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Tennis legends Bjorn Born and Yevgeny Kafelnikov will compete on the famous clay courts of the Hotel Puente Romano during The Marbella Masters 2011 taking place at the Puente Romano Tennis Club 25th-27th August. 11 time Grand Slam Champion Bjørn Borg and former World Number 1 Yevgeny Kafelnikov will be joined by Wimbledon Champion Pat Cash and former top 15 players Younes El-Alanoui and Ronald Agenor. Iranian tennis trickster, Mansour Bahrami will also return to the Masters this year. City Councilor of Sports angel Mora says “It is an honour for our city to host the 2011 Marbella Masters. It is a world-class sporting event that Marbella is proud to host, it will attract some tennis’ best ever players.”

The club is particularly excited to welcome back Bjorn Borg to the hotel. Bjorn is very familiar with the clay courts of Hotel Puente Romano as he managed the club after it first opened in 1979. Talking ahead of the tournament in August, Bjorn said: “I am really looking forward to returning to Puente Romano Tennis Club where l have so many friends and great memories.”  Read more »

Another year with San Juan in Sabinillas. “La Noche de San Juan” is held each year on the evening of the 23rd of June and goes on through to the early hours of the 24th which is the so called Dia de San Juan. This is the shortest night of the year and the longest day which has to be celebrated. As well it is the old pagan midsummer celebration which has been ‘Christianified’. A huge castle/tableau sort of thing is constructed on the beach in Sabinillas. You should go now and have a quick look. It’s an amazing work again, created by local artist Juan Oliva. This castle will be burned down by midnight, when it is also customary to walk into the sea to wash away any bad luck. The night is also marked by nice fireworks on the beach in Sabinillas, live music and dancing in the center of Sabinillas until the early hours of the morning.

This years programme (all timings approximate):

9.30 pm – Parade by the Manilva Town Band

10.30 pm – Live music by the group Libertad who will continue into the early hours of the morning

11.30 pm – Official welcome from Manilva Town Council

12 midnight – The bonfire will be lit, followed by a spectacular firework display

Here in Southern Spain the school summer holidays are nearly upon us, starting near the end of June and will last for almost 3 months. Right now, children and parents alike are looking forward to taking a break from work or house chores and relaxing in the summer heat with a refreshing iced drink.

I can see you dreaming now… how wonderful it will be not to have to leave the house so early in the morning to take the children to school, and how snuggly the bed will be if you get the chance of a lie in. Yes. Perfect, peaceful bliss…for a while.

However, three months can turn out to be a veeeeery long time, with boredom setting in quite quickly when active and inquisitive children are cooped up in the house and have no activities planned to fill in the void.

I’ve taken the liberty of writing a little boredom-free guide, full of information and activities for the parents who are truly stuck for what to do with their children during the seemingly endless break, when the pool at the urbanization just isn’t cutting the mustard anymore… or even for parents who are bringing their children on holiday during the summer from other countries, and are unaware of activities outside of the hotel grounds.  Read more »

Hoping to purchase a second home in the Costa del Sol? Then before you make the purchase there’s the important matter of getting a good exchange rate on your funds. Exchange into euros at the wrong time and it can knock hundreds or even thousands off the final sum. So how do you locate the best rate?

The most important thing to remember is to avoid your local bank. In a lot of cases, people trust their bank on exchange rates because they use them for other financial services. In fact though, banks provide terrible exchange rates compared to those available elsewhere. This is, in brief, because banks aim to make as large a profit on the transfer as possible.  Read more »

If you have children you are always worried something could happen or they just get lost. Telttoo had an idea for decals, that can be customised with important information to the person wearing it and the person applying it. So you can have a decal with information such as telephone numbers and other contact details or even allergies and dietary requirements, identification, etc. At the beach, summer camps, fairs, amusement parks, school trips, shopping centres, children parties and in all those ocassions where your loved ones are not with you. With Telttoo you can be safer and easily contactable in an easy, convenient and fun way.

Telttoo was born from the need of parents to feel safer by knowing that in case of any problem, their children, with a simple gesture of pointing at their Telttoo, can ask for help and their parents can be contacted quickly on their mobile phone.

Telttoo is also very useful for other groups of people, such as elderly, ill or disabled, providing confidence and security to their family and themselves.

Telttoo is sold in templates of 45 decals for a price of 19.90 Euro at telttoo.com/en. All you need to do is cut them and apply them with water and you will feel much safer.