Around Ireland: Sligo - Green Landscapes and tradition

Our aim is to see the most of Ireland by train as it´s one of our favourite means of transport. It took us around 3 hours to get there from Dublin , all green landscapes with cows and sheep. I noticed more cows in these area than in the Galway one.I dont know how many pics i took of them, i find cows so cute!

A couple of weeks ago we where in Sligo, capital of the county of Sligo in the Republic of Ireland, it has a population of around 1800 people. Sligo had a big influence in the poems of the Irish poet " Yeats", who spent many childhood summers in there. Yeats statue can be found just outside the beautiful building of the Ulster Bank at the heart of the town.

We stayed at the Glasshouse hotel which plays an important part mingling in the Sligo town with the traditional country style Irish buildings and the modernity of this innovative hotel full of glass just above the Garavogue river, much cleaner and nicer than the Dublin Liffey river. I totally recommend this four star hotel to have a nice weekend break, the lay-out of the room was very nice and modern with free internet and tv, breakfast was not great but you can´t have it all!For me, it has been the nicest hotel we have been to in Ireland. It´s located just at the heart of the city centre and it has a pub with a nice atmosphere at night, if the weather is good you can even have a nice drink by the river. If you travel around Ireland for a weekend break, it´s important ot go to a nice hotel in case the weather is crap and you dont want to leave the hotel!

Sligo it´s very different from Dublin, it´s a ver y traditional Irish place , quiet and clean, you could go nicely for a walk. Just a few kms away you can go to do some surfing to the Strandhill beach, if you are brave enough to surf in the Irish sea. There are a few coaches going there departing from the city centre.

Sligo is very small and you can see it in a couple of hours, we fnid a bit hard to find a place for lunch, being used to have so much variety of places in Dublin, in Sligo there are not so many restaurants, we ended up in an Italian restaurant, I think we were the only non-Irish there and sometimes we felt being stared at by the locals lol!

We felt very comfi in Sligo and we promised to be back again!

Memorable songs in my life: Taylor Dayne | Tell It To My Heart

Does this song ring a bell? i used to love it when i was a kid! the video is so 80ies! Happy Sunday everyone-

My favourite cities : Berlín

I have been to Berlin a couple of times and I wanted to write some recommendations for those who haven´t been there yet. If you are thinking of what to do Next Years Eve and you are not afraid of minus temperatures and snow, I totally recommend the experience of going to Berlin to celebrate in the big outdoors party in the Brandenburg Tor. Entrance is free ,you may not be able to be in the first row of the main stage due to the popularity of this event and amount of attendees but there are big screens and music for around of 2 kms or longer and you can have a really good time. It´s very welll organized, if one part is very crowded, you have to keep on walking for a few metres to the next entrance until there is enough room for everybody. I took my Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes to Berlin and i bought them in advanced at a little fruit shop at the Alexanderplatz station. The only thing that stopped us from staying longer at the outdoor party was that we didnt have proper snow boots but the atmosphere was great, you could by German sausages, cocktails and watch the fireworks surrounded by people from different ages and nationalities. On that night the underground is operative all night long so we coudl even go back to the hotel by underground.

In case you decide to go, don´t do like us and book your hotel well in advanced, otherwise prices can bve very high. The hotel where we stayed in ,has beven one of my favourite ones, so far but you would need to have a good budget. It was call "Park plaza, wallstreet Berlin", it´s a very modern and original hotel Andywarhol style ! breakfast was fab and it was well located. If you are on a shorter bduget, youth hostels in Berlin have usually a very nice buffet breakfast and you can experienced the graffiti life-side of the city! in the one i was in when i was erasmus the entrance looked like what we call in Spanish "ocupa house" and the "recepcionist" was totally high on cannabis!

Berlin has an excellent transporation system, if you are going for at least 3 days you should buy a 3-day ticket to be able to go by tram,underground,S-bahn and bus.

