Seville, Spain

After two great days in Barcelona, we left for Seville bright and early Tuesday morning. When I say bright and early, I really just mean early -- we had a 7:10am flight so the sun wasn't even close to up when we started our venture to the airport. After taking the metro to catch a bus which took us to the airport, we arrived to see an extremely LONG line at check-in. We were very concerned we were going to miss our flight. I spotted some electronic ticket kiosks that for some reason no one was using, so Brian got in the long line and I went to investigate the kiosk. (At this point I totally felt like I was on the Amazing Race, trying to get our tickets before the other team. It was semi-fun, I'm not going to lie!)

Anyway -- thankfully I was able to navigate the kiosk and was able to get our boarding passes. We finally made it through security just in time ... only to stand around for awhile because our flight was slightly delayed (but not listed as so on the board). Don't you love when that happens?

We finally made it to Seville around 9:00am and took the public bus to our hotel (Silken Al-Andalus). The bus isn't very tourist-friendly. They don't like to tell you what stop you're approaching or where you are, so you just have to keep looking out the window, trying to find a similar street on your map and hope for the best. Luckily we asked the bus driver when we got on (in our broken Spanish) if he went to the hotel and he said yes so he let us know when it was the right stop (thank you nice bus driver)!

The hotel was nice -- it was really big with several restaurants, a piano bar, gift shop, etc. The only problem was it was about a 10 minute bus ride into the center of town (which often turned into a 20+ minute ride because of traffic). A cab to and from was anywhere between 6 and 10 euro which we had to take a couple of times when we were out after 11pm (the time the bus stopped running). That simple fact was interesting to us because people don't get to dinner until around 10pm. But then restaurants close at midnight. So basically you have a two hour window to get dinner and you're out of luck if you don't finish and hop on the bus before 11pm. We never quite got the schedule down, but it was sure fun trying! (This was different then Barcelona though. The restaurants closed later than midnight. We know this because we were trying to do as the Spaniards and went to dinner around 10:30pm. When we were finishing up, people were just coming in and starting to order at midnight -- craziness!)

So basically, it seemed like a fairly big production to get to and from town, especially considering the aforementioned. So while the hotel was pretty nice, I would recommend staying closer to the city center for convenience sake.

We started our Seville experience in the city center near Barrio de Santa Cruz which is a really neat area. We then wondered around checking out the sites. We stumbled upon the Alcazar palace which was really neat with a lot to see.

Later that evening we went to Aire de Sevilla, an Arabic bathhouse. This was a very cool experience. It's a "journey through three baths in different rooms at different temperatures" over a 1.5 hour time period. There's a really hot bath, a warm one and a really cold one. The bathhouse also included a hamman, a salt bath, a hydro-massage bath and a relaxation room. After the "bath" experience I got a massage as well. The whole experience was fantastic and extremely relaxing. However, not much English was spoken so there was a lot of hand gestures and confused looks trying to figure where to go and what to do next. But that was part of the fun!

After our incredibly relaxing bathhouse experience, we went for dinner at a great restaurant on one of the main roads (Mateos Gago). This was actually one of my favorite meals -- we had several tapas which were all amazing.

I tried to capture the cool atmosphere with this video, but it didn't quite work. None-the-less, here it is anyway.

The next day was our actual anniversary and that's when we took the day trip to Granada to see the Alhambra Palace. I'll save that for the next blog post though!

Our last day in Seville we checked out the Seville Cathedral where Christopher Columbus's tomb is. It was a beautiful cathedral and certainly worth checking out. You can also walk up (30+ levels) to get to the top of the bell tower. Although my calves were burning by the end, it was definitely worth the walk -- it was beautiful up top with great views of the city.

Here's a video from the top of the bell tower.

While we were inside I caught an artist at work which I thought was pretty cool.

After, we stopped in Flaherty Irish Pub for a pint of Guinness. I read about this place before our trip and it promised a great mix of locals and tourists and a great pint of Guinness. These claims were also backed up by my fellow Guinness connoisseur Elizabeth who has been to this pub before. Well, it certainly lived up to its reputation. It was a cool atmosphere and a great beer. It was a nice spot to take a break.

We then ventured down by Rio Guadalquivir (the second longest river in Spain) where Plaza de Toros, the oldest bullring in Spain is.

Just on the other side of the river is the Triana neighborhood; a really neat area with several great restaurant options. We ate at El Faro de Triana per a recommendation from Rick Steves. The restaurant is actually an old yellow bridge tower overlooking the Isabel II Bridge. We had hoped to utilize their outdoor seating, but the weather didn't cooperate so we had to sit inside. However, our waiter, Juan Pedro (now my Facebook friend) sat us at a table with a great view and opened the window so we got the outdoor "experience". Brian enjoyed the food more than I did. I don't think it was a matter of the restaurant's food, but more so my tastes not jiving with the local cuisine. We had great conversation with our waiter Juan and made a new friend! He practiced his English on us and we practiced our Spanish on him. By the end of the night we invited him to visit us in Florida!

We really enjoyed our time in Seville. It's definitely a smaller city with a laid back, quaint atmosphere, but with a lot of neat things to see. We had originally thought about doing a hop-on, hop-off bus here as well, but everything was pretty close together (everything we wanted to see anyway) so it wasn't necessary. This was my second favorite city and it battles Barcelona for Brian's most favorite city.

You can see more pictures from Seville here.

Next on the blog agenda -- Granada, Spain / Alhambra!