Seville 2015

 

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.