Prospero Año Nuevo.

Happy New Year.

We hope you are having

a

merry holiday season.

Happy Holidays.

Happy New Year.

rospero Año Nuevo 2009!! on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The leaves of the chestnuts were at their peak about 10 days ago. They are looking very autumnal now as they lay on the ground, accumulating in piles along the road and in the countryside.

We had a bit of rain the other day but not enough to bring in the mushrooms that are sourly lacking this year due to the poor weather. IT has turned colder now though which is about time as it felt like Indian summer for weeks here and it was getting to be a bit too much.

Business has been slow in the week but we have a few rooms tonight including a couple of walkers coming from Ireland for a week. We did have a big lunch on Monday for a German lady who was celebrating birthday 67 with all her friends from their community down there on the Costa del Sol. They were 18 and all had a very nice time. The weather was perfect for what she wanted, a luncheon outside on the pool terrace with all her friends. Ivan made a big Chocolate Volcano Cake which Ingrid said was just perfect. They left happy and all promising to recommend us to their neighbours.

Last weekend was also the big mushroom weekend. While the hotel has an O.K. amount of business, it could have been better. The organised weekend include a cooking demonstration which was organised for here in the hotel restaurant at 13,00 hrs, not good timing for us, I'm sorry to say. We had not thought it through, but with a mushroom cooking demonstration happening from 13.00 hrs, it did not finish until almost 15.00 hrs and so there were people that wanted to eat but did not want to wait around and so we lost that business, at least three table worth. You love and learn and so next time, it will have to be earlier so as not to disrupt our lunch service.

In any event, we were told that 94 types of mushrooms were found that day in the Juzcar countryside including one type that may be a first find in all of Spain, so quite an impressive take of mushrooms, despite the lack of rain. I imagine people want home quite pleased after a weekend find like that.

Of course there had to be one client problem but the problem was the client. She was awfully quick to threaten an official complaint because she could not lock her bedroom door properly. The funny thing was that this was a returning client who was staying here as a guest of the village hall as one of the organisers of the event. But she was just a difficult person, the type that probably goes around most places and gives them a hard for minor things, like she did to us. She even made fun of the way I speak Castilian which is why I thought she was bad mannered and was actually the real problem not what she complained about. Well, I suppose that is the nature of the business we are running and one does not like to disappoint client, lo que sea.

Next weekend is a big one in Spain as there are two national holiday one right after the other. The first one is on 6 December which is the National Constitution Day followed by 8 December which is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. As a result, we have the hotel full for three nights. Ivan's parents are coming to lend a hand as is his brother and perhaps his sister. It will be nice to have them around for a couple of days.

I've started a new activity, writing Ronda restaurant reviews for Andy, the chap has a relatively new website for Ronda tourists and expats living in the Serrania de Ronda. My first review is now on the Ronda Today website|blog at the following page:

http://www.rondatoday.com/808/bar-maestro-calle-espinel-la-bola

More will follow with time; please do have a read.

The hotel has been busy during the weekends of late with a full house again last night; we had a family from Malaga come up for a birthday party last night. It turns out that they have a restaurant in Malaga city and invited Ivan and I to go there to check it out at some point.

We are closing from this afternoon for a couple of nights to go to Madrid to meet our new nephew born last month. Next weekend is the 3rd Annual Juzcar Wild Mushroom Seminar, of course the hotel is fully booked for that already and has been for several weeks. The big question is: will there be any mushrooms?

With the weather we have been having here in the Serrania, and you will note that I have mentioned the weather on several occasions here and in my Tweet account, it has continued to be warm and dry during the day. The temps at night are about where they should be for this time of year having cooled off about two weeks ago. One can smell wood fires going in the late afternoon, early evenings now. But during the day, the temps are still comfortable and there has been no rain to speak of so there are few if any mushrooms growing in the countryside. That will leave many disappointed in the week to come. In fact, we had a booking for a couple to come and stay this weekend for the mushroom package we have on offer and they postponed their stay due to the lack of rain.

We will be closed for Christmas this year. I put a deadline date on for Christmas bookings if any were to be taken and that date was today. We have not received more than one query and so we will be closed for Christmas for the period 15 - 28 December. The hotel is almost fully booked for New Year's Eve, we have two rooms to go and hopefully we will get two more couples to come along and stay for the event.

