a bitsa of Seville AND Portugal

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4 September 2011 1100 (Seville, Spain, 2058 NZ)
Today is the day we ditch the friends and head off on our own… well the 3 of us visitors that is and a few semi locals from spain tell us that we are bound to get robbed in Barcelona, all part of the experience right? Wonder how long I can think that if im the one to get robbed! Haha
So the last few days have been awesome – we arrived in Seville on Thursday avo after a Ryan Air delay (apparently this is fairly common) & our Seville hosts, Debbie & Paul, were at the airport to meet us! Hooray! They bought us back to their place, they live in a hotel which does a great deal through their work (Airbus Military) so we are in the room next door for next to nothing a night! Even better it has air con! Although it wasn’t very warm on Thursday night but I quite enjoyed getting to wear two layers!
We headed down to their local pub ‘The Phoenix’ & had a few beers as we waited for the Argentinian Steak House where we were heading for tea to open… 9PM!!! It was definitely worth the wait though! The place had plastic chairs & long tables with paper on them for table cloths which just got replaced prior to the next diner eating, not arriving! The menu was awesome, I would kind of liken the place to ‘Big Willy Rustlers’ in the way that they had the meat on display so you could check out what you were going to eat before they cooked it IF you wanted to BUT they cooked it for you! I had Argentinian Bull, delicious! And they had really good aioli! Ali-oli is actually what they seem to refer to it as over here but it is very very hard to come by in restaurants! The red wine turned up in unlabelled bottles, was €3 a bottle and tasted DELICIOUS!!! A few of Debs & Pauls work mates joined us & entertained us with tales of their lives so far – fair too say the wine went down far too well & I was tucked up at home in bed about 45mins before the rest of them!!!
FRIDAY = sightseeing in Seville! No plan B for rain so we headed in, had lunch in the sunshine, had a look at some shops & ruddy checked out the cathedral then we sat in a restaurant & drank beer till the rain passed!!! Such huge drops it wasn’t worth drowning just to see more plus it was around siesta time so beers were a good option! Found the cutest kids shop ‘Imaginarium’… if I didn’t have a few weeks left Levi would have been spoilt rotten here I tell ya!
We came home (6 of us in a Toyota Yaris… it works!) & chilled out then headed back in to Seville Centre on the bus, had a drinking on a floating bar in the canal (red wine with tonic, was very very good!!) then crossed the bridge in to Tirana (spelling) & meet a couple more of Debs & Pauls workmates! Dave, a new local to Tirana, took us to his local Tapas bar & he ordered for us – YUM!!! Fillet steak with a duck mousse was a HIT! Prawn salad & oxtail stew croquettes went down a treat too, the octopus was pretty good but the tentacles are off putting! We ate around midnight standing on the street next to three pub leaners, then had to finish our meal with the traditional Spanish shot, luckily we got to choose what we wanted cos otherwise apparently it can be pretty bad – we all just went with debbies choice which apparently was better… hmm!
A few headed back to the hotel & a few of us carried on to check out a few more places, who would have guessed I’d be in the latter group!!! We went to a bar & got a drink & sat out on the wall that runs along the main canal in Seville (earlier we had seen an amazing amount of fish in the river and rats along the riverside - it wasn’t too appealing!) with loads of other people – I would compare it to how the strip in chch used to be, but with non of the regulations! You could drink you drink anywhere along the street, the bars didn’t have separated areas or anything, it was kinda like a street party I guess! Very entertaining just people watching at this point too. We headed along the street a wee bit further to the bar of the people who own the restaurant where we had dinner – great service again cos they recognised Dave AND we had some two for one vouchers but im not sure we used them actually… we did get a sisha (no idea how to spell that properly!) though – peach flavoured cos they didn’t have many options left! Was actually pretty good!! They had some amazing artwork on the walls here too, all of famous dead people e.g. JFK just before he got shot, Marilyn munroe etc etc you guys know how it goes! Interesting atmosphere, not sure if it was going with a gay vibe at one stage or what – not because of this, only because of the time & an early start the next day, Ngaia & I finished our drinks & then headed out to grab a cab. We had the address written on a business card cos our pronunciation of their neighbourhood was cr*p! we were a wee way away from the bar by the time we found it though, that could have been interesting!! Debs thought it should cost around €20 to get home so I mentioned this to the guy in my (& im being nice here!) far from impressive attempt at Spanish – pretty much I can order drinks, and by drinks I mean a beer, wine or sangria! – but he didn’t agree, we eventually got home & were about to pay when he stuck some whopping great fee on top of what the meter said, we were too tired to argue at this point so paid & headed for bed!!
SATURDAY – early start… we are off to Lagos, Portugal! 6 of us in the Yaris… we figure if 10 years ago we could get 9 of us in an Accord we can surely do this… its only 2hrs away, well that was the first time we discussed the option, 24hrs later Debbie was admitting that it might be closer to 2.5hrs, 3 at the MAX!!! haha it was around 2.5hrs BUT we all survived pretty much unscathed!
Lagos is AMAZING – best place so far I think! We stayed in a hostel in the old town which has ridiculously narrow streets which are paved with small tiles/stones – they are sooooo impressive!! I can’t even imagine the hassle that would come with digging up any of these streets – most have designs down the middle and none are big enough to swing a digger round in!!! Anyway clearly not my problem – everywhere outside the walls was ‘normal’! We located our hostel then had some lunch & headed off exploring – lots of touristy shops but that was ok, I managed to source a clock even! It was fairly warm so later in the avo we all met up at the beach – gorgeous! Not far from town, it was busy but we found some spare sand so were set. Very coarse sticky sand though so im still finding it in my bag & clothing!!! Ngaia & I swam in the Ocean which was COLD but we’ll call it refreshing due to the amazing weather!!! A jug of white sangria at the café near the beach, a sundae for some & then we headed back to the Hostel to check in properly & go grab some dinner. Apparently the Portuguese don’t eat as late as the Spanish so we decided to make the most of this! We are the first NZ’ers to the hostel this year so a wee bit of a novelty, our flag seems to be fairly prominent in the hostels & local backpackers bars – seemed that everyone spoke at least a little English too so we had no problems not knowing the language – phew!!
It ended up quite cold as the sun went down so we dined inside at a fairly Portuguese restaurant which served beer in great glasses – they had ostrich on the menu too but none available that night – gutted!! Portugal is an hour behind Seville so after dinner we did a bit of people watching – lots of entertainment in the old town, buskers and MORE African men selling sunglasses, bags, watches etc etc – we bartered a wee bit for some bags but no one ended up buying anything – we still have so much further to carry stuff so I think that most of my shopping will be done in London town, where I will also be buying a new cabin bag to take full advantage of our baggage allowances on the way home!!
An early start the following morning to get back in time for our flight left us all a wee bit nervous of making too much of the cheap cheap drinks in Lagos – but what we saw I loved! Will definitely have to venture back this way!! When I have lots more time to explore!!!!
The trip back was quicker, no much traffic at all & the speed limit is 120 km/hr but everyone travels at 140 so it was gonna be really really bad luck rather than bad management if we were late for our flight!!
Another impressive feat on the way to the airport – 6 of us in the Yaris with ALL of our luggage!!!!!! Not a comfy ride but saved Debs doing an hours worth of round trips!
Now we are about to land in Barcelona, we are staying on the main street so very handy for fitting in the maximum amount of sightseeing possible within the less than 24hrs that we are here!!! Gonna be a rush but im sure we’ll handle it!

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