Huelva

I haven't talked about Huelva yet. I love the town so far. I guess it is technically a small city. Coming from living in New York the past 4 years, I was afraid I would dislike living in a city as small as Huelva, but so far, I like it a lot! It is big enough that if you want to go to other parts of the city you need to take a bus, or go for a pretty lengthy walk. On the other hand, the city center is small enough that you can walk across it in 20 minutes. Huelva is my first taste of a European city, and I think it's beautiful! I think the European aesthetic is more beautiful in general. There are lots of older buildings everywhere, no skyscrapers here, and all the buildings have lots of balconies with plants dangling down and beautifully designed tile walls or detail. There are numerous plazas and small parks, palm trees, and several old churches. In the city center, the streets are for walking and socializing, not for cars. In some of the older buildings you can see the Arabic aesthetic influence, which I love. The streets are all stone brick and cafe tables sprawl out into the streets everywhere. On a more general note, never having been to Europe and coming from the US, it seems to me that this city has a old European romantic feel. It is pretty family oriented and cute old folks stroll down the street or smoke cigars on one of the many street-side benches chatting about whatever it is that cute old people chat about.
There is one cafe which quickly became a regular haunt for us-Bar Aqua-it has wifi for one, every Tuesday there is a language exchange where people from all over come together and practice speaking different languages with each other, every Wednesday there is trivia, and every Thursday its is board game night. We are now on first name basis with the wait staff, so we feel extra cool when we go in there haha. Also, the food and drink in Huelva are cheap and it is totally acceptable to get a wine or beer (or two) casually at any time during the day.
This type of street layout (that is, for walking and gathering at cafes) really reflects the 'slowness' and socially-focused nature of the Spanish culture. As an American coming from the North East, this really stuck out to me. In general, things move slower in Spain, everything takes longer to get done, but there is a really refreshing social intimacy that comes out of this. It is the norm to get desayuno/breakfast (consisting of a cafe/coffee and tostada media/half a toasted bun with oil and a tomato based sauce--the Spanish think eggs for breakfast is ludicrous haha) at a nearby cafe anytime between 9-11, head to work until siesta at 2-5/5:30 during which everything besides cafes shut down, and return to work until close around 9pm. Dinner is at 9. This style work day has the effect of some inefficiency (as we unhappily experienced trying to get things fixed in our apartment) but one has to wander if Americans were more like this, would we be a little less neurotic?