It’s the Giralda of Calpe, its most recognizable symbol.

Ifach, pronounced Ee-fahk, is nowadays a bird and wildlife refuge, a last little hiccup of the Cordillería Betica that stretches across much of Andalucía and Murcia. You can visit the Peñón daily from sun up to sun down, and well-marked trails and climbing are available.

Author’s note: I was a guest of the Calpe Tourism Board on their annual blog trip and digital media conference, #Calpemocion, and will be reporting for The Spain Scoop. All opinions are my own because, ya sabéis, I like to give them.

We were regurgitated from the Dubrovnik city bus and into the dreary station, where ruddy-faced city folk roamed like the stray cats we’d seen all over the city. Taxi? a few whispered as we passed by with our suitcases. Hotel? I approached the dirty ticket window and asked for two one-ways to Herceg Novi, Montenegro, an hour south of the Pearl of the Adriatic. After two glowing days in the city and a big life decision, I would be stepping foot in my thirtieth country.

Hayley and I settled into the plastic benches inside the station, watching the rain come down. Fifteen minutes ticked by past our sheduled departure time. Then another fifteen. Buses headed to Zagreb or Mostar rumbled in and out, but nothing marked HERCEG NOVI or any other destination rolled by.

Ninety minutes after we expected to, we had passed two border controls and entered Crna Gora. The highway snakes between a series of mountains, finally dumping us out in the seaside village of Igalo on the Bay of Kotor. Low, dark clouds rolled in over the wide mouth of the famous bay, which looks like two butterfly bandages stuck together.

It was odd to remember that Montenegro was born in the same year as kiddies I taught in first grade last year, that’s it’s been centuries since they’ve had their own money, that for years they were the little sister to Serbia after the Yugoslav conflict. I braced myself for bullet holes in buildings, or war cries painted on cracked and crumbling drywall. Montenegro looked the same as Dubrovnik, just with half of the signs written in Cyrillic, a homage to the city’s tumultuous past.

Dovar met us across the street from the bus station. It’s apparently really easy to spot two bewildered American girls in a country that a cell phone claims is Serbia and things are written in cyrillic and the Roman alphabet. Our car was upgraded to an automatic, snow chains came included and we were a mere 200 meters from our rental apartment. Stana great us with open arms, enveloping us into a big hug.

“Montenegro! Very nice! Weather, very bad. Ok. We come, girls.”

She made us hot drinks, showing us around the apartment and a few scattered and torn maps of the area. Once we’d satisfied our internet vice, we set out in hopes of finding a place to eat. Stana didn’t understand our requests for food, instead offering us up a few wrinkled oranges she’d cultivated from her garden.

The rain started pouring the moment we got into the car. Unaware of how to get to the historic part of town, we drove away from the apartment and followed the narrow, winding roads until Hayley spotted a red, white and green awning. “Ah! Italian! Stop the car!”

We stopped and I immediately regretted putting my umbrella in the trunk, especially after our two gorgeous days walking the walls in Dubrovnik and drinking beers at cliffside bars. The street had turned into a landslide, a waterfall, and the Italian restaurant was actually a shoe store. Montenegro has become a popular getaway for the jet set, but we were at the end of March.

The historic center, which spills down a hill right into the Bay of Kotor, was a ghost town. The only open establishment was Portofino, easily the priciest restaurant in town during the low season. As it turned out, the hail had shut off the power in the entire historic center, and we were offered  a limited menu: Caesar Salad or Caesar Salad, to be eaten by candlelight.

At least the beer was still cold.

As we asked for the bill, the waitress told us in broken English that we’d been invited to a drink by the group of men sitting near the door. We’d observed the four townies throwing back shots of the national spirit, Rakia. They raised our glasses to us, and we did the same to them.

I think I’m going to like Montenegro, I thought to myself, crap weather or not.

Have you ever been to Montenegro? What did you like about the country, or not?

To my credit, I have never broken a bone. I think (my current toe situation is cloudy).

When I first came to Spain as part of the Language and Culture Assistant program in 2007, I was promised a student visa, a teaching gig and private health insurance during the eight months of the program. Great for being in Spain, but what about my long weekends to travel when my health insurance was not valid outside of Iberia?

