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	<title>Notes from Spain: Ben Curtis on Travel, Life, Culture, Spain</title>
	<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com</link>
	<description>Podcasts and comment on travel, tapas, learning Spanish and living in Spain, plus a lively forum and beautiful Spain photos.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:55:43 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Trip to Gijon</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week we were in Asturias, staying in Gijon. It&#8217;s a small city, industry (pretty heavy), on one side of a river, a lovely old town and beach on the other:

Even in early March, the grannies are on the beach in the morning, getting undressed and stuffing their clothes into giant plastic bags while they [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/03/12/postcards-from-gijon/</link>
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		<title>Community &#8211; Do you live in one?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Forget online communities for a moment, do you have a real, live one on your doorstep?
In Spain the collection of neighbours in a flat block is called a &#8216;comunidad&#8217;? But I wander what that means?
In our case it means saying hello to everyone, chatting to the occasional neighbour, feeling safe about the other people in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/03/08/community-do-you-live-in-one/</link>
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		<title>&#8220;I LOVE the fact that I never feel rushed in a restaurant&#8221; &#8211; Great Comment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I love this comment from JoyceM (worth reading the whole thing) in last week&#8217;s Accustomed vs Resigned thread:
If they are going to enjoy 3 hour lunches, I am going to enjoy 3 hour lunches.  If they are going to invite me out for a two hour coffee, I am going to go and enjoy [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/24/i-love-the-fact-that-i-never-feel-rushed-in-a-restaurant-great-comment/</link>
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		<title>Spain ‘no longer foreign enough’</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Many thanks to Raquel for passing on this classic read in the Times: &#8220;British tourists avoid Spain because it’s ‘no longer foreign enough’&#8221;
&#8230;which says a lot more about the Brits (who aren&#8217;t aware of strange out-of-the-way places like, say Madrid) than Spain, obviously.
I love this line about a recent survey on British holiday choices:
The survey [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/19/spain-because-no-longer-foreign-enough/</link>
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		<title>Accustomed vs Resigned</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Conversation I had with a smart Argentinian guy in a suit outside a bookshop yesterday. Time Bookshop was meant to open, 5pm. Bookshop still shut at 5.10pm:
Argentinian guy: That&#8217;s why this country is in such a mess.
Me: It drives you a bit mad. The other day I went to the bank, it was meant to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/18/accustomed-vs-resigned/</link>
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		<title>You know you&#8217;re a parent in Spain when&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8230;when as you are going to bed exhausted at 10.30 pm on a Saturday night, you glance out of the window and see that guests are just arriving at the party in the student flat opposite&#8230;
&#8230; when you get up to coax baby back to sleep at 5.30 am, and the last of the guests [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/15/you-know-youre-a-parent-in-spain-when/</link>
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		<title>Life and Death of the &#8216;Mediterranean Diet&#8217;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My thoughts below were inspired by a tremendous talk by Jamie Oliver at TED this week, if you have 20 minutes please watch it (below). It&#8217;s moving to see so much passion. His fight is against obesity, and to bring real food back into our lives, and it certainly got me thinking about what&#8217;s going [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/12/life-and-death-of-the-mediterranean-diet/</link>
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		<title>Doh!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On the off chance it&#8217;s mildly interesting to at least one other person in the cosmos, and despite swearing I had no time and too much to do already, I will very occasionally be posting other &#8216;creative&#8217; stuff to another blog, treeofben.com.
Actually it&#8217;s part of my new mission to break through a total creative/prductivity breakdown [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/11/doh/</link>
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		<title>Damn, still not Spanish enough!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
I just popped out to a favourite local bar, where my favourite barman, super-friendly, 50-ish, thick white hair and humour as dry as a brick, brings in his home-made tortilla every day.
&#8216;Un pincho de tortilla&#8217;, I said, &#8216;but don&#8217;t heat it up, I&#8217;ll have it just as it is&#8217;.
I&#8217;m not fond of microwaved tortilla, so [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/09/damn-still-not-spanish-enough/</link>
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		<title>Palacio de Cristal, Retiro Park, Madrid</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
I was poking around on Twitter (me here) recently, and found a link to Stuck in Customs, which has some amazing HDR photos on&#8230; which rekindled my interest in photography. Wonderful how the web can do that. Above is a first new HDR experiment (bigger here). Great fun!
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		<link>http://www.notesfromspain.com/2010/02/08/palacio-de-cristal-retiro-park-madrid/</link>
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