Describing a house...

I live in Barajas, in a 100-square-metre flat on the 3rd floor of a building which is situated in a quiet area of the neighbourhood. It's a ten-minutes drive to the airport and there's a subway station a 5-minutes walking.

It has two beedrooms, a dining room, a large kitchen with a balcony, two bathrooms and a spacious living room. It is light.

The flat is walking distance from stores and restaurants in the town. On Saturdays there is a street market where you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables. The people is very nice and it is like a village: when you're walking down the street, many people say -hello- to you and if they know you, they'll stop you to ask you about your family and your job, for example.

It hasn't got much lifenight, but there are many taxis and buses which take you to the city center whenever you want, and it isn't expensive and it safer than take your own car if you have taken some drunk.

It is an ideal flat for families or couples, and it is possible to have pets, but definitely no smoking.

Posted by Cristina.

PONFERRADA

Ponferrada is a city placed in Castilla y León (province of León). It is the capital of El Bierzo. El Bierzo is a beautiful area in the northwest of Castilla well known for its vines and fruits. It has a lot of fields, lots of mountains, valleys and it is where Las Médulas (old roman mines of gold), that are really famous in Spain, are placed. Ponferrada is in the centre of El Bierzo and it is a small town of 70.000 inhabitants, but it is the biggest town in the area, so people from the surrounding villages go there to buy food, products etc… or to do other things like buying clothes, going to colleges or high schools and entertaining themselves.

Ponferrada is divided in two parts by a river, the Sil. It has a high part and a low part. In the high part of the city there art the important and old buildings; including the castle, the town hall, the university, the Encina’s church… In the low part there is where the big shops, markets, library and cinemas are. There is also a new really big moll in the entrance to the low part where you can find all kinds of shops (Zara, Pull and Bear, Mango, Carrefour), although most of them sell clothes. In this moll called El Rosal there are also cinemas, restaurants (Burger King, Hollywood…), bars, hair-dressers and a bowling alley.

Although Ponferrada is a small city, it has most of things that big cities have. If you go there for a week you can go sightseeing, because it has lots of interesting, old or beautiful places to visit. For instance one of the landmarks that you can’t miss is the castle of “Los Templarios”. This castle is really beautiful, an old and imposing fortress that dates from the 11th century. It has been restored recently and it has guided visits. There is also the renaissance Encina’s basilica that was finished round the year 1600. This year in Ponferrada there was an exhibition calledwas “Las edades del hombre”, but is has been already closed.

There are some old streets, squares, buildings and bridges interesting to see, but if what you want is to spend a good time with friends going out at night, going to the cinema or having dinner in the evenings you can do it here. There are some pubs for going out at night in the low part of the city where young people spend their Friday and Saturday nights. These pubs are Pekados, Marraket, la Buena vida etc. and they are usually very crowded although you have to be up to sixteen for going into these pubs. There are also some two discos; one in the low part (La gran manzana) and another one in the high part (La oxi), but to enter into these discos you have to pay some money just for the ticket and you have to be up to eighteen. These discos open just on Saturdays because it is the day that more people go out.

In the new moll there are also cinemas, bars and restaurants, but most of these restaurants serve fast food. If you want to have a traditional lunch you have to go to a restaurant in the centre of the city. In this moll there are also lots of shops and places to spend your free time (bowling…) so you can spend there the whole evening.

If you are a sport person there are lots of places to practise every kind of sports. There are two indoors swimming-pools and another two summer pools for swimming in all seasons of the year. There are also really big football fields where you can practise this sport, but if you want to do it you have to be enrolled in one of the teams that play in these fields. There lots or teams from Ponferrada and from other villages that play there. You have to be in one team or another depending on your age. Moreover there are tennis courts, basketball courts… that have their own competitions.

People from Ponferrada love sports and, above all football, so they support their own football team, which has its position in the Spanish league. It is called La ponferradina and it has the stadium at the entrance to the city.

This city has two parks; one in the high part (El platío) that is bigger and more modern than the one on the low part called El temple that is a bit far from the town centre.

Related to schools there are lots in Ponferrada and children from other villages go to school in their own villages, however, they have to come to high school to Ponferrada because there are no high schools in the surrounding villages. There are four high schools in the city but teenagers from villages go mostly to La sindical. There are also some technical colleges but there are not many, so most of people than want to go to university have to go to Leon or other big cities.

Pubs and discos in Madrid

Madrid is a big city that has interesting places to visit, to have good times, to go to work… As a big city Madrid has also places for enjoying yourself, dancing, having something to drink and spending good times with friends and other people. There are pubs, discos, and other kinds of locals for going out at night and in the evenings. Most of pubs and discos are forbidden for people under sixteen or eighteen depending on each, but there are some discos that apart from opening at night they also open in the evenings for younger teenagers that are up to fourteen years old. These light discos open at 5 and close at 10. After one or two hours they open again at night for people up to eighteen. In the light session it is forbidden to sell alcohol, however in the late night session they can sell it to everybody because it is supposed that all the persons in the disco are adults.

As everybody know people from Madrid love going out at night, dancing, drinking, staying all night in pubs or parties and going home early in the morning; so Madrid has lots of pubs and discos for doing all these things. There are some famous areas in Madrid where people say best pubs are placed. In Alonso Martínez (a zone of Madrid) there are every kind of pubs. They have all kinds of music from rock to pop, funky… There are also some pubs for older people so it is a very mixed zone. Some of the pubs you can find there are: Autores, Milenio, Impacto Madrid… In Atocha and Huertas there are also famous pubs like: Trocha, Capacho….

The discos are more spread all over Madrid than pubs. There are not special zones for discos but most of them are in the centre, from Chamartin to Atocha and from Princesa to Alcalá. The biggest one in Madrid is Kapital. This disco has 7 floors, with a kind of music on each floor, and it has two sessions one for teenagers that opens in the evening and another session at night for elder people. Other famous discos in Madrid are Joy-Slava that is in Arenal and Pachá that is in Tribunal. The original Pachá is in Ibiza but now these discos are all over the world. Pachá has also a light session in the evenings. Some other discos are Macumba (called elite in the afternoons) in Chamartín, long-Play, Cristal and Green.


Teresa Peña Rodríguez

Museums and monuments of Madrid

Madrid is the capital of Spain and it is an important and big city. It has got a great culture and we can see it in each street, in each museum… there is a great tourist route from Paseo de la Castellana to Plaza Castilla, where are many museums and squares.

The first square that we find is the Emperor Carlos V’s square.
The first museum that we can see is the Thyssen. There we can enjoy the wonderful pictures from painters like Picasso.

Going down the street, there are the Museo del Prado and Neptuno’s Square. It shows Neptuno on a coach with two horses.

Near there it’s Cibeles’ Square. It shows the goddess on a chariot with two enormous lions pulling at the front. It is the Real Madrid football club’s monument and when the team wins any important match, the fans and the players go there to celebrate the triumph. Behind this square it’s the Madrid's new City Hall, known as Correo’s Building. There is a monument dedicated to Colon too, in Colon’s Square.

An interesting museum is the Wax museum. It’s on Paseo de los Recoletos and inside there are sculptures of famous people made in wax. Some celebrities that are depicted are the singer David Bisbal, the Prince and Princess of Asturias, tennis player Rafa Nadal, the Beckhams,Real's goalkeeper Casillas, Benedicto XVI…

Following the tourist route, we can find the Plaza de las Americas, Emilio Castellar’s monument and the Natural Science Museum.

At the end of the route it’s the Nuevos Ministerios’ Building, the AZCA zone. Here are the Madrid's skyscrapers, and it is the financial center of city. An example of skyscraper is the Torres Kio.

And finally, now we can see 4 giants governing the skyline, the towers at the old Real Madrid's sports centre.
This is a wonderful route and if you follow it you could discover a part of the beauty of the capital of Spain, our city, Madrid.

Posted by Cristina.

The parks of Madrid

The parks of Madrid


“Parque del Buen Retiro”

This is a symbol of the city. Tourists of all parts of the world love this park and its monuments and gardens. If you enter in the park you can see a lot of people, specially jugglers, musicians and theatre-goers. Also there are a lot of exhibitions, like “El Palacio de Velázquez” or “La Casa de Vacas”. In adittion, if you want to have a relaxed and nice walk in boat, you can rent one of them and spend the afternoon rowing in the lake. I want to add a curiositie: ¡the Retiro,s surface measures 118 times more that a soccer field!


