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