Spain 2019 {Day 3/Part 2 ~ Sevilla}

On Tuesday, December 17th, I left my pitstop in Córdoba for Sevilla (aka: Seville). It's only about 40 minutes from Córdoba to Sevilla (2.5 hours from Madrid).

Sevilla was a boom town in the 1500's thanks to the likes of Amerigo Vespucci and Ferdinand Magellan sailing from it's river harbor to the New World. By the 1600's it was Spain's largest and wealthiest city. Today, it's Spain's 4th largest city, and the capital of Analucía. James Michener wrote, "Sevilla doesn't have ambience, it is ambience." Y'all, Sevilla is just sublime.

I had a big day scheduled for Wednesday, so for Tuesday afternoon, my plan was to hit up some of the things I didn't think I could get to the next day. I took a taxi from the Santa Justa train station to my hotel in the Barrio Santa Cruz. The Barrio Santa Cruz is described as the location of the "soul of Sevilla". There are mazes of lanes and small plazas and most of the "streets" are too narrow for cars. This posed a difficulty for my taxi driver, and I ended up with my phone out trying to map him to the closest drop off so I could walk down the narrow lane to the hotel. (more on the hotel later in the post).

My first stop was the Plaza de España. This is the remains of the 1929 international fair.

Does it look familiar? It's been a filming location for Mission: Impossible, Lawrence of Arabia, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars Episode II- Attack of the Clones.

This former Spanish Pavilion is covered in the trademark Sevilla tiles.

Every province in Spain has a section that shows historic scenes and a map. I got the idea that I would take a pic of everyone I was visiting on this trip and use it in some cool way in my photo book...

Which would have been great, but there was a person lounging on Cordoba, and they weren't moving anytime soon!

After the Plaza, I walked back toward a park where I had heard Christmas music. I found a little ice skating rink and a Christmas market that was as crappy as the others I had encountered.

I took a taxi over to the Metropol Parasol, or "the mushrooms" as locals call it.

A fairly recent edition to Sevilla, you can tour a museum at ground level of Roman ruins found during the building process, and you can take an elevator to the top where you can walk around.

There was a Christmas market going on there (more of the same), and an ice skating rink at the second level.

I took a taxi back to the room where I tried to figure out what to do for dinner. I got out my Rick Steves book and found a place he recommended that was just a few minutes from the hotel (also just a minute from the cathedral). I enjoyed wondering around and looking in shops on my way (orange trees!)

The restaurant is called La Azotea. Spoiler Alert: I ate here every single meal. I just knew that if I stumbled into another place it probably wouldn't be better, and likely wouldn't be as good.

It was about 5:30 when I walked in and they asked if I was there for lunch. Sure. Call it what you want. I just wanted food.

This was the Braised Iberian Pork Cheek in a red wine sauce with goat cheese gratin. So good!

For my Sevilla hotel, I had selected the El Rey Moro. It was a recommendation by Rick Steves and it was fine. I liked some things and hated other things. The location was amazing. The rooms were clean and the bed was very comfy. So all the major things were good (unless you like to always have hot water). Less important, the decor drove me crazy. It seemed like a person went blindfolded into a TJ Maxx and just grabbed things. But the worst part of the place was the smell. It had very strong smells everywhere. I'm kind of a super smeller, so I felt like the incense and oil burners everywhere in the hotel were assaulting me (and whatever detergent they used was super strong smelling too, so thanks to your towels and sheets, you couldn't escape smells in your room).