I had an American friend from Hong Kong come and stay last weekend for the first time since we have been here. Michael lives in San Francisco now and is quite the traveller. In fact he organizes holidays, one of which I would like to go on with him as they always sound so fabulous and fun. He was here in Malaga to take a cruise from Malaga to Miami, a re-positioning cruise, something I previously knew nothing about. These repositioning cruises mean the ship is going to its next home port for the season; as it has to go anyway and it is not a regular cruise, there is a fantastic discount offered for the cruise. I hope to take this cruise next year actually as it is 12 days and very inexpensive; Michael got a great room for USD1,300 which includes room and all food with most beverages... sounds like quite the deal to me! The ship has 14 restaurants on board as well as a spa and many other activities. He said you have to go with your own group but it is lots of fun... sounds like a great idea to me.

We had our inauguration of the art gallery yesterday afternoon. We had a few artists show up from Ronda, Benalauria, Gaucin and Olvera. We had people from Ronda come for a look as well, something unusual and rare for them as we do not get many Rondeños coming here normally. We had lots of cava on flow with tapas and a delicious carrot cake that Ivan prepared for our 5th anniversary here in the hotel.

There are interested parties who would like to come to put their work on exhibit here but the real valid question is, how many people will we get to come here and actually look at the work on display? All good to have an art gallery and a load of artists who are interested in showing their work but if were cannot get the traffic flow of people to come and see the gallery, then it is a waste of time. We will have to see how it goes; artists should direct traffic to us as well. I think we need to develop a list of artist whom we work with and rotate their works, leading to perhaps developing a following of our own. When people realise it is a legitimate space to display interesting art work with reliable viewing times (well, as reliable as that can get in Andalusia), then perhaps we will have a regular traffic flow of viewers.

I found out that we have a reputation in Ronda with non-Spanish people living there, something we found a bit surprising as we don't have a large clientele from Ronda, especially of non-Spaniards. So how they know anything about us must just be from second hand news; it is nevertheless quite interesting to hear that we are worth talking about. Why those people don't come and see HB for themselves is another question but we are not particularly bothered by that.

Juzcar has a new children's playground, just in front of the hotel actually. It is just about finished and I expect that the village hall will be organising some kind of inauguration as well. It is quite colorful with a swing set, a jungle-jim sort of thing for children to climb on and even some exercise equipment for adults which I look forward to trying out. The ground has some thick rubber surface which has been applied to make it safer than hard ground and it is in very bright colors of orange, blue, green, yellow. They have also planted a few trees around the area with some flowers as well as having planted a few trees at the entrance of the village so it is looking better all the time.

It is chestnut harvesting season here in the valley. We sold all the bags of chestnuts we had yesterday and more people are coming through now asking for more. The chestnut trees themselves have not turned color which normally brings people through the valley. As it has been so unseasonably warm here in the last few weeks, the leaves have not really started the autumnal process. It is yet another bright sunny clear day here in Juzcar and the lunch crowd is gathering steam so I need to get out there and do my duty.

I have today revised my layout of this blog, it now includes a music player with a few tracks to enjoy while reading... or not, one can turn it off as well.

We had a few days without bookings last week so we took ourselves for a couple of nights to Seville and stayed at a nice hotel in the old Jewish barrio called Santa Cruz. The hotel was comprised of 18 former private residences connected with many passages and tunnels, very interesting. The hotel also had a lovely spa which I fully enjoyed.

We are now getting quite busy once again as this is a holiday weekend starting this afternoon, I suppose. We have a two couples who are clients of Butterfly Adventures; they have been enjoying the many walks with their guide, Sandrine, in the upper Valley and the Sierra de las Nieves. With this unseasonably warm weather, they have been having very enjoyable days out. We also have another couple here from our Dutch friends at Hannibal Reisen. They are from Amsterdam and I had to take them to the village of Igualeja yesterday morning where they would start their walk from there back to Juzcar.

On the way to Igualeja, we were chatting about Amsterdam which reminded me of a story about something that happened to me while I first stated living there way back in May 1998. I had arrived to work in Amsterdam in early April 1998 and was staying at the Hotel Grand Krasnapolsky initially. I then took a business trip and upon returning to Amsterdam, found I was moved to what is today called the Renaissance Hotel near the Singel canal in the center. I had gone for a drink with a new friend not far from the hotel and when we returned, we stood not far from the hotel entrance continuing to chat. Meanwhile, two cars pulled up in front of the hotel and out stepped a group of rather large men, all appeared to be possible football player and 1998 was the year of the World Cup. I commented on the men to Dan, the guy I was chatting with. He responded that he thought they appeared to be more of the criminal class. They went into the hotel and shortly thereafter exited again and gathered very near to where we were standing in a circle, so close in fact, that one of them bumped into me from behind.

