Murcia the garden of Spain

Murcia crops, the garden of Spain !!

Spainish Sky

Nice day out :)

Almeria - Lorca

Almeria

Cathedral Murcia

Cathedral Murcia .... Photo taken some time ago but just testing the go blogger service.

Murcia

Los Alcazares 1st November 2010

PAELLA .....QUE RICA !!!!!

This above is typical from Spain, alot of people will have tried it before but if not then you have to because when its made properly like this one above ....its delicious !!
Its called Paella and what it has is rice, peppers, meat (this can be chicken or rabblt) salt, sometimes peas, colouring and a couple of lts of water  it takes about 30-40 minutes to make from start to finish but its worth it. First you have to cook the peppers and the meat separately, then in the paella pan you add the meat etc,  the rice and water (how much depends on the amount of rice) add the colouring and let it cook during about 20 minuts. Once cooked most of the water will have vapourated let it sit for about 5 minutes and then serve Yummmmm !!   This paella was made by my girlfriends uncle "Andrés" he´s been making these for years and has the tecnique down to a T !!! People sometimes squeeze some fresh limon juice onto the paella and other like to eat with some "Alioli" which is garlic mayonaise !!

Cartagena

Here on the right hand side is a picture of a Roman theatre found here in Cartagena (Murcia). Cartagena has a lot to offer and I´d highly reccommend it to anyone for a visit or to live !! its situated in south east Spain about an hour south of Alicante.

As you can see there is a lovely port here in Cartagena where small, medium and hugh cruise ships dock for days and sometimes weeks. This area is a good spot at night time as there are lots of bar´s and restaurants.

This is a small beach here in Cartagena called la Cortina, there are a lot of beaches close to Cartagena some of there are beautiful.  In fairness this beach is not one of my favourites but everyone has their own opinion.

Goodbye Ireland - Hello Spain

Well as you can see from the title of the blog I´m an Irish man living in Spain. I left Dublin in April 2005 not knowing what Spain would be like nor which part of Spain I was going to live. You may be thinking "why Spain" ? Well the answer is a hot Spanish girl influenced me !!!

When I first arrived I didn´t speak Spanish and thought thats great I´ll have at least the summer off to learn Spanish and at the same time have a great summer. Well that plan got ripped away when I got a job in an electrical company a month after I arrived and since then I´ve given up the tools and changed jobs a couple of times.

Here the first thing you´ll see thats different to Irish life ... the SUN. Here in Murcia I think we get over 300 days of sun, this really does put a smile on peoples face and seems to make the people more open and very friendly. Another thing is the food they have so much variety over here and the time table is a little different to that of Ireland. Lunch time over here normally consists of at least two courses then coffee and usually eaten between 2 and 4 o clock. Then dinner is at about 9pm and sometimes could go on until about 10:30 ... this meal depending on the house can be pretty heavy aswell but thats down to each house and what there used to.

After about 6 months mixing with only Spanish people I could see myself getting better with the language and more comfortable speaking it. During these 6 months I had gone to some free spanish classes and picked up alot because there were not alot of students in the class ... I think there was 4 in total which was brilliant because the teacher had a lot of time for us. Learning a language you´ll always make mistakes but sometimes there really funny mistakes like for example : one time instead of asking for a breast of chicken (Pollo) I asked for a breast of Dick (Polla) the waitress just smiled and corrected me) hahahaha.

Well this is my first blog, there will be more over the next few days !!