The Spanish Health System is a relatively good program and free to all residents and workers, who pay their social security taxes to receive coverage. Still, there’s been a great deal of backlash with expats who have tried unsuccessfully to use their NHS card in Spanish clinics and hospitals. I myself wish I had considered an annual holiday insurance coverage policy for the times I tried to push myself to the limits unsuccessfully. These days, coverage plans such as Debenhams annual holiday insurance, seek to not only offer crazy affordable health services for expats and holiday makers, but also to go as far as insure flight cancellations and free coverage for the kiddies. These plans are extremely helpful for families moving to Spain or taking long holidays to the land of sunshine and siestas.

So let’s get to the good stuff…me beating myself up and spending far too much time in a hospital waiting room while they take the more “emergent cases” and not “esa torpe guiri” cases:

Running into the Sevici Station. Sober. While on my Phone.

Yes, this happened, and I had a black eye to show for it during my entire Semana Santa trip to Croatia and Montenegro. On my way to go out and meet Ryan and Ang, my blogger friends over at Jets Like Taxis, I checked the bus schedule on my phone and ran smack into the stationary Sevici station. I made a run for the arriving bus, and the driver even asked if I was alright when I paid onboard.

I began getting looks from other passengers who gasped as I passed by, looking for a rail to hold onto. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflective glass, I saw that I had a bump the size of a ping-pong ball on my right cheekbone, just underneath my eye. Then the throbbing began. I exited the bus at the next stop, calling the Novio to pick me up and take me to the hospital. He shook his head disapprovingly, once again proving that I am, quite literally, a walking disaster.

I’ve been to the ER in Spain a few times before, and it’s always a time-consuming nightmare. I’m always standing the wrong line (and often in the longest), or my name gets so mutilated that I don’t understand when I’m being called, or I’m forced to wait for hours, only then to get so turned around in the hospital, I end up in the maternity ward and not the triage. Even on this calm Saturday, I had to have a doctor escort me to the ER, having my wishing I’d considered some sort of private health coverage to cut through the red tape (and have a smaller building to navigate).

I had clobbered myself so well that I had nearly fractured the bone, but still being able to talk and bite were good signs. The doctor, who was actually quite friendly, uttered the words “hematoma” and must have seen my eyes widen. For someone who studied words and not pathologies, my obsession with Grey’s Anatomy has made me a hypochondriac, but the doctor told me I would merely have the bump until the hematoma broke, after which I would have a bruise for five days. Mentira, it lasted nearly two weeks, meaning all of my pictures from the Balkans looked like this:

Attack of the Pollen (and the olive blossoms and the animals and the hay….)

My childhood nickname was “Honker” (my mother’s was “Grace” because she is just as torpe as I am!) because of my terrible hay fever and my tendency to go through more tissue packets than a vendor on any given street corner in Seville sells in one day.

I hoped that coming to Spain meant exposure to different allergens that wouldn’t bother me as much as my mother’s horse did as a kid.

In May, the sunflowers greeted the warm weather and end of the course in Olivares, the town where I taught for three years. With the sunflowers came olive blossoms as well, and it turns out I’m allergic to them, too (self-diagnosed). Teaching with the window open was no longer an option, so I headed to the pharmacy for anti-histamines.

“Take this once a day, at the same hour every day, and maybe invest in a pill slicer and just take half. They’ll knock you out.” Ah, over-the-counter medicine in Spain. The pills, which were nearly the size of a quarter, had me falling asleep in an English class just a few hours later.

They say the years without rain are the worst for allergy sufferers, and last year’s spring had me blotchy, covered in hives and with red, watery eyes.

One morning it was so bad, I woke up at 6am and headed to the ER for some relief. The halls were deserted, but I waited over two hours to get an allergen shot and prescriptions for inhalers, nasal spray, eye drops and allergy pills when a private doctor could have just scribbled them away without taking my vitals while I heaved and death-rattled.

And then there was the Tough Mudder...

My friend Audrey can’t be described in ten words, or even 100. So when she asked me to do the Tough Mudder and described it as an “obstacle race in London,” I thought we’d knock back a few pints and have one last hurrah before she moved back to America in the form of a scavenger hunt.

I was so, so wrong.

For 20 kilometers, I literally defied death while scrambling over 10-foot walls, plunging into icy water and even getting electrocuted. For the entire grueling race, we picked one another up, hoisted one another over obstacles and had our clothes get torn, blood- and mud-stained and racers drop out. One of the guys on our team even needed to have medical attention at the end for muscle strain, and we were concerned that another was hypothermic.

