After waving goodbye to Portugal and crossing the border, the time zone difference meant that what I’d thought was a four hour bus ride was only three – hurrah! Plus when we arrived at the Seville bus station, it was only a 10 minute walk to our accommodation (which was good, because it had started raining.)
The streets seemed deserted and grey, but also very narrow, and it looked like our accommodation, Ninesuites, was located in a pedestrian street.
After getting ourselves in and drying off, we headed out for a bite to eat and a bit more of an explore. Amazingly, once the rain stopped and the people came out again, Seville seemed much more alive and colourful!
R was keen to try a local speciality of pork cheek, so we headed to a little corner place down the street from our suite, and I tried a Tinto de Verano (translates as Summer Wine, but ended up a sangria-type mix of red wine and lemonade or lemon squash.) we also had a mind-blowing baked artichoke dish, garnished with prawns and Iberian ham.
After dinner, we took a walk to find a bookshop, which was unfortunately closed, but we drowned our sorrows in gelato, trying such interesting flavours as pine nut, or ‘new’. They were delicious!
Our first full day started with a walking food tour, where Devour Tours took us for a wander to find out about Iberian ham and the different grades, churros (none for me unfortunately), a vermouth drink accompanied by local sliders (I had Spanish tortilla of egg and potato instead) and marinated carrot salad, then fried fish (I had tomato salad) with a dry white sherry wine. To finish we had almond cookies made by nuns (I had fried salted almonds). Everything was tasty, but I wished I’d been able to consume a little more similar to the group’s dishes.
Our afternoon consisted of some shopping, as we’d come across a shop selling fabric to make flamenco dresses (I didn’t buy any -yet- but what a range of polka dots!) but many of the shops were shutting for siesta. We popped into the supermercado in the basement of the department store near our accommodation to find some interesting bits and bobs, and headed home for siesta ourselves.
After a rest, we headed out for more book shopping on our way to the evening’s flamenco show. We browsed our way through comic book stores, second hand book stores and record stores to kill time until the flamenco show opened, but neither of us bought anything more than a cup of strawberries with chocolate sauce!
The show was great though. We’d booked at La Madriguera de Mai, and the food was great (we had potatas bravas, gf fried seafood, pork cheeks again, and fried peppers, accompanied by sangria.) our hostess was incredible friendly and charismatic, flirting with all and sundry and even getting up after the show to sing to the crowd.
The show was fantastic too, starting off with a solo guitarist, who was then joined by a singer, then by a dancer. They put on two sets of emotive, heart swelling music and dance for the small intimate audience. We weren’t allowed to take photos during the performance but could have a happy snap with the performers afterwards.
Walking back to the apartment after 11pm was strange – the shops were shutting but there were still a lot of people on the streets, coming back from dinner or drinks, or delivering retail goods to shops etc.
Our second day was a little more chilled, browsing the shops a bit (interesting to see which books are often found in the English section of the bookshops – Fahrenheit451 and Tom Sawyer seem to be popular!) and R had a shave at the Barber de Seville.
Then it was time for our flamenco lesson. I figured it was something we needed to try, even though R wasn’t as keen as I was… but it was lots of fun, and E from IShowUSeville was a great teacher, showing us the basics of some stomps, some hand moves and some Olés. We even managed to do a 40second mini choreography, although R isn’t keen for it to become public!
That night we went to another flamenco show, this time at a larger venue (El Patio Sevillano), which was empty when we showed up, and then three busloads of tour groups plus a handful of smaller groups turned up within ten minutes, and we were off!
This show was much more choreographed and showy than last night, but demonstrated more of the different styles and props, plus there were multiple male and female dancers for variety in costumes etc.
We ended up walking back to our apartment again, this time along the waterfront, dodging locals getting their nightly exercise and travellers like us having a wander.
I enjoyed Seville, but I think if I go back, I’ll stay somewhere a little out of the tourist centre.
Two Weeks Away 