Sevilla: Surprise Tapas, Reales Alcazares, La Plaza de España, Pintxos y Txakolí, and FC Sevilla vs. Zaragoza

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May 27th 2007

Published: August 8th 2007

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melee

La Catedral y La Giralda de Sevilla

An interesting mix, don't you think? A little Islam here, a little Christian there...

Bus to Sevilla
We leave our La Quinta refuge a little after 8am. Adiós, Heavenly Bed. Adiós, balcony view. Adiós, almendras Marconi. Adiós, Marqués de Riscal. We take a taxi to San Pedro de Alcántara, the nearest station. It’s not really a station. It’s more like a curb, with a ticket kiosk nearby. We buy our tickets for about €14 each and wait on the sidewalk for our 9:10am bus. We are entertained by the police who have pulled over a group of teenagers and seem to be searching every cranny of their car. They’re even turning their pockets inside out. The teens are smoking cigarettes through the whole thing - I guess one cannot be denied a smoke, eh? Using their cell phones, they call people, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. Then, more jóvenes (adolescents) walk toward them and talk to the police. A local bus pulls up, and even more jóvenes pile out to join the group. By this time, the police are done searching them, and perhaps the young ones have all proved their point - maybe the police thought they were loitering when they were just waiting for their friends? Who knows, one can only

On the road to Sevilla

View at our roadside stop, Spanish countryside.

imagine what the Sunday morning hoopla was about. When the teens leave, the police move on to their next target, a homeless bum who had asked Leroy for a cigarette (when Leroy said he doesn’t smoke, the bum patted him on the shoulder and said in English, “good”). Seems that these police officers don’t have much to do in Marbella, capital of resorts and summer homes (after all, Sean Connery and Antonio Banderas live around here, right?). We board the bus for the 3.5-hour ride to Sevilla, ready to sleep most of the trip. We stop once at Ronda to drop passengers off, but it’s only later that we get to a highway restaurant so people can fuel up. El Tropezón III is like all the other roadstops that I’ve seen on my many bus and car rides through Spain. Always in the middle of nowhere, there will appear a rustic restaurant with a bar and a glass case with their tapas. Legs of cured ham will hang on the wall. This one even has a mini-mart with Spanish cheeses. A wave of nostalgia passes over me again, but the cigarette smoke puts an end to that. I get water

El Tropezón III

Nope, not the Museo del Jamón, just the roadside restaurant/bar we stopped at. Break me off a piece!

and 7-UP, and get back on the bus.

Driving into Sevilla, Leroy already likes it. There are many plazas with fountains, and the city is colorful. The trees are blooming with lavender flowers. The sun shines brightly as the Spanish sun should, just ask Hemingway. At the station, we ask the bus driver how best to walk to our hotel, but he encourages us to take a cab or the #23 bus. We jump into a cab for one of many pleasant taxi rides in Spain - here, the meter runs and the drivers are honest. I’m sure that’s a generalization too, but it’s comforting. For a little over €4, we are at the Hesperia Sevilla. We’ve been picking our hotels on the fly, basically choosing the best value on Expedia or Travelocity, especially if wireless is free, as it is at Hesperia. We are on the north side of town, a somewhat long walk from the center but close to the train station and soccer stadium. I have this weird feeling I’ve been here before, but then, I will admit that although I’ve been to Sevilla twice before, I have no idea where I stayed or how the

El Tropezón III

The typical Spanish taberna.

city was laid out. One was for Las Ferias, and no one can remember anything from that time (except for the chief of police slashing our tires, right Edgar?). The other time was around my birthday in 1997 with our program and we had lots of education about architecture. We stayed at a Novotel, but I don’t know which one, and besides, they probably wouldn’t want to see us again after how we painted their walls with jam. Ahh, to be twenty in a foreign country! Back to 2007. We are famished, so we set out to scope the neighborhood.

Tapas Monumental
Just two blocks from the hotel is a street with many restaurants. It’s Sunday and almost siesta time, so most of the places look deserted, but we find La Monumental jampacked with what looks like the post-church crowd. We are the only tourists in the spot, and looking at the menu, I recognize only one or two of their tapas. I ask if they have cider, and they don’t, so I order a caña (house glass of draught beer) and Leroy gets a coke. Then I ask the barman for help because we’re lost on the menu.

Bar La Monumental in Sevilla

Leroy is smiling even though we have no idea what we just ordered. Serve it up!