Because I didn’t have valid insurance for the UK, I was happy to skip the extremely dangerous obstacles and to play it safe when it came to my health. Besides, I had the bumps, bruises and swollen joints to show for it for over a week.

The biggest problem I had was the stench from the river water that evening when I flew back to Spain.

Accidents happen, and often while you’re away from home. Even the most meticulously planned trip can go awry, so having a comprehensive health insurance when moving to Spain or any other country – even for the short-term – can mean a great deal of savings, both in hassle and money.

Have you had any medical incidents abroad? Were you insured?

“The hilly encinas are my office,” said Jose, not looking away from his ham leg, from which he took thin cuts and arranged them neatly onto a plate for us. I’d been eating since arriving to the Ermita de San Diego in teeny San Nicolás del Puerto, my favorite village in Spain, and my stomach could only hold so much.

Springtime in Andalucia is all about a healthy mix of hedonism and religion (which surprisingly go hand-in-hand). Holy Week revelers pay a somber penitence to the cruxifiction and resurrection, then sherry is drunk by the bucketfull during ferias all over Andalucía, and concludes with romerías in nearly all of the pueblos from late April until September.

I’ve mentioned San Nicolás del Puerto, a tiny dot of a town on Andalucia’s map. At 700 people and seven bars (seven more than in my hometown of 55,000), the city is the source of the Hueznár River, part of the Vía Verde and the birthplace of San Diego de Alcalá. Nearly all of the town’s festivities revolve around the poor man’s saint, including the Romería de San Diego, held the second Sunday of May each year.

For a small village, San Nicolás throws a big party for the romería, which is like one-part religious procession, one part tailgate. Everyone brings their coolers full of food – chacina, tortilla de papas, filetes empanados, and homemade cakes – and finds a shady spot in the hills near the hemitage for setting up their picnic. They’re often reserved by parking cars, using a fruit crate for a makeshft sign, or by tradition – I always know where Rafalín and the Novio´s father will be with their own portapotty.

At noon, the saint comes dancing in, carried on the shoulders of locals and preceeded by a brass band from the nearby Alanís de la Sierra. It’s kind of like a homecoming, and I can almost imagine my high school’s fight song instead of the paso doble that accompanies the saint before mass. Diego bobs up and down as partygoers watch on horseback, some dressed in flamenco dresses and trajes cortos. The Novio and I watched from afar, busy kicking back a few bottles of beer and helping ourselves to everyone else’s food, lest it go to waste.

Have you ever been to a Romería? Spain’s biggest and most popular, El Rocío of Almonte (Huelva) is this coming Sunday. Read about my experience at last year’s fair here.

If, like Cat, you’re relocating to Spain, you may have seen the news about the Eurozone crisis and wondered, “Is it safe for me to buy euros?”

Yes, it’s absolutely safe to buy euros. So go crazy.

There’s practically no risk of the euro collapsing, nor of you waking up one morning to find Spain has left the common currency as had been discussed, and your euros have been converted into pesetas.

Here’s why:

Since the height of the crisis last Summer, the “existential” threat to the euro has been removed.

This is thanks to European Central Bank president Mario Draghi who last Summer promised to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the common currency, which means he’d pump unlimited sums (we’re talkin’ billions and billions) into the financial system, if need be. This means that the confidence in the euro has come back from the abyss just in time for all of Europe to take their summer holidays.

What’s more, there’s massive political will holding the euro together.

If there’s one thing we learnt last year, it’s that Europe will endure a lot to hold the euro together, including bailing out 5 (count ‘em, 5) countries. This is because, for many Europeans, the Eurozone marks a concerted effort to put an end to centuries of conflict in Europe, which culminated of course with World War II. Were the euro to fall, it would bring an end to the post-war consensus, and a half century of European integration.

Given that, the euro isn’t going anywhere. You don’t have to worry when you buy the common currency!

So, how can you get the best rate on your euros before crossing the Charca? Peter lists several tips, as simple as researching the exchange rate the moment you’re even considering a move to Spain, matching up the exchange rates on Google using their tools that date back to 2009 and know that the euro and the almighty buck are never, ever getting back together (as in evening out…those were the days!)

And this gem: If you like the exchange rate, but don’t want to send your money to Spain, set up a forward contract.

This is because a forward contract lets you “lock in” the exchange rate at a point you like. For example, you may lock the US dollar in at 0.80 to the euro. Then, when you finally come to exchange currencies, you’ll get 0.80 to the euro, even if the exchange rate has fallen to 0.75 in the meantime. You’re therefore protected against future declines in the exchange rate.

