the keys are inscripted in Arabic “May Allah render eternal the dominion of Islam in the city” - watch this space………..
On a much lighter note, this guy was busking for most of an afternoon, the temperature was around 24 degrees……he got our money! Miss you all heaps and will continue this saga…………………..

Spain- Part 1…..

…..we arrived in Seville, pronounced “Sebeea” by the Spanish. We found our hotel -Hotel Amadeus and it was charming - classical cd’s in the rooms, instruments everywhere for the use of guests. Breakfast the next morning was brought up to us on the rooftop terrace, clear blue skies and white buildings. We had been told by a relative of our employer, not to bother learning any Spanish as “everywhere” the locals spoke English…..yeah right....maybe four star and up…….certainly not at ground level!!!!!!
Ordering food was our first problem, our first night we ordered “tortilla” – obviously Spanish, bit of an omelete, we thought we couldn’t go wrong with that. What we ended up with, in a Tapas Bar, where the waiter was also the cook, come barman, come proprietor, was a HUGE slab of potatoe and egg, reminiscent of a stucco type piece of architecture heated up in a microwave. However, he did redeem himself by singing passionate flamenco music and we suspect that is where his true vocation lay!
Learned a thing or two about ‘proscuitio’ though – most bars have them hanging from the ceilings and we imagine that part of the curing process continues with bar smoke and fug… then after they have showed up as part of your tapas they meet the eventual fate of the one we saw at my left shoulder as we sat alfresco!! We never did truly crack the food thing, we were constantly misunderstood, mislead, misguided and miserable with our food, with one or two exceptions (more about this in another blog). Experiencing food was one of our big expectations - and like most of our preconceptions of this trip it bit the dust! Spain for us was full on and in your face……we loved the sign at the river bank – linguistic evolution?
To be continued…………….xxxxxxx