He makes some suggestions - punta de solomillo con patatas (pork with potatoes), almohadillas de salmon (salmon “pillows”), surtido de croquetas (varied croquettes), jamón bellota (Spanish cured ham), and something else that I can’t remember. I’m excited for the surprise meal we’re about to have, and except for excessive salt that is rampant in Spain, the tapas are delicious and affordable. We have seconds of the solomillo, then walk to Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán to see if there are tickets available for tonight’s FC Sevilla vs. Zaragoza game. Remember, Sevilla is third in the Premiere Spanish League now. They have 67 points and tonight’s game left to play, and Real Madrid and Barcelona each have 72. If Sevilla wins, they’ll have 70 points, and with only two games left for each team, it’s quite close. There are tickets left, but only ones behind the south goal or ones in the preferred covered section (more expensive). We can’t decide whether to go with cheap and bad or with more expensive and good. We toss a coin and end up with the better seats - voladizo cubierto. Great, now that we have our plans set for tonight, we can go see some

Reales Alcazares

Patio de las Doncellas

of the sights.

Sevilla Sights
It is Sunday and the Reales Alcazares close at 5pm and won’t open again until Tuesday. We take a cab to the center and enter the place for free (I love student discounts). Reales Alcazares is a group of palaces that have been the royal residences and center of power since over a thousand years ago. It is done in the Mudéjar style, which according to Wiki is a “symbiosis of techniques and ways of understanding architecture resulting from Muslim, Christian and Jewish cultures living side by side… It is characterized by the use of brick as the main material. Mudéjar did not involve the creation of new shapes or structures (unlike Gothic or Romanesque), but reinterpreting Western cultural styles through Islamic influences. To enliven planar surfaces of wall and floor, Mudéjar style developed complicated tiling patterns that have never been surpassed in sophistication.” I recall studying this beautiful style of architecture and marveling at the spaces that they created - the beautiful tilework, the use of water and nature (birds chirping) in the inner courtyards, and the mesmerizing wood ceilings. The Patio de las Doncellas is the star of the show, with lobular

Reales Alcazares

Intricate woodwork of the ceilings.

arches, walls covered with plant motifs, and tiles from the 16th century. The gardens are also fun to run around in, even if that means getting in the way of ducks that are chasing each other. (Remember hiding in the hedges, Eric y Judith? Sevilla sun is still too bright for you, Mallory. You’d have to put your sunglasses *and* visor on).

We loiter on the grounds until almost closing time, and then gaze up at La Giralda, a minaret built for the Sevilla mosque between 1184 and 1198. It now is attached to the main cathedral of Sevilla (as you may have guessed, the Moors eventually lost to the Christians in Spain). The minaret was 76 meters high with four large golden balls that could be seen from more than 40 kilometers away. When the Moslems surrendered the city, they asked permission to destroy the minaret. The conquerors so admired La Giralda, the tour book describes, that Prince Don Alfonso replied, “If only one brick were removed from the tower they would all be stabbed to death.” Ahh, that sounds so conquistador-ish! So, La Giralda still stands today. In fact, it stands higher at 93 meters, because the

Reales Alcazares

On our way to the royal gardens. See the fishies? How are they still alive in that green slime?

Christians added a Renaissance style belfry and, later, a weathervane in the shape of a woman called El Giraldillo.

We plan to see La Catedral next, which sits on the site of the former mosque, but with no student discount (only if you’re a student *and* under 26, well excuse us!) and many a cathedral in our tourist past, we decide to skip it. I’ve already seen it, and Leroy isn’t that excited about it anyway. So, we walk around the narrow cobblestone streets, peeking into souvenir stores but finding nothing we want. We then head down Palos de la Frontera toward La Plaza de España. This large plaza was built for the Iberian-American Expo of 1929 as the centerpiece for the international event. The plaza is an arc of brick, with ceramics and marble columns in a regional Sevillan style. There is a big building in the square supported by an arcade below in which each of the 54 Spanish provinces are represented in ceramic tiles. There is a waterway as well, though I hate to call it a moat. You can usually rent boats and paddle in it, going under the bridges. But today, there is some

Reales Alcazares

That "bush" is a pretty fountain with plants, but it's not very photogenic. Lee is though, if he'd just smile!

construction and the water has been drained. It is Spain hot, the kind that used to torment me in my travel guide days, forcing me to always look for the shady side of the street. It always seems unbearably bright in Sevilla, so I hide in the shade and sit on the steps, face pounding with hot blood. Leroy takes some shots, and we decide to call it a day and start the walk home.

