Living room angles

8 months after we moved into our new home, and it is starting to become presentable… There are still a couple of corners of shame (skamvråar) with boxes which haven’t been unpacked (papers and shoes…) and we still don’t have an oven or kitchen cupboard doors. Here are two views of our living room (the dining part is at the front of the room by the windows and the balcony):

Yes, one of those corners with boxes… The big book case in the middle is from Puerto Rico and we tried to give it a built-in look with Ikea Billy shelves around it. The leather armchairs are also from Puerto Rico and the armchair to the left is my grandmother’s and should be in V’s room but is currently hiding the hole from the partly removed fireplace (to stop V from climbing into the hole which is not too clean…). We still have to decide what to do about the fireplace. We think that you are not allowed to use it so we might put in a fake fireplace? The carpet is from my grandfather and has a label stating that it is from Iran!

Another living room angle, with my grandmother’s cupboard (her brother made it for my grandparents when they got married in the late 1940’s), her Tandberg radio (V loves to push the buttons and turn up the volume…) and the foot stool that belongs to the armchair plus a picture that O got from his colleagues when leaving Puerto Rico.

And this is what it looked like last summer… Before and after the demolition of the fireplace, and polishing of the wooden floor!

Puerto Rican Easter

I have written before about the Easter processions in Puerto Rico, and also about the Spanish Easter celebrations, but here are some more photos for you from Puerto Rico:

As you all know we moved from Puerto Rico little more than a year ago, just after Easter, and I think that it is time to be a bit nostalgic again here on the blog! All holidays in Puerto Rico imply one big thing for Puerto Ricans and that is… GOING TO THE BEACH! I always thought this was a little strange as you can go to the beach every day (or weekend at least) all year around, but a lot of people don’t (and neither did we after a while). I guess it is usually the case when you have something too near by and you need to do your weekly shopping, cleaning etc on the weekends!

The whole family goes to the beach for Easter…

However, as most of the holidays are religious holidays, and most Puerto Ricans are [more] religious [than maybe other nationalities, if I may generalise] there is usually quite a gathering around religious traditions. The Easter processions in San Juan are very popular and the streets around the cathedral in the old town were packed with worshippers on Good Friday.

Preparing for the procession, and of course people taking photos…

The streets were packed, a mix of worshippers and tourists…

“Jesus” starting the long walk around the city…

The congregation sings hymns during the walk and the priest reads (hence the loudspeaker). O recognised all the songs from Spain.

All the way around the Old San Juan goes the procession…

People showing their devotion in different ways (sorry about the quality, wanted to be discreet…)

And the procession ends outside the cathedral again, with the crucifixion… Quite macabre for somebody not catholic…

San Juan’s cathedral

Fortunately there were ways to cool down after the long walk… A piragua with parcha flavour, maybe? (crushed ice with passion fruit flavour in a cone)

And afterwards you can reward yourself with a traditional Mallorcan Easter / Lent treat, una coca con sardinas y verduras in La España bakery.

After fauna comes flora…

Roble amarillo at the end of March

Or not really, at least in Swedish I think we say “flora & fauna”, not the other way around but since my last blog post was dedicated to animals and insects I thought I would make this the flora post:

Similar tree in April – less leaves…

Photo taken in May – almost no leaves left

Help me, how do you search for names of trees and flowers on the internet? I never seem to make succesful searches for flora, nor fauna actually. However, thanks to Britta, I now know that the tree I showed last week is called roble amarillo / plateado in Puerto Rico. The name could be translated as yellow / silver oak. But is that really how the tree is called in English? It definitely doesn’t look like the oaks I am used to in Europe… Apparently the tree also exists in pink – both in Puerto Rico and in Egypt according to Marianne.

Flowers of the roble amarillo…

A walk in my old Puerto Rican neighbourhood

Time flies and it is almost 4 months ago now that we left San Juan and our life in Puerto Rico. I haven’t really had time to miss it too much, but I think about our great friends there very often. This week I got a long email from my Spanish teacher, which made me very nostalgic and then my Peruvian friend CALLED me one evening. It was so wonderful to get news from them both and I really hope that we will be able to meet  up again soon because I do miss them and all the other people we knew!