As I had my back to them, I did not notice what was happening but Dan did. At one point, he said, "Let's go! Move!" and we took off running as gun shots rang out from the group. Because Dan was a bit suspicious, he had been watching the group and he saw what was about to happen. Dan had his bike with him and starting running with it into me, knocking me over with it. As I fell, I tried to hold myself up with my right hand which wound up scrapping severally against the bricks on the street, providing a very nice open skin wound. As I ran along the front of the hotel toward the restaurant which had an entrance to the street, shots were ringing around me. I tried to enter the restaurant but they had already locked the door and would not let anyone in (they did not know me so they would not let me in... nice, eh?). So there I am on the street with these gangsters. I ran for cover behind a cement column in front of the hotel covering my head with my arms and hands.

When it was quiet, I looked up toward the hotel main entrance thinking I could get inside the hotel for cover but there was a gun man there holding a pistol aimed across the street. I ducked down and waited a moment or two before deciding to run out of the area completely in the opposite direction from the hotel entrance. I took off toward the corner away from the gunman, around the corner and then toward the Sheraton Hotel in the Nieuwezijds Kolk (now a Goldenb Tulip property) to get off the street. In running away, I passed one of the gunmen who was himself escaping the gunfire but was covered with blood from the waist down. I entered the hotel and went straight to the front desk holding my injured hand and quite distressed. I told them there was a shooting and they thought I had been shot, of course.

After they called for medical assistance and the police, I was accompanied into a meeting room near the reception area where they kindly offered me some coffee while I waited for the paramedics to come. After the paramedics attended me (leaving my wound open was their advice, a raw skin wound treated only with some antiseptic leaving it to become infected later requiring more medical attention at a hospital!!), I was accompanied by a rather handsome Amsterdam detective to the nearby police station where he wanted to take my statement. By this time, it must have been after 1.30AM as the shooting occurred around midnight. I was kept at the station for at least an hour and then was accompanied, on foot, back to the hotel. There, I saw the street was still closed to traffic and there were plenty of little triangles with numbers covering spent bullet shells. The detective told me that over 25 shots had been fired and they thought it was pretty miraculous that only those involved were shot with no injuries (aside from my hand) to innocent by-standers.

One of the gang members was killed on the spot, I was told. He had been shot several times from the waist down and died there on the street in front of the hotel. It seems this group that arrived while Dan and I were there in front of the hotel was a second coming. They had stopped by earlier for a meeting but the other party had not shown up. This was known by watching the CCTV video tape of the hotel entrance. They returned to find the other party; during their discussions, one of the group got nervous and tried to pull out his gun and all hell broke loose as they all started to shoot each other. They were all well known to the police of course and the problem they had involved marijuana sales and prostitution, of course.

So, that is the story of my first weeks in Amsterdam. Me, a New Yorker, who lived in New York City for 26 years including the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan, and had never witnessed a shooting or even had seen a gun on the street except in holsters of street police. I arrive in "quiet, little" Amsterdam and witness a murder. Wow, was that a surprise. Anyway, needless to say that I did not go to work the following day. I checked out of the hotel a 2 days later as I was nervous that I would be a targeted witness; I was later assured by police that I was safe and not to worry; there were more than a couple of dozen witnesses to the shooting so I did not need to worry.

A few weeks later, I was requested to come to the police station on the Marnixstraat to watch a video line-up; fortunately I recognized no one. Even later, I was requested to be a witness at a trial.... for the defense. At this point in time, more than 10 years later, I do not recall specifically what happened when I appeared in court except that I was informed that I would be compensated by the city for my testimony, provided my bank details and the funds, a mere 30 Guilders at that time, never did appear in my bank account, ever.

After court, I ran into Dan, the first time I had seen him since the shooting. He told me he ran down an alley and was dead-ended there for a few minutes. Hidden for a short time, when things went quiet, he managed to get out and bike himself home without any injuries. As for my injury, I had escaped to Brussels the following weekend to get out of town for a couple of days to forget the experience. There, I realised I required further medical attention and went to a local clinic where they dressed and bandaged my wound and told me to keep it covered until it healed a bit more as it was quite raw and should have been dressed and bandaged from the start to prevent infection.