Don´t miss:

-East Side Gallery to see the wall of Berlin in a very artistic way!
-Museum of the wall in Checkpoint Charlie - you will need to be in the mood of reading in French,English or German , different true stories of waht people did to cross from East to West
-Ampelmann shops- unique trafficlights men wearing a hat has many shops around town
-Museum Insel- if you have time for more museums, don´t miss the museum for Egypt
-Reichstag - Pariliament- you have to queue for long but it´s totally worth it, i loved the parliment visit
-Gedächniss Kirche - old bombed church surrounded by modern Berlin
-Der sieger- golden Angel in a very high column, beautiful area , where the famous Love Parade used to take place
-Brandenburg Tor-
-Central train station and Alexandre-platz
-Berliner Dom- one of my favourite buildings...

and many more in a city full of contrast between the modern world and a piece of history ,still very present!

Fame (musical) Dublin, Docklands theatre 21.08.2010

Para mí es díficil no comparar después de haber visto grandes producciones de musicales como " We will Rock you" en Londres con cantantes con gran experiencia y profesionalidad y con un gran preosupuesto para la puesta en escena : Decorados, efectos, música y vestuario (sobre todo porque la entrada nos costó casi igual.!). Cuando entramos al teatro, lo primero que me fijé era que entre el público habia muchos niños con sus padres, lo cual me recordó cuando fuimos al musical de Annie que no me entusiasmó mucho (fue una intución inicial..). He de decir, que la versión irlandesa que vimos ayer de la famosa serie de los 80 " Fame " me entretuvo, es la mejor manera de describirlo, lo pasé bien ,sobre todo cuando cantaron la banda sonora de Fame en un par de ocasiones("remember,remember"), a mi memoria volvieron las caras de los personajes originales, a los que me era difícil identificar porque les cambiaron los nombres en el musical aunque respetaron el estilo individual de cada personaje: El talentosos bailarín y no tan brillante estudiante: Leroy, la latina con tremenda voz: Coco, el profesor tradicional de música,Benjamin y el alumno tímido que tocaba muy bien el piano: Bruno. Para aquellos que se criaron con la serie, si váis al teatro a ver esta misma versión ,id preparados a que va a ser una versión adaptada y hecha al estilo : "High school musical" o "Glee" ,de alguna manera la esencia de la serie original se pierde. A mí, al ser fan de Glee no me molestó, pero puede que a fervientes seguidores de Fame,no les guste este cambio. En relación a los cantantes, en general, todos cantan bien, sólo la que hace de profesora de baile , nos pareció un poco gritona y no era tan exigente como la profesora original de la serie. Destacan la que hace de Coco, llamada Carmen, el chico que hace de Leroy y la chica de color gordita, el chico divertido moreno y la que tiene el papel principal también morena: Jessica Cervi y la orquesta que acompañaba al musical era muy buena, también la gran acústica del nuevo teatro de Docklands ayudaba. Mi parte favorita fue el final cuando todos acompañábamos al cast con palmas (yo no podia evitar cantar..).

Una escena que quedará para el recuerdo es cuando salieron todos como vestidos de flamenco y empezaron a bailar mezclando el estilo de salsa, con ritmo mejicano y flamenco a lo irlandés. Uy madre, no sabian ni mover las manos y zapateaban como si fuera flamenco cuando la música era como salsa, en cierto modo me hicieron reir jaja

Pues eso si quieres pasar un buen rato viendo un musical estilo high-school, te la recomiendo pero si no te va las canciones estilo "cheesy" (pastelosas),yo me quedaría con el recuerdo de la serie y me ahorraria la entrada! Yo, como dije al principio me lo pasé muy bien y no me arrepiento ,ya que sabia que era una versión irlandesa sin un gran preosupuesto, con gente muy joven sacados de un casting, con talento pero no con amplia experiencia como pueda ser un gran musical de Londres o Nueva York.

ah! en una de las fotos veréis las palomitas que me comí ya que en Dublín en los teatros se puede comer palomitas como en los cines o helados! me encanta esa parte, por cierto :-)

How Fairy Tales really end..lol /Como terminan realmente los cuentos de hadas..jajaj

Cindirella also drinks to forget.. / Cenicienta también bebe para olvidar....

