sunday vertical

This was in Segovia, Spain, in July. A lot can happen in five months.

lookout

The idea of having dogs in apartment buildings seems so strange to me, mostly because then you have dogs on balconies.

petanque players

Happy October! All of my camera bodies are at Canon for repair right now. I finally got around to processing some of these mediocre petanque shots from Madrigal de Las Altas Torres. Petanque is like bocce ball. And they play it for hours.



What a boys' club, right?

one for the road

Here's a shot from Burgos in Spain, where I got chased away by the bartender seconds after taking this shot of a man on a mission.

this dream-like existence

It has been almost three weeks since my random Luna de Miel (honeymoon) in Spain. A lot of it was very surreal, like this drive through the clouds in Navarra.



Today I am reuniting with This Here Man, in another enchanted land...California.

ice cream men

This is in Pamplona, at the horse fair.

If I ever get to be this old, I definitely hope I'm living in a hot enough place to eat ice cream every day...and I'm going to eat ice cream every day. Oh yes.

ice cream man

This is in Madrid, another one of those moments that I am not sure anyone will think is funny except for me.

the king of kings

I touted some restaurants for my San Sebastian city guide, and this was my favorite place, Casa Tiburcio. Here's an out-of-focus shot (I blame it on all the steam in the kitchen) of the chef himself, Tiburcio, answering some questions for me about percebes, a shellfish found in only a handful of regions throughout the world.

madrid

After my friend left, I went on to Madrid for two nights. It was so hot that it was hard to leave the house before 8 p.m.

perch

Something strange about this part of Spain is that there are storks everywhere, and they build nests atop churches. On one stretch of highway, we even saw tall posts with metal baskets for them to build nests in the absence of tall buildings.

dry zone

Where were we? Oh yes, Spain. This is another shot in Burgos, in the archways of the main plaza, where my friend pointed out to me these red lines indicating two of the great floods in Burgos.

Burgos

We spent one night in the town of Burgos, which has a small old city that was filled with people out and about, enjoying tapas and wine outside, even though it was really not that warm. I sat out in the main plaza for a long time, just people watching. It is so nice to see town plazas in action, where everyone just hangs out.

the kids are all right

I loved this scene of boys playing soccer in this small, fenced-off courtyard smack dab in the center of the Parte Vieja in San Sebastián.

closing time

One of the churches in the Parte Vieja of San Sebastián. This guy is helping to close up at eight p.m.

some kind of celebration

Yes, we were in Spain for the finals of the World Cup--but only sort of. We were in San Sebastián, which is in El Pais Vasco (Basque Country), which has a long history of separatism. They have their own language (Euskara) and all. There was no real celebration in San Sebastián for the victory, just a bunch of dazed tourists from other parts of Spain looking to party. And here they are, celebrating under a separatist banner.

San Fermin

I was really happy to be out of Pamplona. We were here for the Festival of San Fermin, and you know what, I am just not into big, drunken, festivities like I once was. We stayed outside the city (thank goodness) and drove in for the Encierros (running of the bulls) in the mornings. The city smelled like shit, the ground was alternately slick and sticky with beer and urine, and even at seven in the morning, drunken boys were constantly yelling at me, surrounding me, or trying to kiss me.



There was a time in my life when I probably would have enjoyed spending a drunken week in wine-stained garments, sleeping in parks in the daytime and getting trashed in the night...but that time, it appears, has passed.

San Sebastián

I spent a few days in San Sebastián to shoot and write a city guide for a fashion magazine.

I just wanted to spent the whole time on the beach.

the other fair

After we ran with the bulls, we went further out from the center of Pamplona to see where there was a horse market going on. It was kind of intense. These horses got out of their pen and into the crowd and this guy is herding them back in by whacking them with this stick.



It made me sad but my friend assured me it was just the day that was going to be rough on them. Then they would be headed home with happy families in Basque Country.

pamplona

We drove into Pamplona and ran with the bulls on the opening day of the Festival of San Fermin. The scariest part for me was the fear that I would be pushed down and trampled by all the people.



This is an image of some police officers guarding the bulls who will run the first day. In the lower right corner you can see some of the white-and-red clad revelers.

small towns

The second day we passed through a town called Madrigal de Altas Torres, where Juan likes to shoot photos of men playing petanque in the park. I shot a ton of petanque photos but the light was terrible and I won't process them until I get back to Buenos Aires. The vibe was very nice, though. People kept coming and going, sitting on the sidelines, enjoying the game.