A new adorable place in Granada......Estrellas de San Nicolas

I'm so thrilled whenever I discover a new place in Granada which is not the average typical noisy café or restaurant. Yesterday, as we were going up to el Mirador de San Nicolas, to have some ice cream while watching the sunset, we noticed a new place has opened in the former house of flamenco singer Enrique Morente.

The door was opened so we peeped inside and found this cosy lounge at the entrance. There was no one but soon a young woman came down the stairs. She didn't mind at all my taking photos of the place and led us to the top terrace which faces the Alhambra. This is the view from the terrace in the first pic....Isn't it just glorious?

There is a beautiful dining room on the first floor with an amazing wooden ceiling.

I very much like the soft blue of the railing of the stairs leading to the roof terrace. So Mediterranean....

the landing is used as a small space to store glasses and crockery.
The terrace is a bit small but the views are just incredible.

On your left, you can see the gardens of the nearby mosque and the Alhambra fortress wall far away.

In front of us......the magnificent Moorish palaces of the Alhambra. We ordered drinks and fish (lubina in escabèche). We could hear some guitar music coming from the plaza San Nicolas, on our right. The fish was excellent (well, the chef is French..please pardon my chauvinism!). Actually the whole team is French. Christophe, the manager, a very pleasant young man, left the south of France to settle in Granada. I'm sure, he'll be successful.

As for me, I think I'll never end to be in love with Granada!

Hope you're all having a nice week end. I'll be back next wednesday. I'm sure you will have noticed my summer blogging laziness, I blame it on the heat but I promise to visit you by then!

pics: me
Restaurant Estrellas de San Nicolas
(/Atarazana Vieja 1 - Mirador San Nicolas - Granada
tel. 958 288 739

Inspired by the heat....

Boy it's hot....and here am I painstakingly preparing a small order of summer cards for a paper shop in Nice. It's all in the pink really, with some models I already showed you (the sweets ones with flowery ribbons)

I took inspiration from these former models which I like very much but are much too time-consuming. I don't know if you can see it on the photos, but they're both collages and cutting out each little piece manually is quite tedious!

I made a lighter version in pink and more sober....La vie en rose....
Pink bikini and high-heeled shoe punctuated with a happy yellow flower
Are you in a pink bikini mood ?

The old admiral and the sea and a poetry contest in Almuñecar

Monchéri likes the company of old men who had a full intense life. He likes to listen to stories of travels and uncommon things. When we stayed in Almuñecar a few days ago, as I was checking on some new places, he met the colorful Pepe who is a former admiral and now lives on the coast in Almuñecar, where he opened a modest small hostal. Tourists have not come in flocks yet so, his hostal was empty by the time we were there. We were about to go back to Granada and may be because he liked us or because Monchéri was all ears when the old admiral narrated his overseas adventures, Pepe proposed us to stay at his hostal for the extremely humble sum of 10€ a night ! So...we couldn't refuse, could we?Pepe generously gave us the room upstairs con vistas al mar, views on the sea and the beautiful metal weathercock in shape of a boat. The hostal was a bit dusty and neglected but oh well, our host was kind and pleasant. After sharing stories of his life in faraway countries, Pepe told us he started to write poetry some years ago and organized a poetry contest every year on a special theme. Everybody from any nationality is welcome to enter the contest, provided the poem is written in Spanish.

The best 3 poems receive a prize from 100€ to 300€. The night of the contest, once the prizes have been awarded and after a few glasses of good red wine and hearty food, poems are being thrown into the sea, inside a glass bottle. I found the idea quite romantic. Who knows if, one day, on the Morroccan coast, someone catches a glimpse of the floating bottle enclosing a poem written by a man or a woman some time ago. Actually, Pepe confessed with a broad smile on his face, that he did receive an email once from someone in Algeria, who had found one his poems with his email address. Isn't it incredible?

