The next day we saw some more of the city of Halifax, which is the largest city in Nova Scotia and a major economic center. But with a population of about 440,000 people it is kind of a small city by most standards. The city is an important tourism center with numerous National Historic Sites […]
Read More »We arrived in Halifax in early September to begin a 10-day tour of Nova Scotia, a beautiful place. As we made our way around we managed to catch hurricane Fiona, which made landfall on September 24. Most of the damage appeared to be in Cape Bretton, which we left the day before. Needless to say […]
Read More »Friday we left Seville for Madrid for a 3-day weekend. Seville is a nice, relatively small city. Madrid on the other hand is very large and magnificent. Magnifico as they say. With a population of 3.4 million and a metropolitan area population of 6.7 million it is the second biggest city in the European Union […]
Read More »We spent this weekend in Seville. Among other things we made a quick trip to a neighborhood in Seville: Macarena. Because of the heat, we restricted our wandering around to the morning. To put it in perspective: at this moment, 11:00 AM local time, it is already 92° Fahrenheit. By this afternoon the temperature is […]
Read More »Since we are living in Spain for a while we went to a Bullfight. When in Rome… It was fascinating, not least because you get to see the whole spectacle, which is not exactly what you’d expect. There is a great deal of pageantry associated with bullfights. (I am sure the bulls are unimpressed by […]
Read More »Granada is an endlessly fascinating city. While we were there, in addition to visiting the Alhambra, we visited the Souk, an Arabic shopping area with silks and spices and various other goods. We saw a busker playing his violin outside on the street near the Cathedral of Granada. And last, but not least, we stayed […]
Read More »Last week we took some time to look at the architecture in Seville (and there is something for everyone when it comes to architecture here!). One of our stops was the Metropol Parasol, popularly known as “Las Setas” (the “Mushrooms”), an enormous wooden (birch) structure opened 10 years ago. Las Setas consists of six […]
Read More »We spent the weekend in Granada, Spain, visiting the City and its jewel, the Alhambra. On the drive between Seville and Granada, we passed mile after mile of olive groves, sunflower fields, and beautiful flowers, while seeing the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance. As far as the eye could see, every hill […]
Read More »We got a chance to visit Italica, the first Roman city built outside of Italy. It was founded in 206 BC by Publius Cornelius Scipio during the Second Carthaginian War. It is about a 30 minute drive outside of Seville. Eventually Italica became a resort city of sorts where the Roman upper crust maintained estates. […]
Read More »