Our street with the view towards the sea, the Atlantic Ocean

Since we have had a heat wave in Brussels for the last two weeks (it seems to be over now, it is only around 20 degrees at the moment and O and I both used covers while sleeping last night) I have been thinking a lot about the differences between Brussels and San Juan and my conclusion is this: in San Juan there is AC everywhere and you have the sea where you can find a breeze – in Brussels you can’t escape the heat anywhere, except in the supermarkets’ fridge departments!

The neighbours’ old Jag that was for sale for almost the whole 2½ years we lived in the building. They had of course already replaced it with a new one..

Most of the photos in this post are from the 30th March, the second day the movers came and I went for one last walk to Walgreens (pharmacy / convenient store which is open 24 hours) from our house. As we stayed on for a few days more in a hotel at the other end of the Condado peninsula, we actually did go for some more walks in the neighbourhood but from the opposite direction.

The old house that could be rented for big parties and during Xmas it would have an amazing light display and Christmas songs would be played – a little tacky some people would say but then Christmas in the Caribbean is kind of tacky!

Just opposite is this beautiful building which is a small hotel

Avenida Ashford / Ashford Avenue, the main street in Condado where we lived

I would always check out the party and wedding dresses in this shop but never entered

The big Marriott Hotel where we stayed when we came for house-hunting and where we would sometimes go for a mojito and listen to music. Crazy person jogging in the middle of the day – too hot!

The Marriott is on the right hand side of the street, right ahead is one of three Starbucks in Condado and a Häagen Dazs where O would always chose Belgian chocolate…

Design shop where they sold DesignHouse Stockholm products and my aunt bought an Alessi Christmas ornament

Our favourite sushi place where the waitress knew that we always wanted two bottles of Perrier and the Japanese owner always greeted us with a recognising smile

Ad for the Dominican republican beer Presidente – the Puerto Rican beer is called Medalla

Every last Sunday in the month there was a jazz festival at the local square by the sea, Ventana al Mar. We only went once with our pic-nic basket but would usually try to at least go for a walk to feel the atmosphere…

Our Walgreens where we would get our milk, medicine (once they charged me 10 times too much but I was eventually reimbursed on this very day when I went for the walk!! There is a huge difference between paying $20 or $200!), AT& T phone credit etc. One of the things I really miss in Brussels is that there is nowhere that is open 24 hours (or at least I haven’t found it) – in Sweden most cities have a petrol station that is open 24 hours where you can buy basic groceries…

Walking back, Marriott on the left and Starbucks on the left…

The piragua (slush puppies, i.e crushed ice with flavour) man – a little bell announced his presence

Danny’s International – burger and pizza place, we didn’t go very often as we preferred Fuddrucker’s burgers and another pizzeria, Via Appia

The touristy restaurants – Yerba Buena is Cuban and Tijuana is of course Mexican, both are actually quite good. Except when Tijuana’s mariachi band is playing 10 cm from your ear while trying to eat…

The Argentinian restaurant Ummo’s terrace would be packed in the evenings but we would always eat inside as it felt too much like sitting in the middle of the street, passers-by could knock over your glass of wine!

Our bank – the security guy would greet me with a “Buenos días” but there was one girl who was always in a bad mood, barking “Siguiente” (Next) and I was almost scared of her…

Spot the tourists sitting in the bright sun on the hot metal bench at the bus stop – the [few] locals would wait in the shade opposite the street by the bank. I wonder how many hours I have spent waiting for the bus to the Old San Juan there…

Eros Mini-market where I would buy milk when it was too hot to walk all the way to Walgreens

The corner of our street and Avenida Ashford – I didn’t realise until now when looking at the photo that the UPS store has a new FedEx sign in the window!?

Walking towards our house on the left right

One of my favourite trees but nobody could ever tell me what it was called! Updated: It is a roble plateado / roble amarillo, thanks B!

Our condominium – we lived on the 9th floor. The windows to the right (two narrow ones and one small) were for the kitchen and one of the bathrooms, they were facing south while all the other rooms had ocean views to the north (except our bedroom that had views of the ocean from the east

I hope you enjoyed my nostalgic walk in our old neighbourhood!

Show & Tell / Friday theme: Nails

Already Friday again, which means that we have been 5 days in Europe! I wanted to show something from our week in Spain and since Taina has decided that today’s theme should be “Nails”, this is what I came up with:

On Wednesday we were baby-sitting O’s niece M (3½) after school and she was very pleased when we invited her to El Corte Inglés (Spanish department store) for churros con chocolate…

What does it have to do with nails, you are wondering??

Look, O’s nails dipping a churro in the chocolate… The chocolate is so thick that is almost impossible to drink, think liquid chocolate mousse. The churros are dipped in the chocolate and what remains is eaten with a spoon.

O drawing a donkey, which both M and I thought looked like a horse!?

O’s and M’s nails (and chin)

Going to El Corte Inglés for churros and chocolate is something we do almost every time we come to Spain and I told M of the first time we went with her, it was almost exactly 3 years ago and of course she was too young for churros. The three of us were definitely the youngest in the cafeteria on Wednesday, as we were surrounded by posh old ladies (and a few men) taking a break from shopping while having tapas or churros.

Some of you might remember my blog post about my Puerto Rican toe nails… O was joking last week that I might want some fake nails as a Puerto Rican souvenir, NO thank you very much! Fake nails are just too fake for me and it doesn’t matter if they are short and have French manicure, they still don’t look real. The very long fake nails so popular with certain Puerto Rican women are quite disgusting, I always wonder how much dirt they gather, and extremely unpractical!

My Puerto Rican toe nails – a once in a lifetime experience 😉

Maybe the other Show & Tell:ers are bigger fans of painted nails than I am? Check them out here:
Anki, Anna, Anne, Anne-Marie, Annika, Bejla, Desiree, Erica, Helena, IamAnnika, IngaBritt, Mais-oui, Musikanta, Nilla, Olgakatt, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, and Under Ytan.

PS Once again I have to apologise for not having had time to answer all your comments on the previous posts, and to not having had much time to comment on other blogs lately…

Show & Tell / Friday Theme: In my Easter egg I would like…

Taina in Connecticut is the April hostess for the Show & Tell and her chosen, very challenging, themes are:
2nd April: In my Easter egg I would like…
9th april: Nails
16th April: White lies
23rd April: Power
30th April: OMG how embarrassing!

We have no Easter atmosphere at the hotel, but last year we followed both Swedish and Spanish / Catholic Easter traditions, including eating fish on Good Friday and lamb on Easter Sunday:

Good Friday procession in the Old San Juan – religious processions are an integral part of Spanish Easter celebrations

Swedish Easter egg

Swedish Easter decorations – on a plate. Next year I would like to take in branches from [our?] garden and decorate them with these ornaments

This year there is no Swedish Easter egg filled with Swedish sweets 😦 , we are not going to the Old San Juan to look at the Easter procession (O is too tired after having worked until almost 10 o’clock last night) but we are going to eat fish today as good Catholics (Hello, I am protestant!?). O has promised me sushi, which might not be the most traditional way of eating fish on Good Friday…

Conclusion: this year since I won’t have a proper Easter egg,  I will make do with sushi at my favourite Japanese restaurant in San Juan!!

I apologise for my not-so-updated list of Show & Tell participants: Anki, Anna, Anne, Anne-Marie, Annika, Bejla, Desiree, Erica, Helena, IamAnnika, IngaBritt, Mais-oui, Musikanta, Nilla, Olgakatt, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, and Under Ytan.

Show & Tell / Friday theme: Change

I really have to apologise for my sporadic participation in the Show & Tell / Friday theme, but here’s at least an interpretation of today’s theme which is CHANGE, chosen by Saltis.

Our lives, as I have mentioned so many times before, will change in a week’s time (or so, probably Easter Sunday to be specific) when we leave Puerto Rico and move back to Brussels.

Here are some photos to show the way our everday views will change from living in San Juan to re-making a life in Brussels. It is probably not an entirely fair comparison, but I want to underline that I love both cities and just like I have missed Brussels, I will miss San Juan and our life here.

Street life in Old San Juan

Brussels street view

A rainy (Midsummer’s) day in San Juan

Brussels on a rainy (National) day

Punta / Playa Escambrón, San Juan

Parc Leopold, behind the European Parliament, Brussels

The City Wall in the Old San Juan

The old City Wall in Brussels – not much left of it…

Plazuela de la Rogativa, San Juan

Manneken Pis on Belgium’s National Day (21st July), Brussels

The Raíces (Roots) fountain in the Old San Juan (usually spraying passers-by with water)

Fountain in the Parc Royal, Brussels

Old San Juan by night (seen from our departing cruise ship)

Brussels Town Hall at the Grand’ Place, by night

I will try to make the blog round today but I can’t promise anything with all the things I need to do before the movers arrive on Monday morning…
Anki, Anna, Anne, Anne-Marie, Annika, Bejla, Desiree, Erica, Helena, IamAnnika, IngaBritt, Mais-oui, Musikanta, Nilla, Olgakatt, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, and Under Ytan.

PS I did a similiar post comparing a Swedish autumn with autumn in Puerto Rico – click on the link.

Wednesday Recipe for Lemon & Butter Fish and Fake Risotto

Only one week left in the apartment here in Puerto Rico and we are trying to finish all the food we have at home (pantry, fridge & freezer). Our friends will probably get some food packages, just like when we moved from our home in Brussels and the farewell party guests went home with bottles of alcohol and canned food 😉

Enter our kitchen

I made the following recipe last week and it was delicious! I merged two different Rachael Ray recipes* and then adapted them to what we had at home:

Lemon & Butter Fish and Fake Risotto
5-8 grape tomatoes (or whatever kind of tomatoes you have at home)
garlic cloves
1 deci-litre of rice per person
fish filets (e.g. white fish such as cod or mahi-mahi)
a handful of mushrooms – sliced
a handful of fresh / frozen spinach
1 onion – chopped
fish stock
butter
olive oil
parsley
lemon (juice + peel)
whole-grain flour

Saute the chopped onion in olive oil. Add the rice, fish stock cube and water to cook the rice as usual.
If you are like my O who hates tomato skins when the tomatoes are warm, sink them into some boiling water for a few seconds and then peel the tomatoes. Cut them up and put aside.
Fry the sliced mushrooms with a clove or two of garlic in olive oil.
Dry the fish filets and turn them over (dredge) in whole-grain flour. Fry them in olive oil, and season with salt & pepper.
Remove the fish and melt some butter in the frying pan, when brown add lemon juice & peel, some fish stock and parsley.
When the rice is ready, add the peeled and chopped tomatoes, fried mushrooms and spinach to the rice and mix.
Serve the fish on top of the fake risotto and add a little bit of sauce.
This was one of the best and most simple fish recipes I have ever made, but it tasted so good – even as left-overs the next day.

Not the best photo but I was so hungry and didn’t have the patience to take another one

Have you noticed that I hardly ever make a cream-based sauce? Living with a Spaniard I just never have cream / crème fraiche at home, and the sauce above is one of the few times I have used butter in the last year (except for pancakes, baking and making quiche). I have realised that a tomato-based sauce or just some lemon juice, stock or white wine is just as delicious! (and I never thicken my sauces, I like them thin and runny!)

The second lift in the apartment goes straight from the garage to the kitchen, very practical!

No etiquette question today but some photos from the best kitchen I have had so far – and we are planning to use it as a model for our next home (in case there isn’t already a great kitchen in the place we buy!?). I would only change the colour scheme – the busy red-brown granite makes it almost impossible to see dirt**, which I guess could be a good thing 😉 and I would choose white kitchen cupboards. O doesn’t agree so let’s see who has to do the furniture compromise in the kitchen! We do agree on one thing though – the cupboards should go all the way to the ceiling; less dust and dirt to clean and more storage!

The kitchen isn’t actually very big but since the dining area of the living room is just next door, it doesn’t have to be bigger. It is well-planned and there is definitely plenty of room for at least two persons to work at the same time. I would like to have a separate book shelf for all the cook books in a future kitchen, in order to free up counter space, and why not a big larder / pantry as well!

A sink with a view is just the best – why stare into a wall when doing dishes or preparing a meal?

*) From her book 365: No Repeats (Lemon and Brown Butter Fish Fillets + Grape Tomato-Arugula Rice)
**) Or tiny ants which we have had problems with lately… Can you believe that they climb up the wall and in through a crack by the window on the 9th floor!? Well, they do and it is really annoying!

