Any town that has orange trees on almost every corner, alphabet tiles for road names, adorable one lane cobblestone streets and bands dressed in Spanish garb playing Michael Jackson tunes in parades is okay in my book. And that basically sums up Seville in a nutshell.
During the three days I was in the town, there were two holidays. I still have not figured out how the Spanish do it. How can an entire population get anything done with a two hour siesta in the middle of the day and going out until six in the morning and getting up and doing it all over again? I don’t understand. At least the holidays meant that there were fun festivities going on in the city (even if it also meant that I was not able to purchase the adorable tights that I saw in one shop window since stores were closed).
I started my visit of Seville with a walking tour of the city. Our group got to see many of the main attractions of the city which included some amazing architecture, beautiful views by the river and learning about the history of the city. Many of the most beautiful structures of the city were built to honor or rebuild relations with people the Spaniards had fought against which influenced the style of the buildings and also the direction they faced. There was even a Maria Luisa Park which was perfect because my middle name just happens to be Louise. I felt honored.
The most beautiful place that we saw would have to be the main plaza in the southern part of the city. It was absolutely beautiful with all the colorful and intricate details and painted tiles depicting different stories and people relating to Seville and Spain’s history.
Of course I also loved all of the amazing small streets that snaked through the city. I think this was probably the hardest city to navigate that I have been to so far, but getting lost in the cuter than cute narrow streets made for a picturesque trip to wherever it was I was trying to get to. None of the streets are parallel or perpendicular and they often get renamed after a block or two since they change directions (if that makes any sense at all), so traveling here really was just as much about the journey as it was the destination.
My stay would not have been complete without some adventures with tapas and flamenco, so of course I got a little taste of both. For tapas, I did my best to get fairly unique dishes, so I tried some gazpacho, goat cheese with marmalade, spinach and garbanzo beans (very surprisingly amazing) and something that had egg on it.
