Tag: Spain
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How far would you go for chocolate?
Rich’s family swears by the four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles. At age 81, his oldest sister showed up for a siblings’ road trip with an entire suitcase filled with chocolate candy — and none of the others thought that was odd. Every McCann I’ve ever met is…
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Great Escapes: Quick, Easy, Affordable Little Getaways
Our traditions and holidays provide reassurance that whatever madness is currently abroad in the world, some things will roll around every year with comforting predictability. But living abroad, it hasn’t always been easy getting my hands on all the customary accoutrements. When I first moved to Seville more than two decades ago, Halloween decorations and Christmas…
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Travel with Curiosity
“Wherever you travel, travel with curiosity.” — Rick Steves If you’re like most Americans, you spend upwards of 72 hours a year planning vacations, but you rarely think about your ultimate bon voyage party. Some flamboyant souls have departed this world with true panache — notably the Vikings, the Egyptian pharaohs, and the empress entombed…
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Not Exactly Going Like Clockwork
Ever find yourself in a situation that seems completely out of whack, and no matter what you do it just keeps getting worse? No, I’m not talking about global events (you don’t want to get me started on that topic!). This is about small, everyday nightmares that can make the simplest act — such as…
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My Foot Sandwich
In my defense, the bar was dark, the menu’s lettering was minuscule, and my brain was fried. I’d been walking all morning, and the last leg of the journey had required pushing through the dense crowds thronging downtown Málaga, where every tourist currently visiting Spain seemed to be jockeying for the most Instagram-worthy place to…
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Visiting The Man Who Never Was
“You don’t want to go there,” a Spanish friend told me. “There’s nothing to see.” When I went to the railway office and tried to buy tickets, the clerk looked at me oddly, as if I’d asked to be strapped to the top of a locomotive for a trip through Siberia. In winter. Naked. “Are…
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A Series of Fortunate Events
I don’t know why I bothered with the twelve grapes and red underwear on New Year’s Eve, because it has now become clear to me that the real luck around here is to be acquired in Córdoba. I’m just back from a long weekend in that city — a mere 75 miles from my…
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The Puzzle
If you’re like me, you’ve been making a list — and checking it twice — of all the people who really ticked you off this year. High on my tally is the knucklehead — for whom I’m sure there’s a special place reserved in hell — who designed the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle Rich and I…
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As Luck Would Have It
Are you finding the Universe particularly random these days? I certainly am. And so is a woman from Alicante, Spain, who made headlines this week for getting fired because (and I am not making this up) she came into work early. The young woman repeatedly showed up for her delivery job at 6:45 or 7:00…
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Flustered? Flummoxed? Welcome to My World
So I arrived at my Spanish dentist’s office, sat down in the waiting room, pulled out my phone, and discovered the screen was now entirely in Sanskrit. (Sigh.) Clearly this was going to be One of Those Days. Or as my phone would put it, तेषाम् दिनेषु एकः. Apparently the newly installed operating system had…