Pintxos at Lizarrán
After a very short stay at the crib, it’s time to get dinner before the game at 21:00. I scoped a chain of tapas restaurants called Lizarrán on the web and decide to give it a try. Like one of my favorite tapas spots in Barcelona, this place has pintxos (a slice of bread with some kind of topping, like cured ham and asparagus or a tuna salad) with toothpicks in them. You grab whatever pintxos you want, and at the end of your meal, they count your toothpicks. There are two kinds of toothpicks - a flat one (€1 each) and a round one (€1,30). I could get full with about four of them, so it’s a good deal. We

Reales Alcazares

This duck was chasing the female all around the garden, then when he walked back, he stopped and waited til we got out of his way.

also order up some txakolí, which is a sparkling white wine from the Basque region of Spain. I think of it more as a cider. They are pretty acidic. Traditionally, they are poured with the bottle over the head of the barman and the glass by his hip, so that the stream drops almost three feet before it hits the tumbler. This aerates it, and you should drink it right away. Our bartenders don’t seem to appreciate the tradition and pour it from a foot above. Maybe they’re too busy - the streets are filled with soccer fans getting ready for the game, and Lizarrán is packed. The four bartenders are hustling just to keep up. We have varied pintxos (jamón, atún, liver, tortilla de patatas), but it’s a crapshoot. What I thought was tuna was liver, and since Leroy picked two of them up, I had to eat both. I like pâté, but it was a lot for one person to eat (no anemia for me!). Leroy liked some of them, but not most. The cold pintxos are not as easy to love as the hot tapas we’ve had before. One barlady sees Leroy’s “I am a tourist, not

Reales Alcazares

The duck is not fooled. I guess they don't eat paper.

a terrorist” shirt and shouts, “Guay! (Cool!)” while nodding her head. This, of course, means that the Spanish are cool in Leroy’s book. He always gauges the citizens by their reaction to his t-shirts. We enjoy the txakolí, getting several refills, and then leave the spot with the bill coming to just €17. This is more like it (La Quinta hurt!).

FC Sevilla Contra Real Zaragoza
We walk the block to the stadium and go straight to our seats, only to find another couple in them. We show our tickets, discuss whether this section is voladizo cubierto, confirm it with the German family next to them and the security person, and the couple just kinda sits there like, “Oh, I guess we’re in the wrong section.” By then, Leroy and I had sat in the seats next to them, closer to the goal, which meant farther from the middle of the field. The seats are great, we can see everything, but I’m peeved that the woman did not even make an attempt to say, “Oh these seats are yours, here you go.” Our section is one of the only ones with vacancies, but if they’re going to try to

Reales Alcazares

Leroy wanted it to look like I was jumping or falling, but I look like I'm skiing.

self-upgrade, they should take the unoccupied ones. The game begins so I leave off arguing and get to watching. I focus on Adriano and Dani Alves, who are both Brazilian, but I’ll admit now that they did not impress. In general, Sevilla did not impress - they did not close gaps and they had many a missed opportunity. But the stadium is filled with only Sevilla fans - I really don’t think I could have found a Zaragoza fan if you paid me. The home team fans are singing songs and the sound is thunderous. I love soccer games - especially in places like Spain where they are enthusiastic but not scary (ahem, Argentina). Everything is in order, except the couple in our seats. I escape to the ladies room and then come back with a hot dog and beer. Not that I was hungry, I just felt like it was stadium tradition! Both were gross, by the way. The first half ends with Sevilla up 1-0.

At halftime, the couple in our seats leaves and I figure they’re finally going to their proper seats. I heard the man say his was in the section above us, and I

Reales Alcazares

Interesting way to fill the fountain!

think she was in the right section but was trying to be with her date. Before the second half, they come back to find us in our proper seats. She asks me what happened and I tell her I thought she went to their other seats. She starts asking us to move over since all the seats aren’t occupied anyway. Excuse me? Leroy says to tell her to “feel free” to sit in any of the other empty seats. She is about to argue her case (she has none), but her man (who seems more logical and appeared more apologetic) convinces her to give it up and they move down to a pair of free seats. Regarding the actual game, Zaragoza evens the score at 1-1, but Sevilla makes another goal and is up 2-1. In stoppage time, they get another goal and seal the deal at 3-1. We pour out of the stadium with all the other fans high on the victory, but secretly wishing we had been able to attend a Madrid or Barcelona game. You wouldn’t believe the price of the Madrid tickets. Well, okay, you would, since the British tickets were way higher, but still, it’s