What in the Smurf is going on here!?

I have no smurfing time to write smurfy blog entries, nor the desire after the long smurfing days we have been having since June. Yes, now that the weather has changed the traffic has noticeably slowed down, which is not unappreciated, but the weekends have still be quite robust in terms of traffic and the village still has its rented local police enforcing traffic regs and parking norms.

Meanwhile, the valley's chestnut trees have begun to change color and provide that lovely autumnal feeling along with a chill in the air! Soon if not already, it will be time to light the stove or the fire and cuddle up with a lovely book and glass of wine.

Our American painting group came through in October as planned and they all left happy and content. That said, sadly they will not return to the Smurf village in 2012 as it was not quite the same experience in 2011 as in 2010 B.S. ("before Smurfs"...?) when one felt that the village was all for the group only and now it was hard to feel at home in the hotel itself with all the noise generated by the passing trade of the Smurf spectators. Oh Smurf!!

The village has it annual wild mushroom conference planned for a launch on 11 November, 3 days of examining mushrooms, searching for mushrooms, reading about mushrooms, eating mushroom, everything mushroom!! What could be more Smurfy?

I think I will revolt a bit and paint my chimneys in color as before before there is an election which makes it illegal to paint your house or facade anything but Smurf blue!!!

I am going on my break now, more Smurf tales later, have a Smurfy weekend!!

Wow, it has been a while since my last post here in the blog world. We have been very busy as you may have seen from my posts on the HB Facebook page. The amount of people coming to see the blue village is pretty incredible. Who knew that Smurfs would be so popular. We now have four waiters working on the weekends and one during the week which may go up to two for the month of August as we expect the traffic to increase in this very busy month of holidays plus one helper in the kitchen.

As we are in a Saturday almost at lunch so I have little time to create the post I would like to to describe the things that have been happening here since April so I will write again in a couple of days when I might have the time to write all I want to say.

In the meantime, I am happy to say we have been having the best summer ever here in Juzcar, both the hotel and the restaurant. No time for rest for Ivan and I as we are flat-out all week.

And tomorrow Sunday, I have been asked again to participate in the Sacramento morning TV program via a Skype call. So I may be on TV in California, my home state, tomorrow!! They tried to have me on the program on 19 June but we were so busy at the time of the interview, I had to hang up. So let's see if I can make it tomorrow.

Ciao for now from Smurfland (a.k.a. Pitufolandia) !

Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, a week full of tradition here in Spain. In the village of Juzcar, today the locals (including all the children) will be tramping around the countryside cutting branches from trees such as laurel, pine, oak, chestnut, following the village tradition. Once they have collected all the branches, they return quite merrily and loudly to the village and put what they have collected near the village hall. Later in the week, they will use all these branches to decorate the village, adorning houses, railings, the village hall, the church, etc., it actually looks quite nice. Of course the older participants in today's activity will end up having a piss up.

February 2011 was the best February we have ever had, strange given that we are still feeling the effect of this recession. We were full for both St Valentine's weekend and the for the Andalucia Day which falls on 28 February. Then we had March which was very slow for us, in fact, March 2011 was the slowest March we have ever had, the least bookings and barely anyone for the restaurant. Of course it did not help that were closed for one week due to my birthday celebrations. My sisters came over from New York as well as a couple of friends, one from Florida and the other from Virginia. It was a big birthday for me so a celebration was in order and that included closing the business for a few days.

We all went to Gibraltar one day and really enjoyed ourselves. We all had the typical tourist fare of fish and chips in the main square which was surprisingly quite good and large. We later took a tour in a taxi of the main tourists points which included the Pillars of Hercules, St Michael's cave and the tunnels dug out in the 18 century, all quite interesting. There are some photos available on the Hotel Bandolero Facebook page of this day, if you're interested

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hotel-Bandolero/113234190020 .

And for my birthday, we all headed to Sevilla for two nights of fun and good eats where we were joined by two more friends from Madrid and Sevillano cousin Jesus and his girlfriend Sylvia. All in all, quite a good birthday.

And now we are here at the start of Holy Week and we have a group arriving from Scotland this evening for the annual Scottish Gaelic Language and Song Workshop. In fact, one participant has arrived just now on his own. This will be the third such workshop held here in Juzcar at the hotel and it kicks off in full tomorrow. The group will also spend an evening in Ronda viewing one of the Easter processions and then an evening of flamenco. And on Holy Thursday (21-04-2011), we will be holding a ceidihl (pronounced "kay-lee") which is a Scottish fiesta comprising of music, song, dance, kilts of course and some whisky if you like. There will also be shortbread about and all are welcome; it kicks-off from 8:30 P.M here in Juzcar at the hotel. Check out our webpage with information about the workshop here: http://www.hotelbandolero.com/themes/gaelic.html .

We are going to continue to be busy with a group of American artists arriving in the first weekend of May. This is a new artist and group for us introduced by our other American artist who holds workshops here in the autumn. They will be here for a full 10 nights with a packed agenda including a day trip to La Alhambra in Granada amongst other day trips for painting.

The other news we have which is something we hope will heavily promote the village of Juzcar is a up-coming film release. "How so?" one may ask. Well, it turns out that Sony Pictures is promoting a new Smurf film to be released in August 2011 and their publicity campaign for Spain includes painting a village where Smurfs might live completely the Smurf blue. Yes folks, you got it, Juzcar is that village and Juzcar is going to be painted Smurf blue for the promotion. Blue, that is correct. (FYI, the Smurfs are called "Los Pitufos" in Castilian.) This planned event was announced about 10 days ago at a village residents meeting with the Juzcar mayor and apparently all the village residents have given their approvals to have their houses painted blue for this publicity event which will be a big press event which will include Smurfs as well in mid-June 2011. Sony Pictures will also donate and plant one tree for every resident in the village with their names on the trees ( as this is an environmentally friendly promotional event in keeping with how the Smurfs live in their enchanted forest!! ). The village will remain blue until end of summer when it will be painted again to the original white. All in all, could be quite interesting, lots of visitors to see the blue village, a unique things for this year only.

