A mixed bag this week, with some local pictures to start, then wine tasting at the office, then Friday in Madrid. A rare week with no trips abroad.
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Walking their dog and themselves:
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Lamp post advertisement:
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I have photographed this plant struggling through the fence before. This time I noticed that there is a flower too:
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Signs of autumn in Alicante:
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While riding my bicycle towards El Campello, I saw that winter was not that far away. It was about 17C where I was at sea level, but at a distance of perhaps 20-30km and at 1500 meters, there is real winter:
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The same mountains, seen from the main road near Benidorm:
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Tuesday evening, another monthly wine tasting at the office. The wine is poured by members of the club while the bodeguero is talking about that particular wine. Here, Robert is pouring an unfiltered wine, straight from the barrel. This wine had been included just to give people a taste of what a wine tastes like at that stage of its development:
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Now for some real wine:
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The colour:
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The nose:
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Conversation:
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I noticed a couple at the neighbouring table. The woman was very attentive towards her partner:
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A loving gaze:
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We had the autumn meeting of our Administrative Board and Budget Committee this week. Monika is preparing the room for the following day’s proceedings:
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On Friday I had a meeting and an errand in Madrid. Until a few months ago, the options would be to fly or to drive. But now we have the truly civilised option, the high-speed train which covers the 440 km in 2 hours 20 minutes (to be reduced to 2 hours next year):
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As I emerged from the metro at the corner of Calle Serrano and Calle Goya, I noticed the olive oil tasting cart. There were several of them in the vicinity, some sort of promotion by the growers, supported by the ministry of agriculture:
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This girl was sitting on the huge monument to the Spanish conquistadores on Plaza Colón, taking pictures of something in the water. I am not sure what:
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Columbus among modern buildings:
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Damsel in distress:
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I walked down the Paseo de Recoletos and noted another piece of street art that I had not seen before:
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Looking closely, outside the national library:
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Poet Antonio Machado, outside the national library:
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I took in an exhibition of the Chinese terracotta soldiers at the Teatro Fernán Gómez:
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Terracotta faces:
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Statue of one of Jim Shulman’s girlfriends:
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Paseo del Prado, near the famous museum. Abortion debate is alive in Spain, because the conservative government has passed some laws restricting abortion, such as requiring parental notification by girls under the age of 18. The graffiti reads “my body, my decision”:
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Another little political snippet. There was a garbage workers strike in Madrid until a few days ago, and some of the more radical elements on the union side put up handbills like this, encouraging people to throw trash in the street to make things even worse and thereby put more pressure on the employers:
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Finally, time to go back to Alicante. This is the Atocha station, where bombs planted by islamic terrorists killed 191 commuter train passengers on 11 March 2004. Atocha is also the main terminal for the high-speed trains connecting Madrid to most big cities in Spain:
