General: November 2008 Archives
The 2-way, 4-lane Calle de San Bernardo, the stretch between Gran Vía and the Glorieta de Ruiz Jimenez (a.k.a. Plaza de San Bernardo), is one of my favorite streets in Madrid - and I only recently discovered it!
Go to http://www.Google.com/maps , enter Calle de San Bernardo, 10, Madrid, Spain, turn "left" by 90º to head north, and start-a-walkin'.
WHY do I like this street? Because it's so mixed culturally, has a kind of bohemian feel to it while maintaining most of its traditional stores and bars. It's probably one of the most overlooked streets by travelers to Madrid. Not only does it have some of the most architecturally stunning and historical buildings in Madrid but also some of the ugliest office buildings - not to mention the worst graffiti covered buildings in the city.
Overlooking the graffiti (and it's difficult to do), you see some buildings which will make you stop, gawk, and cross the street for a better look, wondering how they must look on the inside. The "upper half" of the street is cooler and more historic than the "lower half".
Also along this route is the two-spire "Ministerio de Justicia" building (Calle de San Bernardo, 45), the connecting-and-cool Calle del Pez to the right. A couple blocks up and to the right is the Calle del Espiritu Santo where you find the (American) English-language, second-hand bookstore J&J Books and Coffee (and free Wi-Fi). Up San Bernardo a little further you have the absolutely stunning residential building at Calle de San Bernardo, 67. For this, look at my photo below and also on Google Maps "Street View", look up and down.
Further up, at Calle de San Bernardo, 79 at the left, we see the large, beautiful barroque-style church, Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, designed by the famed Madrid artist, Pedro de Ribera, and whose construction began in 1668. Directly across the street from it is the yellow-façade convent "Convento de las Salesas Nuevas".
Along this street there are countless kitchy-bars, a couple restaurants, and lots and lots of shops. The graffiti really is a problem, though. See the photo at right (Calle de San Bernardo, 18) of the interesting, late afternoon sun reflecting from an adjacent building - and the graffiti too.This bank seems to be open for business so I don't know why they haven't painted the outside façade in so many years.,
I feel I could live in an area like this because of its variety. There are two metro stations along this street; one at mid-point called "Noviciado" and another at the top called, appropriately, "San Bernardo".
So take a walk up Calle de San Bernardo the next time you're in Madrid and see a part of the city often overlooked. Or simply take a virtual Street Maps stroll up the street. Either way, you'll enjoy yourself.
Go to http://www.Google.com/maps , enter Calle de San Bernardo, 10, Madrid, Spain, turn "left" by 90º to head north, and start-a-walkin'.
WHY do I like this street? Because it's so mixed culturally, has a kind of bohemian feel to it while maintaining most of its traditional stores and bars. It's probably one of the most overlooked streets by travelers to Madrid. Not only does it have some of the most architecturally stunning and historical buildings in Madrid but also some of the ugliest office buildings - not to mention the worst graffiti covered buildings in the city.
Overlooking the graffiti (and it's difficult to do), you see some buildings which will make you stop, gawk, and cross the street for a better look, wondering how they must look on the inside. The "upper half" of the street is cooler and more historic than the "lower half".
Also along this route is the two-spire "Ministerio de Justicia" building (Calle de San Bernardo, 45), the connecting-and-cool Calle del Pez to the right. A couple blocks up and to the right is the Calle del Espiritu Santo where you find the (American) English-language, second-hand bookstore J&J Books and Coffee (and free Wi-Fi). Up San Bernardo a little further you have the absolutely stunning residential building at Calle de San Bernardo, 67. For this, look at my photo below and also on Google Maps "Street View", look up and down.
Further up, at Calle de San Bernardo, 79 at the left, we see the large, beautiful barroque-style church, Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, designed by the famed Madrid artist, Pedro de Ribera, and whose construction began in 1668. Directly across the street from it is the yellow-façade convent "Convento de las Salesas Nuevas".Along this street there are countless kitchy-bars, a couple restaurants, and lots and lots of shops. The graffiti really is a problem, though. See the photo at right (Calle de San Bernardo, 18) of the interesting, late afternoon sun reflecting from an adjacent building - and the graffiti too.This bank seems to be open for business so I don't know why they haven't painted the outside façade in so many years.,I feel I could live in an area like this because of its variety. There are two metro stations along this street; one at mid-point called "Noviciado" and another at the top called, appropriately, "San Bernardo".
So take a walk up Calle de San Bernardo the next time you're in Madrid and see a part of the city often overlooked. Or simply take a virtual Street Maps stroll up the street. Either way, you'll enjoy yourself.
Google Maps recently revealed it's Super Cool 360º "Street View" function for the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia. It's a great way to take a virtual stroll through these favorite city streets.
One you go to Google Maps, type in an exact address in the aforementioned cities or just simply the city and country in to the search field. Once there, click the "Street View" button in the menu towards the upper right hand corner of map to show, in blue lines, which streets are covered by the Street View function.
If you chose the city-general Google Maps and see the available streets outlined in blue, double click the street you'd like to see in "Street View" and another window will pop-up on top of the map giving a 360º view of that location at street level. You'll see graphical lines and arrows showing the names of the streets. Click the arrows to move forward or backward, click-and-drag around the Street View image to move anyway, spinning around throughout the photo, up and down, 'round-and-'round, zoom in and out. It's super cool!
A number of the pedestrian streets and not all of the city streets have been mapped though. For example, almost none of the streets in the old Santa Cruz neighborhood in Seville are mapped. NONE of the streets in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona are mapped. About half of Valencia's old town are mapped and most all of Madrid's old downtown is mapped.
The Google Street View cars were driving throughout The Top Four Spanish Cities last spring 2008 and just recently made this cool, new function available. Many of the big cities in the United States of America are already mapped. While I didn't see the cars myself in Madrid, I did find the photo of them (to the right) on the internet. They're a strange-looking vehicle with the tower-camera mounted to the roof of the car. While it drives through the city streets it takes a series of photos of a given location. Those photos are then stitched together, creating the 360º image. I have to wonder how long it took them to drive through these cities. Maybe only 2 days each! You can see the different heights of the sun in some photos, going from one corner to the next, sometimes it's cloudy and then 100 meters later it's sunny.
So if you'd like to take a stroll down Memory Lane from a long-past visit to Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, or Seville, visit Google Maps, go to an address or, generally, one of the aforementioned cities, and take a virtual stroll to see how it's changed.
One you go to Google Maps, type in an exact address in the aforementioned cities or just simply the city and country in to the search field. Once there, click the "Street View" button in the menu towards the upper right hand corner of map to show, in blue lines, which streets are covered by the Street View function.
If you chose the city-general Google Maps and see the available streets outlined in blue, double click the street you'd like to see in "Street View" and another window will pop-up on top of the map giving a 360º view of that location at street level. You'll see graphical lines and arrows showing the names of the streets. Click the arrows to move forward or backward, click-and-drag around the Street View image to move anyway, spinning around throughout the photo, up and down, 'round-and-'round, zoom in and out. It's super cool!
A number of the pedestrian streets and not all of the city streets have been mapped though. For example, almost none of the streets in the old Santa Cruz neighborhood in Seville are mapped. NONE of the streets in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona are mapped. About half of Valencia's old town are mapped and most all of Madrid's old downtown is mapped.
The Google Street View cars were driving throughout The Top Four Spanish Cities last spring 2008 and just recently made this cool, new function available. Many of the big cities in the United States of America are already mapped. While I didn't see the cars myself in Madrid, I did find the photo of them (to the right) on the internet. They're a strange-looking vehicle with the tower-camera mounted to the roof of the car. While it drives through the city streets it takes a series of photos of a given location. Those photos are then stitched together, creating the 360º image. I have to wonder how long it took them to drive through these cities. Maybe only 2 days each! You can see the different heights of the sun in some photos, going from one corner to the next, sometimes it's cloudy and then 100 meters later it's sunny.So if you'd like to take a stroll down Memory Lane from a long-past visit to Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, or Seville, visit Google Maps, go to an address or, generally, one of the aforementioned cities, and take a virtual stroll to see how it's changed.
It's just after midnight and I hope to get some sleep - even though I woke up just 8.5 hours ago, sleeping 'til 3pm after going to bed at 8am, staying up all Tuesday night for the US Presidential Election coverage on TV.
After one well-baked pizza and another burnt one (now the whole house smells like smoke), along with a couple bottles of beer, I hope to be sleepy enough to get at least a few hours of R.E.M. before sunrise. Maybe I'll do a little reading in bed. I'm finishing up "The Rainmaker" by John Grisham. Good book. A legal drama.
Tomorrow's not a big day by any stretch of the imagination but I do have some projects, some "homework", and some work towards the future of MadridMan.com to accomplish. Friday, I hope to return to the gym after a week OFF here in Madrid. I was "a good boy" while in Ohio, USA, going to the gym/YMCA every two days.
The Madrid city streets are now quiet and SOME of the Christmas lights are already hung and illuminated - not sure how I feel about that though. It's STILL autumn, for goodness sake!
Time to get back into a normal rhythm of things here after those long elections. Also, I returned from an 18-day visit in the USA just last Saturday and I'm still a little messed up.
So good night, world. Hope you all have hope for a brighter tomorrow as I do.
(This was hardly worth a blog entry, I know.)
After one well-baked pizza and another burnt one (now the whole house smells like smoke), along with a couple bottles of beer, I hope to be sleepy enough to get at least a few hours of R.E.M. before sunrise. Maybe I'll do a little reading in bed. I'm finishing up "The Rainmaker" by John Grisham. Good book. A legal drama.
Tomorrow's not a big day by any stretch of the imagination but I do have some projects, some "homework", and some work towards the future of MadridMan.com to accomplish. Friday, I hope to return to the gym after a week OFF here in Madrid. I was "a good boy" while in Ohio, USA, going to the gym/YMCA every two days.
The Madrid city streets are now quiet and SOME of the Christmas lights are already hung and illuminated - not sure how I feel about that though. It's STILL autumn, for goodness sake!
Time to get back into a normal rhythm of things here after those long elections. Also, I returned from an 18-day visit in the USA just last Saturday and I'm still a little messed up.
So good night, world. Hope you all have hope for a brighter tomorrow as I do.
(This was hardly worth a blog entry, I know.)
"America's Fresh Prince of Washington D.C." © by Martin Media, S.L, ( 5 November 2008)
What does this posting have to do with Spain? Answer: A LOT!I woke up today at 3pm after staying up ALL NIGHT, until 8am, watching the Presidential Election coverage over a myriad of USA, Spanish, British, and several other international television stations.
In Madrid, John McCain supporters gathered in the Hard Rock Café while Barack Obama supporters waited in long lines to enter the Circulo de Bellas Artes, all to enjoy a long night of back-slapping, wishful drinking, and hand-shaking. One group went away this morning not only tired but disappointed, no doubt.
Spain's very conservative, rather right-wing newspaper ABC headlines today with "EL CAMBIO HA LLEGADO" ("Change Has Arrived"). It seems even the conservative party in Spain is happy with the choice of the only-slightly-left-of-center Democratic Presidential selection. On the front page of their website they show a truly inspirational video of Barack Obama (get your tissues ready) announcing "El Cambiado ha Llegado" ("Change Has Come"). And while it's not totally clear, it seems this 2:45 video was created by ABC themselves. See the video below (hope it loads):
Not to be outdone, Spain's left-wing, socialist party newspaper El País ALSO reports the exact same headline, "El Cambio ha Llegado" ("Change has Come"), ALSO posting a video - albeit much much less inspirational - a reproduction of the CNN+ Spain report (17 minutes) of Barack Obama's election night victory speech in Chicago and translated by a CNN+ person.
While EVERYONE in Spain and Europe (etcetera) would be happy for whatever Presidential change in the United States of America, it seems people are particularly happy with the choice made in Barack Obama.
Now the hard part; putting action to the inspirational words.
It's 3am late Tuesday night - or VERY early Wednesday morning and I'm watching the Elections for the next President of the United States of America. It's an exciting time.
Switching among CNN International, BBC World News, France 24 (English version), Fox News, TVE (national television station in Spain) and even Al Jazeera (English version) is giving me a very broad image of the international reporting of these all-important elections. Thank goodness for satellite dishes!
All channels report the elections to be "of World Importance", and "The World is Watching". I guess the world really does care what happens!
Not surprisingly, these aforementioned big television news media outlets are covering the elections without interruption but TVE here in Spain is now doing the same. Now that's impressive! Of course it's all in Spanish but what's interesting is the perspective they and other international news channels provide us. Even Jerome Socolovsky, my favorite National Public Radio ("NPR" in the United States) correspondent, is on the TVE panel of election experts analyzing the ongoing developments. Cool!
Today I saw a number of Spanish television stations interviewing people on the street, asking them if they were interested in today's US Presidential Elections. To my surprise, nearly everyone said that YES, they were VERY interested in the outcome of the elections. When asked which candidate they wanted to win, about 90% said they hoped Barack Obama would win. The other 10% could care less. No one mentioned John McCain's name.
It won't be long until the USA has a new President Elect - but that President won't start serving his country as America's Commander in Chief until January 20th, 2009.
