Our planned six-weeks stay in Rota meant there was enough time for a road trip – or a vacation from our vacation might be a lighthearted way of putting it.   We did this on our last visit because there was a hole in our reservation that we had to fill. This time, it […]

  When it comes to food, I’m no Anthony Bourdain or even a Stanley Tucci. I’m more like a four-year-old who won’t eat food that touches and absolutely nothing either green or slimy. In short, I’m most definitely not a candidate to embrace Rota’s 9th annual Ruta Caracol.   This exotic celebration runs throughout the month of May […]

  On her own Carol entered the hair salon and emerged with an appointment for the following Thursday, 8 May at 11:15. She was particularly proud to have committed her very personal standard of hairdressing (“just cover the roots!”) to a completely foreign country’s standards of beautician care. But she had done it, and with […]

  Growing up in New Orleans there was a street celebration unique to our city. You all know it as Mardi Gras. We knew it as Mardi Gras too, but it meant something different for us locals.   Here in Rota Feria ran for four days on a city fairgrounds that took days to assemble and […]

  We had strategically used the last morning of our car rental to stock up on groceries at the big Mercadona supermarket on the outskirts of town. The bad news was that the outage was projected to last six to ten hours. But this was Spanish time, which meant eight to twelve hours. (It lasted […]

  I always thought it was just a little affectation of mine that when I’d be “making my sauce,” I’d do it with flair. I would don my “Roma” apron (the only time Carol doesn’t have to demand I wear an apron when cooking with oil or tomatoes). Then I queue up “Italian dinner music” […]

   This is a town that is most thankful Someone else has died for their sins. Holy Week in Spain is a week of solemn, almost morose processions marking the last days of Christ, observed  by a local citizenry hellbent on turning it all into Spring Break.    Beginning Palm Sunday, funereal processions wind through Rota’s narrow […]

There are approximately 264,000 bars and cafes in Spain. The country’s population is about 48 and a half million. That means there’s a bar or café for every 183 men, women and children. Not trying to show off my arithmetic skills, but with a population of about 29,000, that would work out to just under 160 bars and cafes here in […]

DL 1189 to Salt Lake City DL 0702 to Boston DL 0376 to Atlanta DL 721 to Atlanta DL 108 to Madrid     This trip had a lot of moving parts to it, being we broke our own rule about reserving accommodations before having our standby seats confirmed.    Sometime last fall, we locked in a six-week […]

Those of us decrying the end of the American republic (and we’ve always been the numerical majority) can take comfort in the knowledge that that republic had not been around for very long. The United States might be approaching 250 years old, but the “republic for which it stands,” the one for which the majority of us believe that “all men (and […]