For those of you who know nothing about Smurfs, check them out in YouTube and on Wikipedia where there is a history of the story of the Smurfs, their comic strip and cartoons.

Until next time, todavia el Bandolero le espera en el parte mas verde de Andalucia.

Well the end of February is upon us during this three day weekend here in Andalusia. And why do we have three days this weekend? Because Monday is 28 February which is Andalusia Day. In Spain, each autonomous region has public holidays for their own region and here it is Andalusia Day.

The weather could not be more perfect for a holiday weekend. Today, it is like summer out there, warm breeze, cloudless sky, bright sun, one could not ask for a better day. We have the hotel full this evening and expect many to be out walking today and exploring.

Looks like we are going to have a early spring as this weather looks posed to stay and no one is complaining about that.

We have a Scottish Gaelic Language workshop booked for mid-April, well during Holy Week actually. There are still places available and we will be having the Scottish fiesta on 21 April which is a Thursday so mark your calendar if you are in the area. It is a fun evening with Scottish folks dances and song as well as door prizes of Scotch Whisky, shortbread and other prizes. Bring your kilt!!

This is Valentine's Day weekend as Monday is the day. We have put on a special menu for dinner for today, tomorrow and Monday. The weather is gorgeous, perfect for a day of walking and then a lovely candle lit dinner for two, romance in the Genal Valley of the Serrania de Ronda. The hotel is full this evening but we have rooms available for tomorrow and Monday.

Here are a couple of photos I took earlier this week and one that has been around for a while.

It shows how beautiful the weather has been this week and hopefully for the rest of the month.

February 2011,

The Chimney Pots and Almond Flowers

Hotel view from the rooms terrace

Plenty of Almond Trees in bloom

February 2011

Chimney Pots and the Yuca

February 2011

Hotel Bandolero, Juzcar

In the Genal Valley

Serrania de Ronda, Malaga

Hotel Bandolero was once again featured along side the village of Juzcar in a nature program broadcast here in Andalucia on 08 and 09 January 2011. This is a link to where one can view the program on-line:

http://www.radiotelevisionandalucia.es/tvcarta/impe/web/contenido?id=7223

The program normally features stories on sustainable tourism and other related topics about nature and the environment.

Meanwhile, we have been enjoying some beautiful weather, well this area has as I was away for a week up to Tuesday. I went to London for a short break to catch up with friends as I had not been to London since 2005, a long time ago. Ivan stayed here and manned the business as we had a few bookings for the weekend.

As one can imagine, this time of year is normally a slow time in the hotel sector, especially here in the mountains. So we put on a what I think is a pretty attractive offer and we are getting some nice results; many phone queries and some firm bookings. The offer is any room in the hotel for January and February at 53€ per night including continental breakfast and tax. We also reduced the room prices a wee bit given the economy especially here in Spain and so we have been getting booking requests for later in the year as well.

All the almond trees are in flower with their lovely small white and pink blooms dotting the landscape all over the Serrania at the moment. There are many puffy bright colored trees around, so lovely to see almost everywhere one looks on our route from Juzcar to Ronda.

Today is my nephew 's birthday so Happy birthday James.

Here in Juzcar, we had a pretty big thunder and lightening storm last night which for me, coming form New York where it is cold at this time of year, is strange. In NY, there are thunderstorms in the warmer months as I recall. That said, a client in Scotland told me in November that they were experiencing thunder and lightening while it was snowing and that was being called "thunder snow". Strange weather. And the weather today is slightly sunny but with lots of clouds about and it is wet.

Ivan and I drove north to spend the holidays with his family in Avila. We headed north on 21 December and it was pouring with rain all through Andalucia until we reached Castilla La Mancha. The rain was torrential at times and one could see all the rivers overflowing with brown water as well as all the fields of olive trees, filled with water. Andalucia has been having a similar experience to last year with large amounts of rain coming down in short periods of time. One town in Sevilla province had been flooded five times in two or three weeks with news reports showing boats going where cars would normally be as well as houses and shops filled with mud up to 1.5 meters deep.

Our holiday passed quickly as one would imagine a holiday does. I ate too much, of course, spent some time with friends in Madrid. In fact, we got to see the Madrid Christmas lights which I did not know existed; it was quite pretty all around central Madrid, colorful lights by various designers with an open air tour bus taking spectators around to see them at night. It was very cold on that bus up top so we rode inside and did not have as good a view but we were warmer. For New Year's Eve, we had a big family dinner followed by the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes with the strokes of midnight. After that, we all stayed in all evening playing table games and talking, a rather subdued evening in good company and a nice change from working all day and half way through the night on the date.

Now back here in Juzcar, we will have our spring clean up work cut out for us yet again as the algae forms on the terrace tiles from being constantly wet for days on end. When we returned from Avila, I spent quite some time sweeping up leaves, dirt and muck around the terraces and cleaning all the drains, fun dirty work...not! We are also working toward getting more group business this year. We've had plenty of free publicity of late. On 02 January and last night as well (08 January), the village and the hotel were featured in another television program about sustainable rural tourism. Hopefully that will bring business our way. Her is a link to the program from 02 January... it is in Spanish of course but nevertheless interesting to see. Our bit starts at about 8.30 minutes into the program :

http://www.radiotelevisionandalucia.es/tvcarta/impe/web/contenido?id=5309

When the program from yesterday's broadcast is available on-line, I will add the link here as well for all to view.