Snowwhite some years after../ blancanieves unos añitos más tarde..





El 50 cumpleaños de la barbie../ the 50th birthday of the barbie

French Cinema:Cocó Channel and Igor Stravinski (2009)

Saturday night and uhm let´s go to see a movie.., 22.20 and it starts..a couple of sentences in English and i thought, yeah it´s not in French! but nope! that´s all the English they talk at the movie lol nothing against French language,only that i dont speak it and i had to read the subtitles but guess what? the photography ,decorations , light and colours made me forget at one point from the movie that it was in French! It´s not a movie for everyone, though,some people may find it boring because of its slow pace (there was a guy behind me yawning all the time!). I enjoyed the centre of the plot: Coco´s special style and elegance and her torrid love story with the Russian married father of 5, Igor Stravinski. All their romance is bathed in extravagant Stravinski´s music who according to the movie was also inspired by Coco when composing.Coco´s is shown as a strong, cold, demanding, independent business woman ahead of her era.

So if you want to sit back, relax, learn some French,see some romance, listen to some classic music and watch some delightful scenes, dont miss this movie!

Beatiful film from Brazil : Central Station

1998 Brazilian movie from Walter salles, director of "on the road" and "paris, ilove you" nominated for 2 Oscars and won a Golden Globe award. I have to admit that this film captured my heart, a non-conventional drama of 2 lonely souls that encounteer their destinies by chance: a motherless child, Josue, and a retired school teacher,Dora. Josue, an honest kid looking for his drunken father that left him when he was a kid and, Dora rips off illiterate people at the station writting letters for their families that will never reach their final destinations.

Beautiful Brazil sorroundings with a background of social problems in a society with a very poor low class, full of children living on the streets and where cashless people have to rob to survive play an important role of this moving story.

The movie show how everyone has a good side , even Dora couldnt resist Josue´s kindness and innocency.

Thanx Allan for lending me the movie!!!

And yeah people, i cried at the end....

Excellent Spanish movie: Cell 211 (2009)- Celda 211

I have had to wait until today to be able to watch this Spanish drama masterpiece from 2009 directed by Daniel Monzón Jerez, awarded with 8 Goyas (the equivalent of the Spanish oscars awards).

All started when Javier Oliver is assigned to work as a prision cell guardian and decides to go to know the premises one day before starting his new job. This day will change his live forever dramatically. A bunch of good spanish actors in the cast of this film: the main bad guy prisioner alias "Mala sangre" " rotten blood (Spanish idiom meaning ->extremely ill-tempered person"): Luis Tosar, gets into his role of the prision riot leader very well (he is in the picture), you are really scare of him. Juan Bardem brother, Carlos Bardem and the experienced : Antonio Resines and last but not least,the Argentinian , Alberto Amán, who won the Goya award for the best actor revelation for his role of the newbie Javier Oliver prision cell guardian alias "underpants (you will need to watch the movie to understand the reason of his alias)".I almost forget to mention the guy that plays a secondary role as a knackersih prisioner in a Spanish t´shirt with black teeth, gee! he played an excellent role, i wonder if he is a real knacker!

This movie portrays the bad state of the prisions, the abuse and bad conditions in some of them, the Spanish problem with the terrorism and what can happen when anger takes over any human being.

I´m not going to reveal any further details of this film since i will take away the originality and thrilling feeling throughout it, i could not even go to the toilet once! If you have seen any Spanish movies before you will see that the end cannot be guessed and you wonder what is going to happen next, suffering with the protagonist, Javier, every minute of it!

Dont miss this movie!