Happy New Year to all my readers.
Our Christmas was spent working here in the hotel for the first time. This year, apart from all others, we had 5 enquires for Christmas, a first and in the year of a recession, perhaps heading toward depression!
Well, we were pleased to work with the hotel full with this family from Algeciras, Cadiz. They were all very nice people, as usual. They brought a guitar and a karaoke machine which we heard them singing with into the late hours on the night of 23 December. Ivan prepared a lovely Christmas eve dinner for them of grilled shrimp with rock salt, boiled langoustines, plates of Spanish cured meats, Manchego cheese, baked stuff mushroom caps, pisto on toast with baked pork tenderloin, consume of langoustine, all followed by roasted leg of baby lamb with rosemary sauce and a roasted turkey with mashed potatoes. Dessert was a baba au rum, OH so yum yum!!, with whipped cream.
This family was so nice and unassuming, they asked before dinner if we were dining with them! Very nice but of course we could not even though our new waiter, Tony, was here with us. WE were busy getting those plates out there, dirty ones in and cleaned. After dinner though, we sat with them and sang and Ivan danced with one of the girls. We were with them until 4AM.
All in all, a good Christmas. While we did not spend the holiday with our families, it was a good Christmas all the same because we spent it with very nice people.
Now we are in the midst of preparing for the big New Year's Eve Dinner. Ivan has been preparing food in the kitchen since yesterday already. We are serving our usual eight course dinner with wine, cava and grapes at midnight (as per the Spanish tradition, one grape with each gong of the bell it strikes midnight). Ivan is making consume of langoustines, terrine of fresh cheese with brazed vegetables with a sauce, grilled scallops with sweet potato, quail with dates, lemon sorbet, fillets of monk fish with an aubergine alioli and finally sucking pig confitado with a spiced honey sauce. Dessert is a 3 chocolate brownie with red fruit sauce and whipped cream. WOW, that's sounds yumilicous to me and is making me hungry as I have yet to have some lunch.
I have been busy setting the table, preparing the packets of grapes and helping in the kitchen as well. We have the bar closed today as is our custom on this day because the kitchen is quite busy with all these plates of food coming.
We plan to take some holiday in January, closing from 19 January until 3 February. Bookings for 2009 are starting to roll in as well. We have a booking for 2 January and then a group in February, and bookings in March and May already as well. Our group bookings are improving as well so things are looking up for us these days. Hopefully the first few months of this new year will not look anything like 2008 as this was a pretty miserable time for us, Jan to July that is.
The weather here is cooperating as well as it is dry and cool but not cold. We just had a wood delivery yesterday of 3,000 kilos; that should last a few months. Good burning wood as well, encima and olive.
Well, it's time for me to put some food in my belly so I will sign off here with my last entry of 2008. Oh, one more thing, I have enable a counter on this blog page as I was curious to see what kind of traffic I get here. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I have some very interested readers, some who come back and check me out here once a week. To those dedicated readers, I saw sorry for the long break without new entries, I was recuperating from my fall and then lost my momentum here. But now it's back and and I am in full swing with a couple of entries a month, at least. So, keep on reading.... and thank you for reading.
Happy New Year everyone!! Let's all hope it's better than 2007 and 2008. (Well, any year WITHOUT George W. Bush as President of the United States of America has GOT to be a good year!!!)
Ciao.
Saturday 20 December 2008
Today is another quiet Saturday. Last weekend was kind of slow to dead as well. 'Tis the season they say but not much happens in this part of the Serrania at this time of year.
We do have a family coming for Christmas, a first for us. This year of all years with the economic problems around, we have received the miost enquires for Christmas than ever before. Normally we are closed for this time and spend the holdiay with our families, either in NY or in Avila. This year, we decided that if the business was sufficient, we would stay and it has worked out that way. And today we receoived another booking as well for the same time. This family that is coming has seven rooms booked. So we took a booking today for the same period and filled the hotel, a bit of Christmas cheer for us then!!
For New Year's Eve, we have six rooms booked for far and hopefully the last two will fill as well. We are offering our usual festive dinner with drinks and a bit of a party afterwards. And of course the party people of Juzcar will be out and about celebrating the new year as usual, all night in the pub, dancing, drinking, partying!!
We are in the midst of preparing our new living space in the hotel. We have put up a couple of new walls making two bedrooms, we've got some windows going in shortly and a completely renovated bathroom. All should be quite nice, much better than living in the house we have. I'm not so sure what is going to happen to the house as it is for sale but there is no market for houses now, like everywhere else in the world it seems.
We decorated the bar last week and put up our Christmas lights outside the hotel. We decided to skip then outside tree this year for environmental reasons... so just lights which look as good. Ivan has been busy making Christmas cakes and Turron. The turron is so delicious, all kinds, almonds, egg yoke, crispy rice, etc... all so good!
We do have a family coming for Christmas, a first for us. This year of all years with the economic problems around, we have received the miost enquires for Christmas than ever before. Normally we are closed for this time and spend the holdiay with our families, either in NY or in Avila. This year, we decided that if the business was sufficient, we would stay and it has worked out that way. And today we receoived another booking as well for the same time. This family that is coming has seven rooms booked. So we took a booking today for the same period and filled the hotel, a bit of Christmas cheer for us then!!