“Parque Juan Carlos I”

This is one of the biggest parks of Madrid. It has the fairground enclosure IFEMA, where it,s celebrate the SIMO, a very important fair. My favourite monument of this park is the “Jardín de las Tres Delicias”, who has three gardens. They represent three cultures, the christen, the muslim and the bean. One of the best installation of this park is the “Cibernetic Fountain”, where in summer its celebrated spectacles. They consist in fireworks and music, and the appraisal is 9000 persons. Also there is a lot of gardens and trees of different kinds and a golf course.

Posted by Carmen.

Cádiz

Cádiz is a wonderful place to go on holiday. It’s in the South of Spain, in Andalucía, and it’ll be a fantastic place for holidays if you like the heat. It’s a “ film city”. Some films, like Alatriste, have been shot there.

Cádiz is surrounded by a lot of little towns and villages, and there’s a special place, Chiclana de la Frontera, and it can be fantastic if you know where you can go.

Chiclana is very well communicated with all the towns. You can take the car and go everywhere you want in a few minutes. There are buses too that take you and bring you everywhere.
The climate is hot, but it’s not as hot as Sevilla’s temperature, for example.
I think one of the best things is the people. They are very kind and fun.

Chiclana has got a great beach, La Barrosa. It’s very clean and quiet. There’s a little island with a castle 1 km off the coast and at sunset you can see the sun diving into the sea behind it. Near the beach there are some pubs and bars. They are not very expensive, the waiters are kind to you and you’re still on the beach! At night, they’re still open and sometimes there are parties on the beach, at midnight.

There’s a town near Chiclana, called El Puerto de Santa María. If you like shellfish, this is your perfect place. There’s a restaurant called El Romerijo. It has got great shellfish because it’s fresh fish by the fishermen,
Another place of interest is Gibraltar. It’s about 2h by car from Chiclana. It’s easy to get there and there’s a place, Punta de Tarifa, where you can stop to stretch yout legs and if you’re lucky, you can see Marruecos. It’s difficult to see it well because it’s usually foggy.
In Gibraltar you can see a little England, more or less, and the monkeys who live in the rock. It’s a good place to have a day in family. You can take beautiful photos and buy camaras, tobacco, alcohol, clothes and more things cheaper than in Spain.
Finally, there is a fantastic, beautiful, wonderful and magic place: Las Playas de Trafalgar. It’s a comfortable place. At sunset, the sun lights the boats and all the beach with its orange light. The photos are fantastic in all the beaches of Cádiz.

The South of Spain is the place where you have to go once in your life. If you haven’t gone, you don’t know how beautiful Spain is.

Bars and restaurants in Madrid

Madrid has got a lot of differents places to eat. You can go to restaurants, if you want to eat menu. Also, you can go to the bars, if you want to eat Spanish “tapas”.
There are a lot of zones to eat Spanish “tapas”, with differents typical products of Spain. You can eat, for example: squids, andalusian “gazpacho”, iberian cure ham, mixed paella, fried eggs with “chistorra”, toasted farmhouse bread with differents ingredients. Some examples of zones are: “Plaza Mayor”, “Retiro”, “Ventas”, “Sol”, etc.. This zones have different prices, but in general the prices are good, except “Casa Lucio”, “Taberna San Mamés”, “Embassy”,”Taberna Alabardero”, etc.
But if you want to go to the restaurants, you´ll have the same problem, because there are a lot of variety of this. Some of this are well-known, but more expensive, for example: “Asadores” in general (“Donostiarra”, “Txistu”), etc..But also there are a lot of restaurants with good menus and differents types of food, and the prices are cheaper than the other famous restaurants.



I was recently in one restaurant called “El Ingenio de Cervantes” that is in the street Leganitos 10, near of “Plaza de España”. The restaurant is small, but is very cosy. The restaurant decoration is dedicate to Cervantes and his work “Don Quijote”(yo can see in the photo). You have a complete menu and you choose one starter and after the second dish, meat or fish, and you finish with the desserts. The food is typical “manchega”, like: tripes of veal “Madrid style”, white beans, grilled mushrooms, bread crumbs “mancha”., etc..
The owners of the restaurant are very kind and nice, and in general you enjoy a lot because the food is very good and there isn´t too noise, and you can to talk with your partners without problems. I recommend to you to go to this restaurant.

Posted by Ruben