This year, the contest is on again and the elected theme is the crisis. Monchéri says he will try to write something. My Spanish is not good enough but I would love to write something too. To be sincere, I'm very curious to read what the participants will have to say about the crisis in form of a poem....

I must say, it's a topic which worries me rather than inspires me to write poetry !

edit to post : silly me, I forgot my Spanish speaking blogging friends (Yoli, Cynthia, Cuban, Susanna) and all of you out there could be interested. Here are the conditions of the contest. The exact theme is España en crisis*. Poesia.

The length accepted is a A4 sheet.
Deadline is : august 25th
Works are to be submitted at the following address : Hotel Playa San Cristobal, Plaza de Abderraman nº5 - 18690 Almuñecar (Granada) Spain.
3 awards will be given to the best poems
1st prize : 300€
2nd prize : 200€
3rd prize : 100€
Awards will be remitted at the Hotel Playa San Cristobal on september 5th.

*the crisis is hitting hard in Spain as the economy mainly rested on sectors of construction and real restate which have been severely slowing down

Summer treats.....and the slowness of time

Summer is really my time, my tempo....everything is slowing down here. I especially enjoy the quietness at lunch time around 2 o'clock. It seems everyone in the village is shut in the house, with the shutters down. Andalusians do not like the sun too much. They prefer to stay in the shade, al fresco as they say. I love to spend long hours, basking in the sun. I know my skin might reproach it to me one day but it's my way of relaxing and daydreaming. The heat is my excuse for not doing too much, just the elementary things such as work and cooking. These days I've been making gazpacho a lot and my favorite refreshing cake with orange and almonds. I posted these pics in a former post, hopefully the widget link thing will link to the posts which give you both recipes. You see, I'm sending this post from a cyber cafe, we're having internet problems in half of the village. So I thought I would at least come here and wave you a sunny buenas dias ! with summer treats.

I do hope to be back soon....hasta luego for now, the cyber cafe is about to close, it's 2 o'clock and the streets are already empty. Time for lunch then siesta.....There is definitely something good about Andalusian summer...

edit to post : the technician came and is fixing the problem so hopefully normal connection can be expected this week end. In the meantime, do try to concoct some fresh gazpacho for you and your loved ones, you can find the recipe here. As for the orange cake, sweet blogging friend Sara already tried it and loved it. I promise you, its texture and moisture are divine, find the recipe below and have a wonderful week end !!

Orange and almond cake

You need:

2 medium oranges
1 lemon
6 eggs
150 g of almond powder (sorry i couldn't figure what it would be in cups)
200 g of caster sugar (plain white sugar)
40 g of caster sugar
1tsp of baking powder

boil the oranges until cooked

process them with a mixer then pour the mixture in a big bowl.

add the eggs one by one in the orange mixture

in another medium bowl, mix 200g of caster sugar with the almond powder and 1 tsp of baking powder

preheat the oven at 200ºC

pour the sugar and almond mixture into the big bowl and all the ingredients together homogeneously

pour the preparation in a 22cm diameter mold covered with tin foil

bake for 1 hour approx until lightly golden brown

in the mean time, prepare a lemon syrup with 40g of caster sugar and the juice of a lemon.

put it to a simmer until it thickens

pour the syrup over the cake when it's cooked

That's it ! just let it cool then put it in the fridge. This cake is delicious served cold. you can keep it up to 2/3 days in the fridge.

Andalusian fashion accessory

My lovelies, this is my latest fashion accessory....a fan. I'ts cheap, light, and a lots of fun to use, and it's very Spanish (although mine is certainly made in China). I love seeing women of all ages in Granada, taking out their fan from their handbag and making these quick elegant movements with their hand.

