Home » Spain » Tapas and Tile Heaven; Seville - Sevilla, Spain

A long weekend break in Seville (Sevilla in English) Spain is without a doubt a perfect place to go.

Tapas and Tile Heaven; Seville - Sevilla, Spain

LindaThalm
2005-12-02 16:11:52

Displayed times (last time: )

open and we had an excellent visit of one and a half hours including the wine tasting and tapas for 13.50 euros for two.

The tour was informative, very well done in English and I would recommend this tour.

The gift shop (tienda) was lovely and we bought a lot of wine. We were a bit annoyed to see that the Tio Pepe we had bought cost one euro MORE than a bottle purchased in a tiny superette in Seville!

Shopping Tip: Get your Spanish wines in a superette or supermarket.

Time for lunch, so we sped off to Cadiz. Thinking we'd find dozens of restaurants along the beach or bay of Cadiz we were in for a major disappointment.

Cadiz is missing a major source of tourist revenue - where are the seaside restaurants? None, almost nada. And, I must say, Cadiz struck me as boring and ugly.

Sevilla tiles That is harsh I know, but having seen Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona, and other cities in Spain, you could give Cadiz a miss.

But we did find - with much difficulty - a local restaurant along the seaside, below the seawall with very good food: clams, mussles and grilled green peppers with nice cold beer.

Back to the autopiste (a toll road, but quite cheap compared to France) paying 5.15 euros to get back to Seville. The autovias in Spain are not toll roads, but just about as good as the motorways/freeways and they are free and very well maintained, too.

Time for a bit of sunning on the roof top of our hotel. The small elevated pool was not open - sigh. It was hot enough to swim in my opinion as it was 30C in the shade! So we read our books and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.

Then, guess what? Back on the tapas trail. At the suggestion of two Canadians we'd talked with in the Tio Pepe gift shop, we went to the Bodega tapas bar in the historic quarter of Seville. Delightful, though their speciality of tapas on bread were not my most favorite, they were still great.

The service in the Bodega and all the other tapas bars in Seville is excellent. The waiter or waitress is usually there in seconds when you put your hand up for another order or a refill on the wine. Better, much better than any fast food outlet I've ever been too. Que viva España and tapas bars!

We were so enchanted with Seville we even considered changing our flight to the next day so we could explore further.

Seville typical street view Monday morning the alarm wasn't set, but somehow I woke up at 6:30. Our flight was for 9:00 and it left on time. We had to fill up with gas before returning our rental car and figure out how to get to the airport.

In the end, it was a piece of cake. Seville is a small city compared to Paris and at 7:00 there was not any kind of rush hour - which you certainly have in Paris.

Our flight left on time and we nearly missed it while looking for a final bottle of white wine and then having to line up for the security check.

Five minutes before we went to gate 8 there had been absolutely no queue of people. Suddenly there were about 150 folks lined up. Bizarre.

The line moved exceptionally fast and we ra
n to the gate while 'last call' was flashing on the screen. We were almost last onto the plane.

It's almost a shame we didn't miss the plane.

It just means we'll go back to tapas and tile heaven in Seville again one day.