Money and banking in Spain – especially with financial commitments in your home country – can be a huge, time-consuming pain in the culo. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll get the best possible exchange rate when you move to the land of sunshine and siestas! Got any other questions? Leave them in the comments below, and we’ll try and answer them for you.

Peter Lavelle is a currency broker at foreign exchange specialist Pure FX.

I dutifully took out my notebook, etching the bull’s hide of Spain and marking the end of the pilgrimmage across the top of Spain with a star. As Raquel recounted her experience walking a month across age-old trails between drags on a cigarette, I’d been imagining a return to Spain one day to walk the Way to Santiago de Compostela.

During my 2012 trip, I ran into some of my old students from IES Heliche. All roads may lead to Rome, but quite a few lead to Santiago, too!

Galicia, the region in which Santiago is located, is like my second home in Spain. On half a dozen occasions, I’ve laid my eyes on its sprawling cathedral, watched backpackers with no common language embrace in the sacred Plaza do Obradoiro, smelt the mix of incense and sweat left by peregrinos as I’ve hugged the bejeweled bust of St. James, the patron saint of Spain. I’ve even spent the Xacobeo, the Holy Years in which St. James’s Day falls on a Sunday, partying until dawn in the sacred city. The Camino has been part of my Spain bucket list since that sweltering day in June when Raquel first talked about it.

Jesus, my friend James and the Patrón himself in front of the Catedral de Santiago in 2010, a Holy Year

While many legends exist about its origins, perhaps the most common story is the one in which St. James, one of Jesus’s disciples, had his remains placed in a boat from Jerusalem. The saint was covered in conch shells and barnacles when his boat washed up on the northwest coast of Spain, and the remains were subsequently buried. Centuries later, a shepherd claims to have seen a cluster of stars in a field at night over the reputed tomb of the saint, and King Alfonso II ordered a massive cathedral to be built in that very place. For the last milenia, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have descended on the city – now a major tourist draw and intellectual center – believing that completing at least the last 100 kilometers on foot brings pleneray indulgence. This route is called la Ruta Xacobea in local galego, or the Camino de Santiago in Castellano. To me, its one name, El Camino, holds a world of meaning.

The Camino is the subject of numerous books and films, and ever since its first inference, I’ve read many of them. Paulo Coehlo’s  The Pilgrammage, Field of Stars by Kevin Codd, A Journey of Days by Guy Thatcher all stick out in my mind, and a flight home from Spain in 2011 had me watching Emilio Estevez’s poignant film, The Way.

After years of wishing, planning and reading loads of books on the Camino, I’ve finally made plans to go. My hiking boots and trail bag are purchased, our route has been carefully outlined in red from Gijón to Santiago de Compostela. Towards the end of July, Hayley and I will set out from Asturias, rumbo Santiago. The Northern Route, called the Ruta del Norte, is less-traveled, more physically straining and supposedly breathtaking, as the majority of our first week will be along the coast before taking the Primitivo route until we reach the end of our trek.

People walk for many reasons – for spiritual reasons, for a journey of self-discovery, for the sport and adventure of it all. But I’m not walking just for me and a goal eight years in the making. I’ve decided to walk two weeks on the Camino de Santiago For the Kids – to raise money for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, an organization that has been important to me for nearly ten years.

As a college student, I would only pull an all-nighter once a year, during the annual Dance Marathon. During a full day, I could not sleep, sit or drink alcohol, an this was after raising a minimum of $425 to even get in the door. For an entire day, we’d put our bodies through hell to feel some sort of what kids and their families felt.

Coupled with bi-weekly visits to the hospital’s Child Life center and numerous leadership positions, I was hooked on helping and creating tomorrow by dancing today. When I became a Morale Captain in 2005, I was assigned a family to sponsor. The Lees were coping with Kelsey’s recent diagnosis of leukemia, a side effect of the chemo she’d received earlier in the year. We began to exchange emails and phone calls, excited to meet one another at the Big Event in February, 2006. Kelsey was only 14 years old and already fighting cancer for the second time.

After repping the Lees for two years, she was passed onto another sorority sister, but stayed in the family – literally –  a sister from two pledge classes above me’s father married into Kelsey’s. Even when I moved across the charca, we kept in touch through Facebook, postcards and Skype. Invitations for her high school and technical graduation got sent to my parents’s house, along with a yearly Luau-themed fundraiser her family held in their town. Kelsey felt like a cousin to me, so I was crushed when I learned she’d relapsed once again.