For New Year's Eve, we have six rooms booked for far and hopefully the last two will fill as well. We are offering our usual festive dinner with drinks and a bit of a party afterwards. And of course the party people of Juzcar will be out and about celebrating the new year as usual, all night in the pub, dancing, drinking, partying!!
We are in the midst of preparing our new living space in the hotel. We have put up a couple of new walls making two bedrooms, we've got some windows going in shortly and a completely renovated bathroom. All should be quite nice, much better than living in the house we have. I'm not so sure what is going to happen to the house as it is for sale but there is no market for houses now, like everywhere else in the world it seems.
We decorated the bar last week and put up our Christmas lights outside the hotel. We decided to skip then outside tree this year for environmental reasons... so just lights which look as good. Ivan has been busy making Christmas cakes and Turron. The turron is so delicious, all kinds, almonds, egg yoke, crispy rice, etc... all so good!
Friday 5 December 2008
Can you believe that Christmas is just around the corner? Time to get out that box of decorations and start decorating the bar and the hotel for that festive of all seasons.
It has been way too long since my last entry here. So what's happened since July? Well, we've had a pretty good August, September and October. We have seen that given the current economic climate, guests are waiting to make booking to the last minute. But we've had a good steady flow of business since then. Things were very bleak in the first half of the year and have gotten better since summer.
Our American artist group was here in October for the 4th workshop with the largest group yet. Some were not actually painters so they found that there are plenty of things to do here even if not painting. They went on walks across the mountains with Sandrine, mushroom hunting one afternoon as October is a good month for that (if the weather cooperates) and even had a cooking class with Ivan, his first.
Ivan discovered that he really does enjoy instructing people how to cook which was a good first step in offering cooking classes. So the cook book is still in the offing but we hope to have more takers of our cooking offer meanwhile.
We had a couple of takers for the relaxation package we have on line, which came as a surprise actually. One puts these things on line hoping people read them and act upon them but when it actually happens, it is a surprise, a pleasant one of course.
We are preparing to move house which is something I am looking forward to. We are now in the process of building a flat for ourselves here in the hotel; the hotel will now have a proper owner's unit of its own. We have ordered new windows and doors for this and are building walls, so real DIY work!! Not sure when that will be ready but soon I hope. The bathroom is nearly there as the plumbing has been done which is key in a bathroom.
In the same project, we are making a few changes to the large room located next to the flat space where we are planning to install an art gallery. This is an idea I am especially excited about as we have artists that come here to paint already and now we will be able to have their art work on display here as well going forward. We are also working with someone in Ronda who has been searching for such a space in the Serrania for local artists to display their work as well. We hope to have a permanent exhibit as well.
This weekend here in Spain is a 3 day holiday weekend so we have a full hotel tomorrow and Sunday... always good news. And then we have a family coming for Christmas as well, our first time staying here for Navidad. And then there will be the Fin de Año celebrations. I think we are going on holiday in January so the hotel will be closed for a couple of weeks.
So that's my short update. I'll tell you about the big mushroom weekend we had here in early November next time.
It has been way too long since my last entry here. So what's happened since July? Well, we've had a pretty good August, September and October. We have seen that given the current economic climate, guests are waiting to make booking to the last minute. But we've had a good steady flow of business since then. Things were very bleak in the first half of the year and have gotten better since summer.
Our American artist group was here in October for the 4th workshop with the largest group yet. Some were not actually painters so they found that there are plenty of things to do here even if not painting. They went on walks across the mountains with Sandrine, mushroom hunting one afternoon as October is a good month for that (if the weather cooperates) and even had a cooking class with Ivan, his first.
Ivan discovered that he really does enjoy instructing people how to cook which was a good first step in offering cooking classes. So the cook book is still in the offing but we hope to have more takers of our cooking offer meanwhile.
We had a couple of takers for the relaxation package we have on line, which came as a surprise actually. One puts these things on line hoping people read them and act upon them but when it actually happens, it is a surprise, a pleasant one of course.
We are preparing to move house which is something I am looking forward to. We are now in the process of building a flat for ourselves here in the hotel; the hotel will now have a proper owner's unit of its own. We have ordered new windows and doors for this and are building walls, so real DIY work!! Not sure when that will be ready but soon I hope. The bathroom is nearly there as the plumbing has been done which is key in a bathroom.
In the same project, we are making a few changes to the large room located next to the flat space where we are planning to install an art gallery. This is an idea I am especially excited about as we have artists that come here to paint already and now we will be able to have their art work on display here as well going forward. We are also working with someone in Ronda who has been searching for such a space in the Serrania for local artists to display their work as well. We hope to have a permanent exhibit as well.
This weekend here in Spain is a 3 day holiday weekend so we have a full hotel tomorrow and Sunday... always good news. And then we have a family coming for Christmas as well, our first time staying here for Navidad. And then there will be the Fin de Año celebrations. I think we are going on holiday in January so the hotel will be closed for a couple of weeks.
So that's my short update. I'll tell you about the big mushroom weekend we had here in early November next time.
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