Sailor Ricardo - Madrid Rooftop bar - Ross tucking in for a grin

Old Ricardo has left us. This is one of my fave pix.
:(

People we miss - Lisette DeJ, BillyH y English Ross. - Plaza Santa Ana, at the Hotel Melia Me.

This picture was taken from the rooftop bar on the Plaza Santa Ana, at
the Hotel Melia Me.

Ross is still about, but Billy is stuck in the UK? and Lisette is
nursing it up in the low countries.

Good times. We miss you

Food in Madrid that is good enough to eat - La Taperia, en La Plateria Plaza, near the Prado, on Calle del Prado.

Ask Nicci what she thinks of the food here, and you'll get an earful.
In this case, the food was good enough to not only eat, but take a
picture of.

This was taken during the early summer at a La Taperia, en La Plateria
Plaza, near the Prado, on Calle del Prado.

Nicci is eating a nice cold gazpacho with a crostina of bread with
peppers on it, and some olives. Above that is the Tinto de Verano, a
fine spanish drink (Red wine, ice and usually either Limon soda, or
gaseosa bubbly stuff). Yum.

I've got a two tostas (or toasts), one with salmon, and the other with
the famous jamon iberico. Beer too.

Free basket of bread in the back (cost 1.5€)

We enjoyed this meal.

English Ross - Fine looking lad from London, open to chatting up married women - Beso Game

But seriously, Ross is a chipper chap, and we like having him around.
At this point he hasn't decided to leave Madrid yet, and has himself a
real job now (meaning his mother approves of it)

Hiya old boy!

Although people from Britain, the UK, England, whatever you want to
call them don't consider themselves "European" (see Rich Mc), Ross
does a fine job of the lean in beso game like all the Spaniards around
here.

Bravo

Flower Towers - The flowers in madrid are nice, and these poofy towers are a good example

Spain. Ahh Spain.

Here is a nice view of some Flower Towers with my muse in front.

--
www.MacGenius.es

People we miss from Madrid- Meg B from Lousiana

This is a picture of Nicci with our friend Meg B. It was so much fun
to have her around with us (we did the TEFL with her at TTMadrid) She
was from Louisiana and sadly has returned there.

Rumor has it that she is heading to Panama to break some hearts there
too.

WE love Retiro in Madrid, even Nicci!

Greetings readers.

Fall has hit here in Madrid, and the one thing that we seem to love in
all seasons is Retiro Park (El Retiro). Called the lungs of Madrid, it
is easily the best way to relax in the City, take a run or people watch.

The trees are dropping their seeds, which in Retiro are these weird
green brown spiky balls of stuff, that then look like a chestnut when
the outer skin comes off, and then a gigantic macadamia nut once that
skin comes off too.

I'll need to find out what kinds of trees those are.

Just a quick post to let you know that we are cranking out teaching
here, and getting amped for our trip to Praga in 2 weeks.

yay!

Andy and Nicci

New Video's are up - bunol spain, and tomatina

The are only like a month late.

A typo from the Spelling Guy

A typo from the Spelling Guy

This the other site that tried to fix the original spelling error.

Funnily enough, I forgot the "In Spain" part of the URL. Oops.

The Play Project for the San Francisco Bay Area- Austism

Here is the latest from Dr. Barbara Snyder, PsyD. Take a look at the cutting edge of Autism Therapy and care.

The Play Project for the San Francisco Bay Area: "The P.L.A.Y. Project is a community based/regional autism training and early intervention program dedicated to empowering parents and professionals to implement intensive, developmental interventions for young children with autism in the most effective and efficient way."

Programación del Cine Doré

Programación del Cine Doré

This is the link to a local theatre in Huertas/Anton Martin that plays all sorts of movies for 2.50€

Tonight I'm going to go see La Reina/ The Queen
all info here. More information.

The Launch of MacGenius.es - Apple Consultant Genius Bar ACN Xserve Spain EU

Announcing the launch of MacGenius.es, a Mac Strategic Consulting
Agency, based in Madrid, Spain, and serving all of the EU (European
Union).

Let us help you implement solutions for the 21st century, leveraging
our experience from Silicon Valley and San Francisco, CA, to leapfrog
your business to efficient and cost-effective Mac based solutions.

Embrace Apple, Inc. solutions and conquer your competition.

Technorati Tags:
Apple, ACN, Apple Consultants Network, EU

McCain’s VP Pick Could De-Fang Biden - America’s Election HQ

McCain’s VP Pick Could De-Fang Biden - America’s Election HQ

I AM STUNNED that McCain picked a woman!!!

John McCain is playing to win.

Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center

Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center

This is a good page, and if you use iCal and Google, you can use this to tie it all together.

We Expats need stuff like this.

Staying in Berlin, near Checkpoint Charlie

The last stop on our trip was Berlin. I was excited to go, as I'd not
managed to get to Berlin when it was still part of West Germany, and
was amoungst the biggest European capitals that I'd not seen.