This afternoon, I had a routine check up at my gynecologist. When I opened the door of her office, she was seated in front of her computer, fanning herself with a fan very similar to the one on the pic above. Next to her, an assistant, a young pregnant woman was also using a bright colored fan to get some fresh air on her face. I knew my camera was in my bag and I was dying to ask them please let me take a picture of you, you're so cute like that! I just smiled and told them, it was very elegant and that we should definitely start this fashion in France.
I left the hospital and started to look for a fan! I didn't have far to go and bought one of these from an African street seller at 3€

of course, you can find more sophisticated models at El Corte Inglès at all prices
I stalked this lady when I got out of El Corte Inglès, bag in the left hand, fan in the right hand....
and when the sun is too hot, you just use your fan to protect your eyes from the direct light. Isn't it a clever elegant accessory?

La Terraza del Casino en Madrid

We keep postponing a 2 day trip to Madrid for work and the more we postpone, the more it's likely we won't go because the heat is already too much! So, my guess is we will wait until the weather is a bit cooler. Madrid is full of lively bars and new trendy restaurants but I've been wanting to visit La Terraza del Casino for some time, out of pure curiosity. And when I say visit, I mean it because it's not exactly cheap. The restaurant is on the top floor of the casino in Madrid, calle Alcala and has been entirely redesigned by Jaime Hayon, the enfant terrible of Spanish design. Is the food good? I have no idea but knowing that the chef is a disciple of Ferran Adria, it should be at least.

I like the oversize proportions which make me think of Alice in Wonderland and the soft palette of colours. I would love to be a cat and curl up in the white armchair called Showtime. Would you feel at ease in this decor? I think I would feel even more petite as I am already, but I don't mind especially if they tell me I just can stay for desserts. If we ever go there, I'll let you know!

Is it just me or do you also think the room below bears some resemblance, a bit baroque and same oversize proportions. This is one of the rooms of former luxury hotel and casino, Palacio Quitandinha, near Rio de Janeiro, decorated by American design icon Dorothy Draper, in 1942.

another exuberant place to dream of!

I wish you a great week end more exuberant than mine

Mine will be a sequence of naps and meals...a bit boring but I'm vanquished by the heat!

pics: La Terraza del Casino from here

pics: Palacio Quitandinha from World of Interiors, oct. 2006

La Terraza del Casino, Alcala 15, Madrid

Adios cinema....

Sadly our local cinema shut its doors. It was an old cinema dating back from the 50s which opened only on Fridays and week ends. We didn’t go much because the movies were not always our type of movie. The last film I saw there was Volver by Pedro Almodovar. I remember how thrilled I was, to be seated in an old Spanish cinema, watching a Spanish movie about Spanish women, by one of my favorite Spanish directors.

Tickets were sold outside at a little booth, at 3€ the entrance. The man who sold the tickets also sold packets of popcorn or chocolate bars in the hall. If the movie was to start at 9.30pm and very few people would attend the session, we would wait a bit more time just in case late spectators would show up. Then the same man would start the projection. I can't say the Spanish audience is a very quiet one. Kids usually eat pipas (sunflower seeds). There is always someone cracking up a packet of crisps, or commenting constantly to its neighbor thinking nobody can hear it. But the Spanish audience is also very “bon public” as we say in French, meaning they show good humor and are not too critical (like the French, for instance!); they shed a tear easily and I like that.

The other film I saw in our local cinema was the French movie, The Chorus. I could say the whole audience was very much taken by this poignant story because not a sound could be heard. At the end of the movie, everybody clapped for a few seconds. I had cried, the woman next had red eyes too, another woman kept saying Que bello, que bello….It was wonderful to go back home walking after seeing a movie, our mind still filled with emotions.

The ambiance of our local cinema always reminded me of the movie Cinema Paradiso. It felt like another time indeed which the kids in the village will not know anymore. I feel nostalgic about it because it is such a great thing for a village to have its own cinema. People were proud about it and enjoyed it as a place of social and cultural gathering. Now that it’s gone, we will all miss it. I wonder what the town hall will make of it. I pray it won't be some horrendous modern flats.

pics : scene of Volver
our former local cinema