Ah Sevilla! What a stunningly beautiful, authentically Spanish, magical city. Everywhere you look is beauty – around every corner it seems are beautiful buildings, broad squares, majestic cathedrals and horse-drawn carriages. The streets are spotless, and there actually appear to be more Spaniards going about their days than tourists – couldn’t be more different than Lisbon. Seriously, this city is beautiful.
Anyway, to get to Spain we thought it was time for the kids to experience an important (and cost-effective) mode of transportation in their international travel experience, so we took a bus from Faro in the Algarve (Portugal) to Sevilla. The bus was WAY cheaper than renting a car or flying, and it was an easy 3-hour ride. I will say that this was a significantly more comfortable ride than my past bus experiences in rural China and Laos (which had a habit of randomly stopping in empty dirt lots in the middle of nowhere for 30 minutes to 4 hours, with no explanation whatsoever), but I digress.
We were dropped at the bus station in the center of town and walked 10 minutes to our apartment – nothing particularly fancy, but a great location just around the corner from a cute pedestrian-only street with lots of cafes and restaurants. And there was so much more to see just a few minutes walking from there – the Cathedral (we didn’t plan ahead enough to get tickets to visit inside, but the outside is stunning), the bull ring where they hold regular bull fights, the Plaza Espana and more.
Our first day, we took a tour by horse carriage past many of the main sights. The kids loved the horse (which was pretty cool) and it gave us a great orientation to the city. This is some of what we saw:
We also stopped into a random café just outside the bull ring and had some of the best tapas I think I’ve ever had. It turns out that black garlic is different and BETTER than regular garlic – this was probably the best pork we’ve ever eaten!
On our last afternoon, we toured the Royal Alcazar Palace – we had to book timed entry tickets the day before, which allowed us to tour the inside of this palace. It was pretty cool, but the grounds were even more impressive. This was the site of our second peacock encounter in this adventure – seems that castles and palaces and peacocks go together.
One morning, I (Jen) woke up earlier than the rest of the fam and went out exploring on my own. The Spanish stay out pretty late, so the mornings are relatively quiet. It was fun to wander while the city was mostly still asleep (and this wasn’t that early – call it 8-9am-ish). I LOVE the coffee – and the coffee drinking experience – in Europe so was happy to pop in to a bar/café and have a cortado at the bar (in Spain, that’s a thing – you walk up to the bar, order your espresso, drink it, then pay and carry on your way). The coffee was great; the 2 dozen baby cockroaches that scurried out of sight in the bathroom when I turned on the light was less great. Chalk it up to urban life in a city that is centuries (millennia?) old, I guess.
Our last night, Ryan and I went to the rooftop bar overlooking the cathedral and the city at one of the nice hotels. The view was incredible:
We ended up spending 3 nights but will absolutely be back. The city is just magical and alive and real – definitely a favorite so far!
