Our desk (one end of long dining table), table for meals and kitchen just off the living/dining room. It’s a nice little kitchen. Very well-equipped. Yes, we found the milk frother.
Wynette: Thanks for your comments. We sure enjoy them. If you’ve tried to add a comment and were put off that you had to provide your name and email, don’t worry, your email won’t show up on the post. Also, I think (?) you can get by with just providing your first name or nickname. The first time you post a comment, it will have to be approved by us, but after that it won’t have to be approved.
You can click on any photo to see a larger and much higher resolution version. E.g., once you’ve made it bigger, try zooming in on the people in the photo below or in the vegetables in previous post.
Off the subject, but apologies for how slow the site is. We think it is because we have pretty minimal hosting service at Dreamhost.
This is the view looking down from our front window. Bar just below us does a very good business. They seem to have many loyal customers. Unfortunately, we weren’t crazy about their coffee so we are going to start search for our local bar.
Need cash to buy this beautiful food. We can’t believe the quality of the produce or how inexpensive it is, given the quality.
Charlie (with photos added by Wynette): In 1969 Christy and I went to Europe and spent an hour at the bank, in the US, signing $10 travelers checks. We visited at least 10 countries, each for a different currency. We used the price of an ice cream cone as our unit of currency comparison.
On this trip Wynette and I are doing most of our buying with cash.
Nowadays it is so much easier, we just get cash out of machines. A few years ago each use of a cash machine involved a fee and a 2% (or more) conversion rate. Now most people get debit cards with no use or conversion fees. We have Capital One Bank cards but there are many others. Sometimes these cards pay the cash machine fees for you. I’m not sure what the business model is that allows profits there.
But banks crave profits so in the last few years when you get cash you are presented with a choice, either have the cash machine’s bank convert to dollars or do the transaction in euros and have your bank to the conversion. I did this yesterday and it said (some European full disclosure laws I assume) that it would convert at $1.19 per euro and my 200 euros would cost $238. I have been following the rates for months and know it should be less than $1.14. So I declined the conversion. Minutes later I check Capital One bank and it had charged me $228. I googled 100 euros and got $1.394 so this is an excellent rate. That extra $10 would have been a 4.4% fee, much larger than the old 2% fee.
You are presented with the decision standing at the machine on the street with bare-bones information and no way to know what choice might be better. Like they used to say, a banker can steal more money with a pen (update to computer) than a robber with a gun.
We have no-fee credit cards also. I used it for the train fare but I didn’t check the conversion rate. You often get the same choice, convert here to there, with credit cards. I rail agent didn’t offer a choice. I assume it went through in euros.
We bought freshly made pasta and pesto at the market from this man. We’ll cook it for dinner tonight.We’ve never seen so many varieties of fresh mushrooms. The proprietor was puzzled by our taking photos. But she was very kind to tell us exactly how to cook the chanterelles we bought: Sautee with olive oil, white wine, and leeks. I asked about garlic and she adamantly said “no”. Only leeks will do.
Wynette: This evening, we had intended to eat at a place near our apartment named “OK Tapas”. When we got there they were closed and this sign was on the door: “Today Tuesday the 13th. Closed. Personal rest. Excuse the bother.” (In Spanish, they use the verb molestar to mean to bother. Molestar has not taken on the connotation that molest has taken on in English.) So, we had to make other plans. Decided to go to a roast chicken take-out we’d spotted earlier in the day. But that place didn’t (re-)open until 7:30 pm so we had an hour to kill. Decided to take a walk in the nearby park. They have many of these lovely trees in the park.
Charlie: There are three main mobile phone companies serving Spain: Orange, Vodafone and Movistar. We have unlocked phones (more on that later) and just get Spanish SIMs for them. Previously we have gotten Vodafone: one month, 200 MS, 1.2 GB data, 100 minutes for 15 euros or about $17. We thought we found a better deal with Movistar, about the same thing for 12 euros plus international calling. The woman at the Movistar store has not heard of this even though it is on their website, a similar one had a 30 euro initial charge. At a second Movistar store they said they couldn’t sell it to us.
Back to Vodafone.
A long wait. We talked to a local guy who spoke excellent English. He told us some nice little towns to go see on the south coast and what wines to get.
15 euros even, no other charges. My google nexus 6 worked fine. Wynette has an LG G3 from T-mobile which we unlocked last year and used with a Spanish SIM with no trouble. This time it didn’t work, the phone seemed to be locked again. As far as we can tell, it relocked itself, not sure how. We went home and did a chat with t-mobile. I had to dredge up two old, almost forgotten PINs but we convinced them to re-un-lock it. I just got the email about, tomorrow when we are fresh.
