sammi needham : cogitate

From Milan’s going away on friday night. Nicely captured by Gil.

that is all. home in 4 days

the flamenco in granada was the best. little cave like place and 3 dudes, one old guy singing, one awesome guitarist playing guitar and another dude dancing. he was unreal. got lots of photos.

from granada, we mvoed on to barcelona which is a great place. heaps of great shopping locations and the weather was fine fine fine. ate some good food and saw the gaudi sights before our final night on tour. Roxy found that one of the gaudi apartment buildings had a jazz concert on the rooftop for a cheap 12€ so that was our destination. It was brilliant, there were fireworks going off in the city and we were sitting back watching some amazing contemporary jazz on the inspiring roof of the Casa Milà with Sagrada Familia lit up in the distance. Picture perfect.

From there we did a cooking course in barcelona where we did a tour of the local market and then made a bunch of dishes including a delicious paella. And the next day hired a car and drove to san sebastian. It was about a 500km drive after getting lost a little bit and a stop-over in a little town for some lunch along the way.

San sebastian greeted us with an awesome beach (THAT HAS TABLE TENNIS TABLES  ON IT MILAN!). Drove around for a while and found the hotel pretty efficiently, then have spent the last few days, shopping, walking the beaches kicking the footy and throwing the frisbee, bar-hopping to find the best pintxos in town and walking up the big hill to see the jesus, which just happened to have an awesome bar that overlooked the beaches with an amazing view from very high up and also had incredibly cheap cervesas!. Today has been spend in town doing a bit of clothes washing and planning tomorrows drive to pamplona.

Probably won’t be online again for a little while as i’m sure pamplona will be massive. Dan is coming down for a day as he is going to be surfing in spain. Hutchy will be there for the second day too, so there will be lots of beer, running with bulls, bull fights, sky-rockets and jumping off fountains to certain death to come. Back on deck when we hit barcelona again on the night of the 8th. If i post on the 9th, you’ll know i haven’t died. If i don’t post on the 9th, maybe you will get a text from roxy letting you know that i might not be back at work/footy/home on time. Wish me luck.

over and out.

just in an internet cafe in granada quickly. done some much needed laundry. about to head back to the hotel for a swim. saw alhambra yesterday – it was big – and awesome.  Bit of an upset tummy last night, but after an early night i feel much better today. Flamenco tonight and then one more day in Granada before overnight-training it to valencia (balenthia).

went to amsterdam for about 24 hours to visit Loeve. Amsterdam was absolutely awesome. Nick and Hayle´s place was great, we ate delicious food and walked around and saw the sites. red light district was . . . . ummmm . . . facinating? Wished i had more time to spend there, it´s ace.

left london a couple of days later, i have no sense of time at the moment, but that´s what holidays are for. Went to oxford for a night to meet up with roxy and her english buddies kat and debbie. Oxford is pleasant. tom yorke lives there.  pushed our way down a canal on a punt with a bag full of beers.

been in spain for about 4 or 5 days now.

had bad weather in madrid. it was a nice place but not a patch on toledo or seville.

my new camera had been having trouble focussing on stuff, i thought the lense was just a bit crappy and that maybe it was the all-purpose lens i hoped it was. Then i went to take a shot (of another church) and felt something rattling around. turns out that the glass inside the lense had just busted off and was floating around inside the lens casing. no wonder it wasn´t working very well. crap. forked out 400 euro for a new lens exactly the same. Yeah, it is actually a great all-purpose lens.

Been to a few galleries and palace´s and stuff. Its ridiculous to just look around and there be a photo in every direction. Taken lots of photos but won´t get to post anything until we get back now as we´re on the road, and i can´t wait around in internet cafes uploading 4gb of photos to flickr when there´s a holiday to have.

speaking of that, what the hell am i doing, it´s lunchtime, and 35 degrees outside in seville. We´re going to a flamenco show tonight (hi homey, hope you´re feeling well) so that should be fun. Then i think the next 2 days are spent in 3 different countries. Tour guide is lovely, tour group are funny, health is fine, beer is cold, life is good.

until next time