Left Madrid on the fast train to Seville and it was a two and a half hour journey. Arrived at the station, got a taxi to hotel and were in our room in about 20 minutes from when the train arrived. Train travel beats plane travel on lots of levels.
Our hotel, Don Paco is quite good, in a good location and has a rooftop pool with views of Seville. The temperature in Seville has been in the low 30s, so the pool is getting good use.
The first afternoon, we walked to the main tourist area, where the main feature is the Cathedral. Trying to follow the tourist map and google maps was close to impossible. What looks like a main road in Seville might be a single car lane with no footpath!
The Cathedral is the largest Gothic church in the World and 3rd largest overall. It does look impressive.
After a light lunch of tapas we wandered back to the hotel and spent some time poolside.
Between 4pm and 8pm everything is shut for siesta, so for dinner we headed off at about 8:30pm. We went to two highly rated tapas bars not too far from the hotel. Both were great. The second, El Rinconcillo, is the oldest tapas bar in Seville (maybe Spain). If you stand at the bar and order drinks and food, your bill is written in chalk on the counter and you pay at the end. A great atmosphere of locals and some tourists. Back at the hotel, we had a nightcap on the rooftop bar, overlooking Seville.
On Tuesday, we had an easy going day, we are trying to organise a trip to Morocco leaving Thursday, at the time of writing this blog nothing organised yet!!!! We wasted some time at a travel agent and walked around a little bit. After another tapas lunch at a very highly rated bar ( 20m across the road from the hotel and was also very good), we spent a few hours at the pool. That was until a school group of thirty (seemed like 130) 15 year old English students invaded the pool, I couldn't smell the serenity anymore!
In the evening we walked to the Plaza de Espana, via the Christopher Columbus memorial. The Plaza de Espana is incredible. It is a building in the shape of a horseshoe about 150m across. Every region of Spain is represented here with a tiled mosaic of the region. Then we walked through the gardens to the riverside and towards the Cathedral. We decided to graze for dinner. Our first tapas bar was the Bodega Santa Cruz, very busy and crowded then we went back to El Rinconcillo, where we had a nice time chatting with a Spanish/ Irish couple and also a couple of lovely girls from France and Germany. Once again back to the rooftop bar at the hotel for a nightcap.
Cheers,
A & K.
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