We had planned a few days to be here, and stayed really near
Checkpoint Charlie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkpoint_Charlie
We used the bus and metro to get to our hotel (too early again to
check in) and wandered about. We were pretty tired from our crack of
dawn flight, so we fueled up at Starbucks (surprise surprise, they are
all over in Berlin) and then saw Checkpoint Charlie (which is an
intersection now).

More importantly, we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was
fascinating. If you are in town, definitely go. All kinds of great
stuff about the war, the Soviets and a time gone by.

We were staying along one of the main streets (fredrickstrasse) and
were up and down that thing several times. In case you are wondering
the U6 line of the metro has a stop (Kostrasse) that is right at
Checkpoint Charlie.

We walked around, and did our best to not get lost. Berlin is a big
mix of concepts (since the allies bombed the bejeezes out of it in the
war), over 90% of the buildings are 60 years old or less. It seems a
fairly cosmopolitan city, and also, and uniquely perhaps, it has no
city center, and redundant services, busses and trams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin

Course, the were a city split in half for 40 years, so it makes sense
that they had their own airport(s) and everything else. This means
there is no epicenter of the city, there are like 6 of them. Well, we
found about three of them and liked what we saw.

I got some good German food, although it seems like I think of German
food being Bavarian food, and as any German will tell you, they are
not the same thing. Anywho, I also partook of some of the Berliner
Pilsener, which is quite good, and cheap.

The weather wasn't great for us, but at least it didn't totally rain
on us (oh wait, it did, but only once) and we caught all the main
sites. We did a day trip to Potsdam that I'll also write about, and
that was pretty neat.

Berlin was so big that it's probably worth another visit. Even taking
the tourist bus around and hearing about all the buildings doesn't
give you a true lay of the land. I wonder what it is like being
German, and what sense of national identity you have these days. We
Americans never lose any wars (do we?) and so I'm not sure about that
feeling of if you were the kickee in the last big battle.

The Olympics started when we were in Berlin, so we enjoyed hearing
them in German, and Spanish. Go Team USA.

There is a good Jewish memorial, sculpture, city block right near the
Brandenburg Gate. It is a large number of concrete blocks on an
undulating floor/ground. The blocks are all different heights, and
with the variation of the ground, you can walk amoungst them and have
them tower over you, but they still seem of moderate height from the
street.

I think having that is the least the Germans can do.

We are fairly travel weary, but we still have to/ get to go back to
Madrid. We have a bunch of pictures, and I'm sure I'll write up a
wrapup.

Thanks for reading!

Vienna - land of Mozart

We can now add boats to our mode of transportation during our trip:
planes, trains, buses, cars, boats. Since Vienna and Bratislava are
separated by the Danube at a fairly small distance up the river, we
were able to take a ferry from Bratislava to Vienna. We arrived in
little over an our. It was quite enjoyable to a flight or another
lengthy train ride. Our arrival into Vienna was therefore somewhat
interesting. We didn't arrive at the typical city center train
station or airport, but instead were just sort of plopped into the
middle of the city somewhere. Thankfully, we had done some planning
and knew where we were to be dropped off and from there how to get to
our hotel. Vienna, along with many other European cities, has a
fairly good metro system, so we were able to fairly easily get to our
hotel.

After we checked-in and regrouped a little, we headed out to see what
there was to be seen. Vienna is really quite beautiful. Tons of old
majestic buildings that are museums, theaters of some sort, churches,
and old royal residences. We were able to try apple strudel and other
very yummy pastries. Dinner was good (once again, yet another
European city that seems to recognize vegetarians as humans and not
aliens) and Andy was able to sample some of the local beer. During
the next day, we spent a large part of it visiting the museum/old
palace of the Hapsburg Royal Family (one of the few Royal Family's/
Empires I remember from History class). It's so hard to imagine a
life back then as either royalty or as the relatively poor working
class. The money and opulence that goes into establishments at that
time in history is unbelievable. A huge section of the museum is
dedicated just to their table services of silver, gold-plated silver
and porcelain. We learned some about the Royal Family - this is the
family that Marie Antoinette was born into. Most of the focus was on
the most recent generation that lost power with the start of WW I. I
think you could just as easily teach European history from a lineage
point of view and cover just about everything from that angle.

Vienna was a charming city that clearly has much pride in its cultural
heritage and significance. I wish we had a little more time there,
but a couple of days was a good amount to get a general idea.

Sunset in Malmo, from the Hilton. Twisting Tower also viewable

Love that Sunset mode on my Olympus 720SW

Nicci's new car

Surprise, it's green!!!!!!!

Pork Knuckle, baked in Beer, with fried potatoes, sauerkraut and horseradish

Best meal. Nuff said.

I like beer bubbles

And the rest of the stuff in this glass too.