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Published: September 4th 2007
Waiting for tapas at Bar Manolo
L-R: me, Robyn, Jess, Chook & Dan Wow, it has been a while since I last blogged anything so I will try to remember details as best I can! I am also in Sintra which is the mountainsa outside of Lisbon so internet is hard to come by.
I flew from Valencia to Seville. The plan ride was interesting - Valencia airport despite looking fabulous is boring as hell but maybe this had something to do with the fact that I was flying domestic. It was a smaller regional plane to be precise and I havent flown on anything that small in ages! As I was sitting in the departure lounge waiting for my flight to board a man and his wife and kids came and sat next to me. I saw a guy a few seats along pull out his mobile and take a photo in my direction but thought he was taking it of something behind me (although I didnt know what!). People started looking in my direction and I had no idea what was going on. Then a guy came up and introducted himself to the man next to me and spoke a bit in Spanish. I quickly figured out he was some famous
Jess & Anj with a jug of Agua de Sevilla
Judging by the look of us (mainly me) I am guessing this may be the second jug! spanish dude but I have no idea who he was! People kept looking at him and his family in a similar way to when I saw Pat Rafter and his family on a flight! He was about 40, had a massive ring on his pinky and had 3 kids. He wasn't esepcially young or hot so I figured probably not a sports star nor movie star. I will never know!
When I got to Seville I had a few hours to kill before Robyn, Jess, Dan and Chook (a friend of Robyn's from London) arrived. It was pretty hot so I didn't go very far and had a bit of a wander then a rest. When the others finally arrived it was around 9pm and we were all starving!! It was fab to see Jess after 3 months and I couldnt believe she was still standing. She had flown in from Sydney at 7am that morning, and then flown to Seville on the same day.
We headed to the Alfalfa district in search of Tapas. Being August a lot of the restaurants were closed so it was difficult to find anything on our list of recommended restaurants. We
were lucky enough to find a typical tapas bar, popular with the locals and extremely busy on a Friday night. We put our names down for a table and headed inside to get started on tapas at the bar. Luckily for us it starting pouring at that point, so when everyone came into the bar we had a great spot!!! We tucked into beers and olives and chose a few things from the menu. When it cleared up we headed back outside and continud there. We asked our waiter for some local dish recommendations and our favourite dish of the night was pork with whiskey. I think it was something like solomio al wiskey in spanish but I could be wrong. Yum!
We then headed around the corner which we found to be a conveniently located bar strip for some after dinner drinks. Most of the bars were small and very smoky so people were spilling out onto the street outside. We found a bar which had a cocktail called 'Agua de Sevilla' and us girls got stuck into jugs of that straight away. I think it must be something only the tourists drink coz we got some funny
looks from the locals! It tasted very much like a pina colada but with an extra kick. After 3 jugs of that we were pretty merry and made our noisy way back to the hotel. It was about 3am but still very hot!!
The next day I woke up feeling a little hungover and sick which is not surprising!!! We headed out for spanish brekky which is a coffee & pastry at the counter in the patisserie round the corner from our hotel. As I was standing there I realised I should probably go and lie back down so I excused myself from the morning's activities! While I rested the others checked out the castle which sounded awesome. I will have to go back to Sevilla!
In the arvo I headed out to meet the others at the Cathedral. This is one of the biggest cathedrals in Europe and in extremely ornate gothic style, so I was in heaven!! It wasn't particularly well laid out for large services so I am not sure how they ran them. It houses the appparent tomb of Christopher Columbus. You cam climb to the top but the ascent is via about 30
small ramps around a square centre rather than stairs. It was built in this way so horses could get up there, although I am not sure why they would want horses at the top of the tower!! The view from the top was spectacular and we watched a storm a little way off which was quite spectacular, with lightening bolts etc.
It was time for lunch so we found another tapas bar and tucked in!! We then went in search of a gelato place which was supposed to be the best in the world (Or Spain, I can't remember!). I wasn't all that impressed with my fig gelato but maybe I chose badly!
That night we were all pretty tired and headed out to another tapas restaurant for dinner - we couldn't get enough of it! Not knowing the size of the dishes we ordered way too much and the food just kept on coming. We were sitting outside and instead of the waiters bringing the food as it was cooked they would holler over the crackly PA that it wsa ready and we had to go and collect it. The dishes kept on coming and it became
quite hilarious every time they would turn on the microphone and yell something out. We had no idea what they were saying but it was hilarious and they thought it was quite funny too!
After dinner we decided to go in search of flamenco. Jess had been to a flamenco place in Seville before so we headed back there. It was quite a walk but it gave us the opportunity to see the backstreets of Seville by night. It seems Seville is quite safe, or we were just lucky! I love Seville, it is such a sultry town. I think it is a combination of the heat and the colours of the city. The buildings are yellow, red, pink, and there are many ceramic tiles. The street signs are ceramics, there are tiles all over houses and most interestingly there are tiles on the underside of balconies so if you look up while walking around you get a great view. There are beautiful colourful churches with tile decorations on the outside and always somerthing to look at. I have since found out that the tiles keep the heat out so this makes perfect sense for a city like Seville
where temperatures frequently go over 40 degrees!!
We found the flamenco place and it was lucky we knewwhere we were going as it turned out to be a hole in the wall! Behind the doors was a large shed type building with a huge beer garden. On a small stage there was a guy playing guitar, a man singing and a woman dancing flamenco. I am so glad we found this place - I wanted to see flamenco but not in a huge touristy venue and a special show. Granted there were lots of tourists there but it felt more authentic (and it was free!). We settled in with some sangria to watch the show. What struck me first about flamenco was it is so emotional. Maybe I was tired, but the combination of the passionate singing and dancing really moved me. The man had an amazing voice and the woman danced beautifully and it was just so pwerful to watch. They would play a few songs and go off for a break so we watched for about an hour before everyone cried tiredness and we headed home.
On Sunday morning we had to check out of our
hotel and arrange transport to Lagos in Portugal. The others had been the day before to the train station to buy tickets bbut they said their computer was down and you could only buy tickets for the bus on the day. We tutrned up at the bus station around 10am on the Sunday to buy tickets for that day and they said they were all sold out and they couldnt sell tickets for the next day - that we would have to turn up. Bloody hell! There was a big queue of very angry people and we were quite stressed - we had accommodation booked for that night which was difficult to book etc. I decided that there was no way we were staying in Seville for another night (as much as I loved it!) and set about trying to find another bus or train company. Thankfully Eurolines had a bus going to Faro so we booked tickets on that and hope to get tickets on another bus to Lagos when we arrived in Faro. Crisis averted!
We had a few hours to kill so made our way slowly to Placa de Espana. It was slowly coz it was
Sant Angela
That was her name, and doing my best Saint impersonation darned hot! We had been lucky the day before as it was only around 23 degrees and I was wearing pants but this day it was well into the 30's by 10am. Placa de Espana is a huge square that was built for an expo in the early 1900's (if memory serves correctly) and it is pretty specatacular. There are tile displays depicting each region in Spain and a beautiful tiled bridge. We took cover from the heat and waited for Chook whilst watching the illegal stall people pack up in fear of the cops arriving!
Afte meeting up with Chook we bade our farewells as she wanted to go to a costume museum whereas we were heading for lunch. We grabbed some tapas and headed for the bus station. The bus ride was pretty uneventful and we got a good connection in Faro with just enough time to have something to eat in between. We arrived in Lagos around 8pm tired and hungry and went in search of our apartment. More in the next blog!!!
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