A Goodbye To Spain

Elvita was a very funny and lively lady who lived by herself in a very big house. We were with her for more than an hour and a half because she never stopped talking about her life, her husband who drank all their money away (and who was in the hospital now) and about the land she was selling to get the money to finish the restoration of her big house. She had to convert it into a hostel; the guests that would come would make her some money again.In the meantime she fed the chickens, the ducks, and the rabbits, and showed us the new plumbing that was built-in, but still not covered with cement, because she ran out of money, and it went on and on and we were sorry to have to leave her while she was waiving us goodbye...

Sunday

On Sunday morning after church, the people of Salamanca come together on the Plaza Major and walk around in the first sunlight of February. They stroll and the women show off their fur coats. After the walk they sit on the terraces and drink their coffee.

Cider

In the north part of Asturias people make cider. In the pubs and restaurants over there the waiter will pour the cider by holding the glass in his left hand way below his waist and the bottle as high as possible in his right hand. Then he pours the cider in the glass in a trickle from the bottle. In the meantime he looks straight ahead; not at the bottle and not at the glass. He will spill some of the cider when it falls splashing into the glass, but the spilled cider collects in a pond-like structure in the middle of the bar. In the middle of this pond there is the table on which the bottles and glasses stand. The drinkers sit on high stools around the pond, waiting until their glass is filled. They do it this way because the cider needs exposure to a lot of air before you drink it.