Situated on the bank of River Guadalquivir, this energetic city is described as the artistic, cultural and financial capital of southern Spain. Seville (pronounced: Sevveeyya) is also the capital of Andalusia. Compared to Toledo and Cordoba, Seville definitely had a big city feel to it. Not in a bad way though.
We stayed in the heart of Barrio Santa Cruz – the historical downtown. The only downside to this location is that our hotel didn’t have parking, and even if it had, our car didn’t fit through the streets! So we parked at the nearest possible street parking and walked to our hotel. Not wanting to waste time, we dumped our luggage and set out in search of beer. Our timing was just perfect; the shops and restaurants were opening after siesta. We settled down for a beer in an open cobble stoned plaza over looking a fountain. The one thing that stood out was that no one was in a hurry to get anywhere… it was all leisurely. You walk up to a restaurant, choose a table that’s empty, you get what you want and then you can literally sit there for hours… and leave when you want. No one comes by to ask you for the thousandth time “how’s everything here?”
We walked through the meandering streets stopping at restaurants to taste some classic tapa dishes like Spinach and Chickpeas, grilled meats and the like. While we are on the topic of Tapas, let me tell you this, one cannot…. at least we found out that the four of us couldn’t survive on just tapas. It was just not enough food (period). We had seen some Chinese restaurants while ambled around the town… and we all were thinking about the same thing, but K was the only one with the courage to suggest “guys, we should have some good rice and chicken for dinner”. At first we all laughed and turned down the idea of eating Chinese while in Spain… but two hours and several miles of walking later, we were all cramming in to a Chinese restaurant. Rice has never been that tasty before!
On our way back to the hotel later that night, we stumbled in to a bar with live music and lot of noise, it looked like one of these old neighborhood joints… but the doors were sort of ajar… as we entered we realized that we were walking in to a private party. We were ready to apologize and set out when everyone there urged us to say… Well, if they insisted! It was the most fun thing we did… We hardly understood a word most of them said…. Especially this young chap who was giving us company most of the time… and in every sentence of his he would punctuate it with SEBBBIIIYYAAAAAA with hand movement to accompany that, which we found out was an R rated action!! From then, Vicky and Kapil got the Sebiya bug. Rest of the trip they kept saying SEBBIYAAAA and break out laughing. That night I realized that you really don’t need to know or understand a language to really have a good time! We watched some Sevillano dance, which until 3 weeks ago I thought was Flamenco. In all, I had a wonderful day. Seville was growing on me. There was a sense of being at ease when I was there… doesn’t mean that I didn’t like any of the other places that we visited, but I really didn’t feel like a tourist in Seville and I think that’s a really good feeling to have.
The next morning, we had some more time to kill until our tour of the Cathedral. So we took a horse carriage ride through the town.
After seeing the Cathedral and climbing the spiral ramp all the way to the bell tower… it was time for us to leave. I would love to go back to Seville and spend more time, not for the regular touristy things, but just to hang out and relax.
Now, here are some pictures courtesy: K
View from the other side of the river
Seville Cathedral
Plaza Espana
He wont have an issue finding a job, would he?
1 comment:
sebbiiyyyaaaaa.... Another excellent post!!! I am dying of laughter...
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