Day 2 - Seville — Travelling bryans

After lots and lots of deep and satisfying sleep, we dragged ourselves to breakfast/brunch. We walked back to the Mushrooms and sat at a very sweet cafe called La Mala. An unfortunate name that translates to ‘bad’.

The food was amazing. Oliver had a bacon, chicken and cheese roll, Andrew had spinach and eggs on toast and I had the vegetarian bagel (mushrooms, avocado, tomatoes and honey dressing). So delicious.

All nourished and ready for the day, we walked the 20 minutes to the old town, and the cathedral.

Seville cathedral was built in 1506 on the site of the former Great Mosque. It is the largest Gothic church in the world. I have been to Seville before, but we didn’t go to the cathedral, so we bought a ticket this time to the cathedral and the bell tower.

The cathedral is vast. I am not a huge fan of wandering around churches, but they feature heavily in catholic countries and there’s no denying how impressive they are. The cathedral houses the tomb of Christopher Columbus.

There were lots of statues, lots of robes, lots of gold and lots of scary looking figures of baby Jesus. We spent half an hour trying to translate Spanish tomb inscriptions and then made our way to La Giralda - the Bell Tower.

The tower is accessed by ramps rather than stairs. It is a square tower and the ramps were built so the guards could ride up on horses rather than walk. It was quite a slog, but we paced ourselves, stopping at little windows pretending to be taking in the view, rather than sneaking a rest!

The bells do ring whilst visitors are at the very top and we were lucky enough to be there at 2pm, so not too many ear splitting peals.

After looking at the beauty of Seville from up high, we made our way back down to a sweet little bar for a drink and some shade. The heat zaps your energy!

Our next stop was the Plaza de Espana. If you had 2 hours in Seville, this would be the place I would suggest you visit. It’s beautiful. It is surrounded by lush, green parks, so you can have a relatively shady walk to it. It was built between 1914 and 1929 as one of the main constructions of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. It is a semi-circular area made up of beautiful ceramic tiled ‘benches’ each one representing the provinces of Spain. There is a little river in front where you can row a boat and with ceramic tiled bridges above leading to a central fountain. The acoustics of the covered area mean that there are usually some guitar players and flamenco dancers entertaining the tourists. It is just a place to walk and to marvel at the beauty of the decoration. It’s free, there’s nothing to read about, or learn - it just is.

Not us

We had a slow walk back to the hotel, slurping on our slush drinks (mine cola, Oliver’s kiwi and Andrew’s..nothing - he had a bottle of coke) and took a long dip in the hotel pool.

For dinner, we decided to commit to tapas! We pledged to go into the first restaurant and just eat what they had on the menu. The two waiters in the tiny little tapas bar didn’t speak any English, but we muddled through and tried: Panko fried chicken (more Asian than Spanish?), anchovies on toast, Patatas bravas (spicy potatoes), bread and a HUGE glass of Sangria.

We left there and walked back to the old town where we found another restaurant for our main dinner! I had (another) Spanish omelette (not much choice for veggies here), Andrew had beef cheeks and Oliver had ham hock and mash potato. Rounded off with an ice cream and a walk with round bellies back to the hotel and another well earned sleep.

Seville really is beautiful.