There was an organized US Elections Party tonight (errrr.. last night) at 11pm at the Circulo de Bellas Artes but I couldn't imagine myself A) dragging myself downtown at that hour, B) paying 20 Euros entry and then extra for drinks/food (or maybe that was included? doubt it), and C) forcing myself to stay awake in the company of strangers until 6am.
Regardless of who wins the Presidency, it'll (hopefully help to) re-establish the reputation of the United States in the world's eyes. No matter what anyone says we have to keep lines of communication open and improve diplomacy to get along better with the world's nations, our neighbors.
Switching among CNN International, BBC World News, France 24 (English version), Fox News, TVE (national television station in Spain) and even Al Jazeera (English version) is giving me a very broad image of the international reporting of these all-important elections. Thank goodness for satellite dishes!
All channels report the elections to be "of World Importance", and "The World is Watching". I guess the world really does care what happens!
Not surprisingly, these aforementioned big television news media outlets are covering the elections without interruption but TVE here in Spain is now doing the same. Now that's impressive! Of course it's all in Spanish but what's interesting is the perspective they and other international news channels provide us. Even Jerome Socolovsky, my favorite National Public Radio ("NPR" in the United States) correspondent, is on the TVE panel of election experts analyzing the ongoing developments. Cool!
Today I saw a number of Spanish television stations interviewing people on the street, asking them if they were interested in today's US Presidential Elections. To my surprise, nearly everyone said that YES, they were VERY interested in the outcome of the elections. When asked which candidate they wanted to win, about 90% said they hoped Barack Obama would win. The other 10% could care less. No one mentioned John McCain's name.
It won't be long until the USA has a new President Elect - but that President won't start serving his country as America's Commander in Chief until January 20th, 2009.
There was an organized US Elections Party tonight (errrr.. last night) at 11pm at the Circulo de Bellas Artes but I couldn't imagine myself A) dragging myself downtown at that hour, B) paying 20 Euros entry and then extra for drinks/food (or maybe that was included? doubt it), and C) forcing myself to stay awake in the company of strangers until 6am.
Regardless of who wins the Presidency, it'll (hopefully help to) re-establish the reputation of the United States in the world's eyes. No matter what anyone says we have to keep lines of communication open and improve diplomacy to get along better with the world's nations, our neighbors.
How would YOU feel about this if you were a resident or citizen of Spain? Our initial reaction is shock and probably fear. But are we responsible for the actions of our parents?
The below is the English version of an El País article:
The below is the English version of an El País article:
Bin Laden's Son seeks asylum in Spain citing fear of Arab Nations
Omar Osama Bin Laden, the son of the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, has requested asylum in Spain, claiming that he does not feel safe in Cairo, where he currently resides, nor in any other Arab country.
Bine Laden, who applied for asylum on Monday, will find out in 72 hours whether his application will be accepted, Spain's interior minister announced yesterday.
Omar Osama Bin Laden, landed in Terminal 4 of Madrid's Barajas airport on Monday, arriving on a flight from Cairo that was later due to head to Casablanca, Morocco. He had bought a ticket for the final destination of the plane.
"What we have done is to apply the law," Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Spain's interior minister, said yesterday, "[Bin Laden] is currently being held in [an immigration holding room] in Barajas, and is being examined by the committee that has the legal capacity to decide whether or not this falls within the asylum claim, and whether or not we should grant him asylum in our country."
All sources with knowledge of the asylum process have suggested that the answer will be negative. If that is the case, Omar Osama will have 24 hours to appeal the decision, and the interior Ministry will then have another 48 hours in which to give an answer. If the appeal is rebutted, he can then take his case to the courts. He would then be obliged to prove that his life is in danger in his native country.
Bin Laden, who is 28 years old and is married to 52-year old Birton Jane Felix-Brown, requested a visa to live in the United Kingdom with his wife at the British Embassy in Cairo back in April, but his request was denied due to what officials described as the "considerable public concern" his presence would cause.
Omar Bin Laden, who is one of Osama Bin Laden's 19 offspring, has described himself as the "pacifist child" of the leader of terrorist network Al Qaeda, and has condemned the violent methods attributed to his father.
He was born in Saudi Arabia, to Syrian mother Najwa Ghanem, and lived with his father in exile in Sudan, and then Afghanistan, where, until the year 2000, he was trained in a terrorist camp. At the time of the September 11 terrorist attakcs on the World Trade Center, he was in Saudi Arabia.
Omar Osama Bin Laden married Jane Felix-Browne in Egypt in September 2006. The couple met when Felix-Browne, who already has three children and five grandchildren, traveled to Cairo for medical treatment for multiple sclerosis.
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