Pics: Bells clanging!, our Blue room, one more stork picture
We checked out of our lovely casita and started our long drive to Sevilla. We headed south on smaller roads, in hopes of seeing bustards and other steppe birds. We even found a large sign advertising a dirt road through farmland as an ornithological reserve and so set off, driving 10 MPH. Unfortunately we saw only storks and lots of larks, but little else. After five miles the road suddenly came to a “T” in the middle of nowhere with no sign of which way to go! I choose “left” as that went south and we took off, gradually heading more and more east, per the GPS, until the road ended at a rundown farm and we were surrounded by six large barking farm dogs…we turned around and finally found our way to the highway and headed south.
Expiring from hunger, we stopped at a little store and got ice cream and cokes before trying to wend our way into and around Sevilla to return our car at the airport.
As we have had more experience than we wanted in getting there, we got on the SE30, then the SE20, zoomed around the city without any problem, checked-in the car, and got a taxi which took 15 minutes to get us near our hotel at 4:30PM. Near, because our hotel is on an alley which doesn’t allow cars. The hotel, itself, La Casa del Maestro, is quite charming, four stories with no elevator, and no view, but brilliantly painted. It’s named for Niño Ricardo (1904-72), a master flamenco guitarist who lived his life in this house. We have Gitaneria Arabesca (place of the Arab gypsy?) room on the third floor which is small but beautiful with brilliant blue walls and superb Arab embroidery above the bed.
We cleaned up and relaxed a bit before setting out at 8 in search of tapas. This is a difficult city to feel at home in. The buildings are all four stories tall, the streets are as narrow as the ones in little villages in the countryside, so the immediate feeling is one of claustrophobia. And as the streets wind around and change names; it’s amazingly easy to get lost and feel panicky. The temperature in the mid 90s didn’t help either.
We went to the tapas bar that the nice receptionist at the hotel recommended, but when we entered we saw trash on the floor and the typical high tapas tables at which one stands and we were too exhausted to think of eating and drinking standing up! There were tables with chairs, but one can only order dinner at those and we wanted to eat lightly. So we wandered around, Bob keeping a close eye on the map, and found ourselves at the Giralda tower, the Moorish remnant attached to the main cathedral. It was 8:40 by this time and suddenly all the bells in the tower started ringing! The tower is very large and square so from all sides you could see bells emerging, swinging upwards and around again. The most amazing noise! It went on for at least five minutes. I don’t know if this is a Saturday night special or if this happens all the time??
We started back retracing our steps and found a tapas bar that looked quite nice with high tables and stools. You pick what you like from the tapas menu and then order it at the bar. We picked out four dishes: Salmorejo tomato soup, potato quiche, shellfish sandwich, shrimp and curry cazuelita and a bottle of Rioja wine and had a fine supper.
We walked back and found our hotel and waited a while with two Spanish couples who where returning from a wedding for the receptionist to open the door which he finally did, but we were glad to have other jolly people there with us!
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