“You’re so much braver than anyone I know,” she wrote me in an email just before Christmas 2011 as I was preparing to visit my family in Arizona. “I really have to come visit you in Spain to see why it is you’re still there.” I promised to call her once she was out of surgery for some build-up in fluids around her lungs, an effect of her treatment.

The following day, she passed away. Her mother sent me a text message that I read, hysterical, in the Philadelphia International Airport as I boarded a Madrid-bound plane. Attempts to organize a mini-Dance Marathon at my old school never materialized, but I donated part of my severance package to Dance Marathon in Kelsey’s name and joined the Iowa Bone Marrow Donors Network. As Hayley and I made preliminary plans for this summer, I contact the UIDM’s sponsorship and business directors, setting up a donation page and walking in memory of Kelsey and all of the other families coping.

2013 has really been my year, between a promotion, getting my European driver’s license and (fingers crossed) obtaining my master’s degree. Things may be coming up roses for me, but I realize that this year has been tough on many of my loved ones. That said, I want to raise awareness of the numerous Dance Marathons that are emotionally and financially supporting families afflicted with childhood cancer, as well as trying to raise $500 – 100% of which will go to the University of Iowa Dance Marathon. My pilgrim conch shell will be accompanied by the leis Kelsey and I wore during the Big Events we spent together, my name-tags from when I was on the leadership team, and lime green letters FTK – For the Kids.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to the University of Iowa Dance Marathon to keep Creating Tomorrow by Dancing Today, and follow me at #CaminoFTK on twitter and instagram.

And many thanks to my sponsors, without whom this Camino would not be possible.

Interested in helping me complete the Camino For the Kids? Please contact me for sponsorship opportunities or check out my Camino Pinterest board for inspiration!

Unable to get closer to the art due to a railing to prevent you from falling in, I peered through my camera lens and zoomed in and realized this art piece is more than just what meets the eye on first inspection.  The surrounding sights- river, wave-like metallic museum and visitors all become part of the piece. A piece that stops you and reminds us to take a moment to enjoy, appreciate and reflect about what is going on around you. 

The Guggenheim is open Tuesday- Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm and is open everyday July and August.

Lauren David writes at Roamingtheworld, which began in 2007 when she set off with a one-way ticket to travel from Eastern to Southern Africa solo. Nine months later, she accomplished a dream and stayed put in the San Francisco area until she got itchy feet 3 years later and moved to Andalucía, Spain in 2011. She’s traded sunny skies, free tapas for picturesque landscapes and occasional snowstorms in Basque country. Her blog is about life as an expat, travels, food, and the unexpected. Visit her atRoamingtheworld and follow her on Facebook.

My, how times (and tastes) change!

Just a few Mondays ago, the Feria de Abril’s festivities began with the lighting of the main gate, known as the portada, at midnight. Right before, around 9pm, the owners and members of the makeshift caseta tents gather for a traditional dinner of fried fish, known as the pescaíto. Seville’s isn’t exactly the gastronomical gem of Andalucía (minus its tapas scene), though fried fish, pescado frito, is one of its most typical dishes.

What it is: Battered and fried fish. My favorites are choco (cuttlefish), adobo (brine-soaked dogfish), puntillitas (baby squid) and sardinas (sardines).

Where it comes from: Owing to Spain’s many coasts, fried fish can be found throughout the country. It’s especially popular in Andalucía and considered one of Seville’s most typical dishes.

Goes great with: Beer, and fried onions and peppers, called calamares del campo.

Where to find it: Seville abounds with small shops called freidurias, places where fish are fried, weighed and served up hot in wax paper cones. While those I like best are in my neighborhood, I like Mara in Triana (San Vicente de Paul, 22-24), El Arenal in the barrio of the same name (C/Arfe, 8) and Frieduría Puerta de la Carne near the Jardines de Murillo in Santa Cruz. If you’re in Málaga, El Tintero is a great restaurant experience, and you can pick up sardines cooked over coals, called espetos.

 Have a favorite tapa you’d like to see touted on Sunshine and Siestas? Leave me a comment below, or on my Facebook page!

