Part I Valle de los Caídos

The summer air in Madrid is immobile. It just hangs there, smothered in cigarette smoke and car fumes. Not a breeze to stir the smoke. Not even at night. Only that at night it's worse because everyone smokes like its going out of fashion. Perhaps it's the altitude. Madrid is the highest capital in Europe, after all. It sits right in the middle of the high Castilian plain like a golden oasis in a vast rocky desert…Read More

You don't come to Spain for the beer. That much is a well-established truth. In fact, you tend to forget about beer altogether during the first few days of your visit to Spain. That's because their wine is so good and so well priced. When you can get a marvelous bottle of Tempranillo while sitting al-fresco in a medieval plaza over a dish of black paella, then beer takes the back seat. Mainly because the said bottle of marvelous Tempranillo costs the same as a glass of plonky house wine back home…Read More

Romance of the Sierras

When Spanish explorers arrived upon the snow-covered mountain range that separates the high desert from the fertile flatlands of the Central Valley of California, it must have reminded them of the snow peaked mountains rising above the arid plains of Granada and its Moorish Palace of The Alhambra, called the Sierra Nevada. So, in their infinite originality for naming newly discovered places in the New World (the choice is usually a Saint’s name, a town in Spain, or occasionally a Hispanization of a local indigenous name), the range was christened The Sierra Nevada of California...Read More

Ireland has a comfortable relationship with ghosts. Dublin might have an Ikea and motorways and tourist traps that sell whatever passes for Irish symbols these days (usually Guinness and shamrocks), but scratch the surface (even within the city itself), or better still, take that unexpected exit from the motorway and onto a gravel one-lane country road lined with hedges and farms, and be prepared to be face to face with ghosts...Read More

The border between San Diego, USA, and Tijuana Mexico may look like a straight line on a map, but in reality, it’s a twisting village of alleys, stalls, carts, and shops that’s cut in half by a river of traffic and pedestrians going in both directions. Parking lots, money exchange houses, fashion outlets, and drive-through Mexican car insurance booths on the American side, vs taco stands, hole in the wall restaurants and countless pharmacies hawking Mexican Viagra on the Mexican side…Read More