A "Dos Cervezas" Sort of Guy


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Europe » Spain » Andalusia » Seville
August 3rd 2016
Published: June 5th 2017
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Issy sleeps in, so I again trudge down to the restaurant alone and sheepishly request a table for one. The waitress sits me at a large table right in the middle of the room. I'm the only person eating alone, and the eyes of everyone else in the room are on me, or at least that's how it feels. I'm sure they're all thinking that I'm a poor lonely man who has to go on holidays by himself. I try to pretend not to notice by looking at my iPad, in the hope that if I do this perhaps they will instead think that I'm an important businessman. I wonder if anyone ever comes to Ronda on business.

We've heard that the bus ride to Seville will take two hours and is along a very windy road. Issy says that she thinks that she should get some travel sickness pills, so I set off to try to buy some for her. We'd said to each other a few days ago that there seemed to be lots of chemist shops in Spain. It seems however that this applies to all places in Spain except for Ronda, and by the time I find a chemist shop I'm nearly back at the hotel. I've gone so far that I get lost trying to find my way back to the bus station. I try to follow a bus, but it goes around a corner, and by the time I get around the corner too it's disappeared. It's getting quite close to the time that our bus is scheduled to leave, and I'm getting a bit worried that I might miss it. Just when I'm almost desperate enough to ask someone for directions, I stumble across the bus station. Disaster averted.

We put our suitcases in the luggage compartment in the bottom of the bus. When I go to get in the bus, the driver tells me that I have to put my backpack in the luggage compartment as well. This is a bit unusual; I've been able to take it on buses with me everywhere else we've been to so far in Spain. I think he thinks that it will take up too much room and be a safety hazard. He blows cigarette smoke in my face as he tells me this. I think that the bus must be very full. I take all our valuables out of the backpack and by the time I've done this there is virtually nothing left in it. I show the bus driver that I can lift it with my little finger, but he still insists that I need to put it in the luggage compartment. When we get on the bus we find that it's three quarters empty. I'm sure however that the driver now feels much better for having exerted his authority over me.

The first half of the trip is very windy and takes us through some spectacular mountain scenery. It looks very rocky and dry, and the vegetation is distinctly sparse. There are however the usual endless groves of olive trees. I think that they must produce most of the world's olives here in Spain. I hope that they don't all get a disease. I quite like olives.

We emerge from the mountains onto the very flat plane on which Seville sits. A thermometer on the side of the road tells us that it's 41 degrees, so it seems that we are back into real heat again. Our taxi driver has never heard of our hotel. He asks the driver in the taxi behind us for directions, but he hasn't heard of it either. I hope it's still there.

We have a siesta and then go wandering. Our hotel is very close to the Seville Cathedral. We can see its Giralda Tower from our window, and it looks like you'd be able to see it from just about anywhere in pancake flat Seville. We make a note that when we get lost we should look for this tower. They seem to take siestas very seriously here, and much more so than in any of the other places that we've been to so far in Spain. Signs on the shops seem to indicate that most close at 2pm and reopen at 5.30pm. I wonder if they go home to have their siestas or just go to sleep in the back of the shop. I hope they don't have to go home. I don't like having to go to and from work once every day, so I really wouldn't want to have to do it twice. We pass a barber shop called "El Barbero de Sevilla", and are left wondering how many other barber shops in Seville have this same name. We walk down to the Guadalquivir River past the famous landmarks Torre del Oro and the Real Alcazar de Sevilla.

The tapas we order for dinner are a bit different to those we've had elsewhere, but in a very creative way. They include anchovies on puff pastry, and a potato salad that looks like ice cream but is actually potato mashed with some sort of seafood mix. I order a cerveza grande, and when I order a second one the waiter says "of course" in a very animated way, as if it was inconceivable that I would order anything else. I wonder why. Do I just look like a "dos cervezas" sort of person? Maybe I should start ordering gin and tonics instead and see what sort of reaction I get. I think that the cervezas are starting to affect my blogging, so it's probably time go to sleep.

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