When I graduated college, I expected to live abroad for a year, learning Spanish and traveling as much as 631€ would allow, and the  return to Chicago to become a journalist. But I was hooked, not willing to give up my daily siesta, the cheap tapas and a whirlwind relationship with the Novio. Five years on, I make a living from teaching part-time and blogging part-time. Turns out, with Seville as my muse, I’m able to sell the city I now call my hogar dulce hogar. A city where flamenco seduces, where the sun and empty blue sky reflect off the Guadalquivir, where lunchtime stretches into dinnertime. My visitors to Seville understand the draw it’s had on me, and I seek to relate that to my readers, too.

When Flavio Bastos, a travel professional with a background in digital platforms, offered me the chance to test run his course about how to use your city as a vehicle with which to make money, I couldn’t say no. Habla de Tu Ciudad y Vive de Ella is the result of over fifteen years in the travel industry, numerous city guides and a love for Europe’s great cities.

The Course

Habla de tu Ciudad is a five-part online course that focuses on the various mechanics of starting up a blog or webpage, learning SEO, writing compelling content and learning how to monetize your blog. Each module comes with mini-lessons, complete with videos and text to helped you get the most out of each one. After deciding to self-host Sunshine and Siestas late last summer, I’ve used loads of resources on the net and other e-books to get an idea of how to begin taking my humble blog to the next level. They’re useful and pertinent, but very one-dimensional in the sense that you read it, take notes, and try to apply what you’ve learned to your own pages. But Flavio’s approach, his videos that show real-time tutorials and “homework” activities that allow you to put to practice the different topics discussed in each module.

Want proof? Type in “guy speedo siesta spain” and see who comes up first. I am an SEO genius. Not really, but the 15-year-old boy in me is loving this. Or, do a google image search for “Ham Fair Aracena” and you’ll see a few of my photos.

What Else I Liked

Flavio has worked on this course for the last four years, taking into account the latest rules and algorithms used by Google to rank pages. Apart from having the latest information within the travel and digital journalism, Flavio’s personal anecdotes of trial and error and how they led to his own successes were heart warming and left me feeling at ease. And even though it’s travel and tourism-centric, there are loads of relevant information for bloggers and digital media strategists. The course is easy to follow and starts with the basics, followed by a gradual build up.

Satisfied with that I had learned, I asked the course creator to tell me a bit more about the course.

Describe tu experiencia profesional, tanto en el sector en turismo como plataformas digitales. // Describe your professional experience, both in turismo and the digital world.

De formación soy periodista. Sin embargo tengo más de 15 años trabajando con Internet, trabajé en varias startups a lo largo de mi vida, y siempre de manera muy autodidacta. Cuando vine a vivir a Lisboa, hace 4 años, decidí que era el momento de entender más del área del turismo, que es algo que siempre me había fascinado pero nunca había tenido la oportunidad de explorar. Desde entonces he trabajado en el área de comunicaciones e internet para varias empresas, desde las RRPP para un software de revenue management hotelero hasta el community management para un buscador de turismo rural muy conocido en Portugal.

I’m a journalist by studies. Nevertheless, I have more than 15 years of experience working on the Internet, working on various start-ups throughout my life, and always in a self-teaching type of way. When I came to live in Lisbon four years ago, I decided it was he best moment to start understanding this part of tourism more – it’s something that has always fascinated my, but I never had the opportunity to explore it. Since then I’ve been working

¿Cómo desarrollaste el curso? ¿Tienes algún plan de elaborarlo o hacer otro curso parecido? // How did you develop the course? Do you have any plans to expand it, or begin another, similar course?

El curso nace de una inquietud: ver el potencial de muchas personas que no saben cómo sacarle provecho a las herramientas que nos brinda la era digital. A nivel personal, antes del curso, había formado a algunas personas con conocimientos básicos sobre cómo hacer ciertas cosas.

Por mi experiencia con la industria turística y tras ver casos como el de AirBnb (empresa valorada actualmente en 1 billón de dólares), pensé que esto es algo que puede hacer cualquier persona. Me refiero a “hablar de su ciudad”: la gran mayoría ya lo hace a través de las redes sociales: instagram, facebook, twitter. Y para vivir de ello sólo deben entender un poco más de el mundo digital y hacer eficazmente esas comunicaciones. Deben tener ciertos conocimientos: conocer cómo funcionan los programas de afiliados, optimización para buscadores (SEO), cómo escribir para web, gestión eficaz de redes sociales, asuntos de publicidad,  etc.