Despite this experience, I would recommend Amsterdam to anyone. It is a lovely city, small and manageable yet international with lots on offer.

Other news, big mushroom weekends coming up here in Juzcar in November as well as a yoga weekend on offer at the end of October. The weather is quite good and the chestnuts are all starting to fall, ripe for the picking. I understand up in Holland, the leaves have changed color already, something we are still waiting to happen in the Genal Valley.

And finally, as for those very adorable puppies, all but one have new homes. The last one is in a shop in Ronda waiting.

Another gorgeous day in Juzcar, warmer than the previous week, good day for a swim after a long walk in the hills.

Two of the pups have now gone with the owner of the daddy so we have a bit of relief as these puppies are a lot of work and require a lot of attention.

We are also quite busy at the moment in the hotel and the restaurant; business has certainly picked up from a low in June/July. We've had a steady flow of customers for lunch on the weekends and the hotel is full at the moment for a week; we've also had a very good flow of clients in the hotel since 12 August. In fact, next week we will have our first days free since then. At the moment, we have a group in from Scotland who are walking and painting; they arrived on Saturday and depart on Saturday.

Speaking painting, our Art Gallery is just about ready for a launch party. Ivan is working with this artist from Ronda named Jose Cabeza. He came by this passed weekend and hung a whole gallery of paintings and set up sculptures on stands around the room. I meant to have some snaps to load here but have not had the time to take any yet. Anyway, it is looking very good. With the new lights we installed last week which highlight the painting in a much better light, we are working towards having the gallery opening with a wine and cheese or cookies sort of thing; we will be inviting the people of the village as well.

The gallery now has a name, the Sheila T. McCabe Galeria de Arte, named in memory of my mother who was an artist and who passed away a couple of years ago. We have several of her work hanging here in the hotel already none of which will be hanging in the gallery. I prefer to have them hung where they are on display permanently to all of guests in one of our dining rooms.

Anyway, this art gallery idea is making me a bit nervous as I'm not sure how this will work out but it is rather exciting to have oiur own art gallery. There is nothing quite like this space anywhere in the whole Ronda area. The room is rather large with plenty of natural light. There is a view of the mountains which Jose said he would love to have for himself out of his studio. With the new lights, it is like a different place, funny to think of this place within the hotel.

This is like the idea of our apartment in the hotel, it is like being in a different place altogether.

Well, it's kind of late and I need some rest so I'm off.

New photos of our French bulldog puppies.
11-09-2009
Am I adorable or what?

Wow, what's this big thing... is it for peeing?

Just ate, can you tell.

Very cute.

And still cute.

All are doing very well, are healthy with good appetites and are ready to be taken to a new friendly loving home... any takers?

The news here is that we unfortunately appeared to have acquired a cat. This kitten appeared abandoned near the hotel a few weeks ago and so Ivan, who takes in strays apparently, started providing food to it. So the cat started to feel more confident about coming to hotel to beg for food. Next thing you know I am finding the cat asleep on my bed in the flat upstairs. Something that did not make me happy, I must say. Yesterday, it was in the ktichen and so I told Ivan the cat has to go!! Not sure what we are going to do about it but I just do not want to have a cat, period - full stop, no changing my mind. More on this next time.


Weather - it has changed a bit in the last couple of days. It is a bit cloudy but no rain... a bit cooler but still quite warm when the sun peaks out from behind the cloud cover. Temperatures are in the upper 20s, centigrade of course. So the weather is actually ideal for walking. the hotel has been fairly busy of late as well and the bookings are just coming in. We had lots of French here last weekend, the most at one time ever actually. And last night, we had four Dutch couples, two English and a German while tonight that has changed to two Dutch couples, three English couples, and two solos - one German and one English, so pretty busy. We are shy one room from full tonight, tomorrow we are full and Sunday we are shy one room from full so all in all, pretty good. Many, well actually most of these people are here for walking, the remainder are friends visiting from London so keeping us busy.


I must now show our new art gallery to one of the Dutch who is an artist and is interested in seeing our small gallery. We have hung the few paintings we have and we have found a local artist from Ronda who is interested in hanging some of his work here including a sculpture or two so all in all good. I will post some photos here of the gallery shortly.