Charlie: We are in a neighborhood called “Los Remedios” which our taxi driver said was very nice, safe and interesting but not too expensive. It has a great feel. Block after block of 5-8 story apartment buildings but the ground floor is always businesses. Cafe/bars on every block. Our supermarket to 100 feet away. Lots of people on the streets (except on national holidays). No tourists because there are no tourist attractions. It is exactly what we were looking for.
The supermarket is very nice. In general things are kind of like they were in the US 30-50 years ago. Lots of employees in the markets. A meat person, a cheese person, a fruit person. We got 250 grams of cheese from from a big wheel and the cheese clerk cut off the waxy edges and sliced it. The bread and butter were great. They still have peaches and they were as good as we have ever had. There is a fruit and vegetable stand on the way to the supermarket (that is about 50 feet away from our door) with lovely stuff.
Everyone has been very friendly. Wynette has been talking in Spanish and when she asks a question in slow, careful Spanish everyone is confident of her ability to understand a rapid-fire Spanish reply. Sometimes she gets most of it.
We had a little rough spot getting phones, see the next post.
We walked around a lot today. We found the main shopping street nearby, pedestrians only. We got a roast chicken for dinner at a shop on the street and some empanadas and soups (beet and zucchini). All quite good.
Charlie (plus above photo posted by Wynette): We took the fast AVE train from Madrid to Sevilla. It averaged about 200 kph, got as high as 250 kpm (150 mph). Looking out it didn’t seem that fast. It was very smooth at that speed. Quite a whoosh when you passed the train going the other way, they have 20 or more each way every day.
Sevilla train station had a taxi line line of about 150 people. Not as slow as you would suspect since 2-4 people get into each taxi. Our taxi driver said it was because of the holiday. She was very nice and told us places to go and places to eat. Wynette did pretty well conversing with her.
Our AirBnB host was waiting outside when we arrived. The apartment (see previous post) was exactly as expected and as shown in the pictures. Of course, they always show up bigger in the photos. But it is a good size and we are very happy with it. It is fun looking around and seeing what is there. Yes, we found the hand blender. The ironing board was hidden behind a chest.
Couldn’t get phone SIMs or groceries because of the national holiday on Monday, October 12. (Hispanic Day — the day Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas.) Express store was open, we made an omelette.
We each got 1/2 to 2 hours of sleep on the plane, it is hard to tell. After that much sleep in about 30 hours we went to bed. We each woke from 12-2 am Spain time but got back to sleep and slept until 8. Hopefully tonight will be close to normal.
Charlie: We got a good flight this time, only 2.5 hours layover in Dallas, pretty good legroom on AA, we had maybe 4 inches clearance between knees and seat back, about 22 hours from our door in Albuquerque to our door in Sevilla.
DFW has a yoga studio, actually just a carpeted area off the transition from D to B with a screen in front of it. No one there. DFW-D has two walk-through art works. DFW terminal D has a walking course with signs of art by locals and how many steps to the next sign, each way. I walked over an hour of our layover.
Three years ago we flew into Madrid and there was a national general strike. By luck we got from the airport to the train station. Normally busy Atocha train station was empty. Strange.
This year we arrived on a national holiday of some sort, a bank holiday. But most things were running normally. Grocery store in Sevilla was closed during the usual 5:30 pm to 9 pm open hours.
Charlie: We will be staying in an apartment in Sevilla for five weeks. It is an AirBnB rental. You can see the listing here.
It is not as quaint as some places we looked at but we went for comfort and a more modern place. The “Old City” is across the river, about a mile away.
The address is Calle Fernando IV, 28, Seville, Spain. You can look it up on google maps and see the street view. If you do you will see the entrance looks like this:
Not the Bar El Rocio, the black steel gate to the left is the entrance. We are on what they call the second floor there although we would say the third floor, two flights up (there is an elevator). If you look up you can see our apartment:
Four windows wide with the shades closed. A thin balcony but not enough room for a chair. If you look to the west you can see it is a neighborhood of apartment buildings all about the same:
At the end of the street (1/5 mile away) is the Parque de los Principes (25 acres). If you look to the east:
you see we have one of the Spanish “Chinese stores” on our corner. They have a little of everything. And down at the end of the street (1/3 mile) is the Canal de Alfonso XIII, fed by the Rio Guadalquivir. It goes through the city and has a walking path along it. If you turn left at this corner and go about 100 feet you get to our local supermercado:
I’m creating a blog but I’m not sure exactly what will be in it. We’ll see. Here is a photo of the Plaza de España in Sevilla taken from an article in The Telegraph. We’ll add our own pictures as we go along.