El curso es una plataforma pensada en brindar las herramientas necesarias a cualquier persona que quiera trabajar con Internet intentando abarcar de lo más básico a un nivel intermedio. El curso podría perfectamente llamarse “Habla de cualquier cosa y vive de ello”, pero pensé que no sería un buen nombre, y por eso decidí enfocarme en las ciudades y el turismo. Pero el curso lo han hecho personas de varias industrias y todos le están sacando provecho en sus carreras o empleos actuales, además de estar generando webs paralelas que les permiten tener ingresos adicionales.

No tengo planes de hacer un nuevo curso, sino de seguir mejorando el actual. De hecho, el curso está en constante actualización, y tenemos sesiones grupales y personales permanentemente para garantizar que quienes hacen el curso sacan el mejor provecho de las herramientas dispuestas en el curso.

The course was born from restlessness: seeing the potential that many people had to create content, but had no idea of how to take advantage of the numerous digital tools at their disposition. On a personal level, I was already training several people and teaching them the basics.

In my experience in the tourism industry and after seeing cases like AirBnb (currently valued at 1 billion dollars), I thought that it was something anyone could do: talking about their city. Most already do it through social media: twitter, Facebook, instagram. To be able to make a living really only depends on understanding the digital world a bit more and effective communication.  One should have certain skills: they should know about affiliate programs, SEO, how to write web copy, how to use social media, publicity, etc.

The course is a platform that uses the necessary tools that anyone who wants to live and work on the Internet, from the most basic to an intermediate level. It could actually be called, “Talk About Whatever You Want and Make a Living Off of It,” but I thought that it wouldn’t be such a good name, and that’s why I decided to focus on cities and tourism. But the course has been done by people in various industries who have seen its benefits in their professional careers and current jobs, in addition to running additional blogs as an extra income source.

I don’t have any plans to make another course, but to keep improving the current one. In fact, the course is constantly under construction, and we have group and personalized sessions constantly to guarantee that those who do the course get the most out of the tools at their disposal.

¿Cómo pueden los blogueros adaptar tu curso a sus blogs o las redes sociales? // How can bloggers adapt your course to their own blogs or social media?

Una de las inquietudes permanentes de los blogueros es “vivir del blog”. Con mi plataforma, muchos blogueros descubren qué están haciendo bien y qué están haciendo mal, así como generar ideas sobre nuevas oportunidades que quizás no vieron anteriormente.

Así que el curso puede funcionar como varias cosas: mera inspiración y mejoramiento de habilidades, o aprendizaje de cero de cómo iniciarte en el mundo digital, cómo escribir y sobre todo cómo sacar dinero de ello, en cualquier industria.

One of the biggest worries bloggers have is how to “live from” their blogs. With the platform, many bloggers have discovered what they’re doing well and what they’re not, allowing them to create new opportunities that perhaps they didn’t see before.

That way, the course works on many levels: plain old inspiration and improving skills, or starting from zero and learning how to get started in the digital world, how to write and, above all, how to make money within any industry.

¿Cuál es tu ciudad preferida? Descríbela en una o dos frases. // What’s your favorite city? Describe it in a few sentences.

Lisboa. Lisboa es una ciudad que para empezar, no parece una ciudad, sino una pequeña aldea pero al mismo tiempo con todos los beneficios de una capital europea. Tiene playa y montaña a menos de 30 minutos. Y es muy auténtica. Por  eso adoro esta ciudad.

Lisbon. Lisbon is a that, at first glance, doesn’t seem like a city but a small town, but at the same time has all the benefits of being a European capital. It’s got beaches and mountains at less than 30 minutes. And it’s very authentic. That’s why I love this city.

Mil gracias to Flavio for providing me with a free trial of his great digital training program, Habla de Tu Ciudad. As always, all opinions expressed are my own. Click on the link above to learn more and sign up to learn how you can start living from your city, and take advantage of this incredible offer, plus a 20€ discount by using the code SUNSHINE. First ten to grab it and purchase the course will get the discount. Follow Flavio on twitter at @fba.

Lauren David writes at Roamingtheworld, which began in 2007 when she set off with a one-way ticket to travel from Eastern to Southern Africa solo. Nine months later, she accomplished a dream and stayed put in the San Francisco area until she got itchy feet 3 years later and moved to Andalucía, Spain in 2011. She’s traded sunny skies, free tapas for picturesque landscapes and occasional snowstorms in Basque country. Her blog is about life as an expat, travels, food, and the unexpected. Visit her atRoamingtheworld and follow her on Facebook.