Little Hotels' Blog - Information, Opinion and Stories

Off topic

	Union Island We were distressed to learn of the devastation caused on Union Island by Hurricane Beryl. We enjoyed our best ever holiday there, where we found not just wonderful natural beauty but charming, friendly, genuine people. We would urge anyone who has enjoyed a holiday in the Caribbean to make a donation here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-union-island-population-recover-from-the-hurricane. ....READ MORE
	Road Racing on The Island In 2021, it may not be quite so clearcut when a motorcyclist says he will be racing on "the island". There is a plan being developed for motorcycle races on the Isle of Wight, that will be called the Diamond Races. If all goes well, the races will be held on a 12 mile course using a part of the fast, flowing Military Road on the south coast with a return leg through narrow country roads just inland. ....READ MORE
	Helping Our Community A couple of recent incidents alerted us to the importance of acessing an AED (that's an automatic external defibrillator) very quickly if someone has suffered a cardiac arrest. Looking around, we realised that there was no definitive and accurate list of the defibrillators in our locality. So we decided to create our own. We were fortunate to be able to work with Portishead Coastguard Team who sent coastguards out to find, check and photograph every defibrillator in and around Portishead. ....READ MORE
	Beware The Law of Unintended Consequences! If you use an ad-blocker on your browser, be aware that it may interfere with the working of perfectly legitimate webpages. ....READ MORE
	The Basque Language age edition of Scrabble, but there really should be. Without some adjustment to the scoring system and the numbers of each letter, the game would become impossible. When you're up in that area, if you see words liberally peppered with t’s, x’s, z’s and k’s; that’s Basque! And where does this language come from? Amazingly, nobody knows. Basque is spoken by around three-quarters of a million people, mostly in the corner of Spain known as El Pais Vasco, the remainder being in the corresponding ....READ MORE
	Catalonia: The Making of Extra-Special Wines... And Memories It has long been acknowledged that there is a mysterious connection between taste, smell and memory. Those in the know refer to it as the “Proustian Experience”, a reference to a famous passage in Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” in which he tastes a madeleine and sip of lemon tea and is instantly transported back to his aunt’s house some 40 years earlier. ....READ MORE
	The Catalan Language 4 million speakers out of the Spanish population of 45 million may not initially sound huge, but in those communities who do speak it, Catalan has a significant standing. A somewhat maligned language, it has a turbulent history which highlights the point of contention it long has been. Fundamentally though, despite the presence of other minority languages in Spain such as Basque and Galician, Catalan is the most prominent.Catalan is, to most of its speakers a very important sign of identity, som ....READ MORE
	The Spanish Language It is estimated that Spanish is spoken by between 350 and 400 million people around the world. It is the third most spoken language by number of speakers (after Chinese and English), and the second most spoken language in terms of native speakers. It is also the official language of nearly all of South and Central America. Spanish has certainly spread itself far and wide from its Iberian beginnings. ....READ MORE