Retail therapy and a seaside lunch

Only three weekends left in Puerto Rico and today we did some outlet shopping, drove along the beautiful northern coast from Barceloneta to Arecibo and had a delicious seafood meal.

I have to confess something; it is actually the third weekend in a row that we go to the outlets! 😕 Maybe we are shopaholics but the clothes are much cheaper here than in Europe and we might as well aprovechar (take advantage) while we are here! Especially as we do need to update our wardrobes for the colder climate in Belgium.

Check out these bargains*:

$15-cardigans from Ralph Lauren; a black wool one and one in white cotton ($15 = 11 € / 107 SEK!)

A dark blue blouse and a top from Banana Republic for $15 and $10 (7 € / 71 SEK)

My favourite bargain – a summer dress from Banana Republic, $45 (33 € / 322 SEK)

Swedish B had decided to join us for today’s excursion and we met in Barceloneta where the huge Prime Outlets mall is located. We only went into a handful of shops and actually only shopped in RL and BR. As O likes to say, we were not “very inspired” (despite the above purchases), and maybe we are quite “shopped out” after the last weekends’ shopping sprees.

Our second destination was a restaurant that B has been telling us about but we haven’t had the opportunity to check out:

Salitre Mesón** Costero in Arecibo

Fortunately we didn’t bring any children  😉

View over Arecibo’s lighthouse, el faro Los Morillos

Surtido marino – an assortment of seafood (calamari, real fish sticks and coconut shrimp)

Asopao de camarones – Puerto Rican soup with rice and shrimp (I got mofongo (mashed plantains) as a side order). !Delicioso!

Another photo of the Arecibo lighthouse

It was a lovely place and we fully enjoyed the late lunch and the views over the ocean, the lighthouse, the surfers and the lizards on the beach (no lizard photo today though). Definitely worth the drive to Arecibo (79 km from San Juan).

*) We hardly ever pay the full [outlet] price when we shop at the outlets, and always look for “Clearance” and today we also had extra discount vouchers of 15% in Banana Republic and 20% in RL, hence the low prices…
**) Mesón is an old-style tavern

European women who lunch in San Juan…

A few weeks ago I decided that in order to maximise spending time with my friends before leaving we had to schedule to meet regularly during this last month. My French and Peruvian (so the title of the post is obviously wrong!) friends and I have met for breakfast or lunch in various locations every week.

These are my top two favourite places in the neighbourhood, places that I have discovered in the last month thanks to my French friend E and it really is too bad that I have such little time left to go back and enjoy them!

Hacienda San Pedro Coffee Shop is just opposite the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR) and gets its coffee of course from The Hacienda San Pedro in Jayuya. We are hoping to be able to visit the coffee hacienda before leaving Puerto Rico – it’s on the list!

It is so nice to go and have “fika” (Swedish expression for having a coffee break) in a place that is NOT Starbucks! The coffee is better and cheaper and the atmosphere is just different. As French E said, it feels European! I discovered the yummiest ecological yoghurt, which comes with cereal and fruit, here and I was very pleased when I noticed that they also sell it in the Borders Café in Plaza las Américas.

Under the Trees entrance

Yesterday E took me to another hidden gem – who would have thought that behind the trees along a busy street next to the Hilton Doubletree hotel, a calm and fresh restaurant with delicious and affordable dishes could be found? Under the Trees should really be called Behind the Palm Trees  😉

Behind the trees there is a really busy street and I used to pass on my way to the Alliance Francaise without realising what an oasis I was missing…

You have to imagine the big scrumptious salads we had for lunch yesterday… I forgot to take a photo before we had finished. We choose self-service (not paying a tip is great!!) and had two huge salads, shared a yummy almond-raspberry cake and drinks for less than $25!

The best part of the lunch? That we were sitting outside and with the breeze we were “almost cold” as E said at the same time as I had the exact same thought. We laughed – two Europeans who marvel at the fact that they are almost cold [outside] in the Caribbean! And we were really pleased that we hadn’t decided to sit inside where we would have been too cold!

Too bad that the background is so busy, but can you see the lizard enjoying the sticky sweet stuff on the wall in the photo above?