We’d often say that our sabbatical was made up of a bunch of ‘normal’ one- to two-week vacations all strung together. You could carve it up into numerous two-week or so chunks that each make sense as an individual trip. One of my absolute favorites of these is the two-weeks we spent in Andalucía, Spain.

We had beautiful weather, gorgeous scenery, lovely cities, fantastic food, perfect wine, and just such a chill time. I’d go back and do the exact same trip again, right now, no complaints (okay, I’d extend our time in Málaga).

It didn’t start off well! We got in late, later than we were supposed to–around 11pm. We worried our AirBnb host would be put out by this, but he was gracious and friendly and welcoming nevertheless. I shouldn’t have been worried, really. We were in Spain now. 11pm is just dinner time.

He pointed out the Flamenco festival that happened to be going on while we were there. Flamenco festival, in Andalucía–sounded like serendipity! This was the biennial Flamenco festival, only happening every other September. What luck, indeed!

Well, the stuff worth seeing seemed to be already sold out or kind of expensive, unfortunately. Plus, it turns out there is another Flamenco festival that happens in the off years. Basically there are Flamenco festivals all the time.

Erika and John Do What They Do

At this point, I imagine you could write these blog posts yourself. They’re basically madlibs at this point:

John and Erika take a [mode of transportation] to the city of [a city in Europe]. There, they walk [number between 20 and 30] miles, visit a [word meaning ‘church’], eat at [number between 1 and 4] food halls, butcher the [a European language] language, eat lots of [famous local food], and drink even more [famous local drink].

So it always begs the question: why, then, is this visit to [city in Europe] so special? Because Sevilla is beautiful to walk around, their particular ‘word meaning “church”‘ was stunning, the tapas were cheap and delicious, and the wine maybe even more so. And we didn’t butcher the language as much, we’re pretty alright with Spanish.

Always Be Eating

First stop when we left the house on day 1 in Sevilla was a food hall. What? We gotta eat!

But first, we gotta walk, to get to the food hall. We were staying in the Triana area of Sevilla, so the first move was to cross the Puente de San Telmo to the other side of the canal, lending excellent views of the Torre del Oro–the tower of gold.

This canal–and the river it breaks off from, the Guadalquivir–are interesting because they bring up an interesting bit of history about Sevilla. Which is that it used to be one of the most important port cities in the world.

Wait, what? Sevilla is about 50 miles inland. But it can be reached by winding your way up and down the Guadalquivir. And during the Spanish colonization period of the Americas, it was granted a monopoly as the port city for trade with the Spanish colonies. Magellan even departed from Sevilla for his trip around the world. As you can imagine, Sevilla was quite rich during this period.

Once on the other side of the canal, we followed it north, up past the Torre del Oro, on our way toward the food hall. This next takes us past the beautiful Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza, a large and famous bullfighting ring. You can take tours inside. We opted for simply viewing from outside.

Finally, after a tough day so far (what did we walk, a quarter mile? Maybe half a mile?), we arrived at the market and could eat! This was the Mercado Lonja del Barranco, a small, somewhat upscale food market. We had an excellent quiche and delicious Andalucían gazpacho.

A Word Meaning Church

We were gifted a beautiful, but very warm, day for walking Sevilla’s charming streets–which we did plenty of after lunch.

Quite randomly, we stopped in a candy store we came across in our wandering. We didn’t end up buying anything, but we tried a little bit of everything in the store!

I’m normally not a fan of paying to visit churches. Every European town and city of any size has one to three large, beautiful churches, so paying to visit any seems highly ridiculous. The Catedral de Sevilla–our main objective for the day–was worth it, though.

The church has Moorish origins, beginning as a mosque on that site in the 1100s. Once the Castilians conquered Sevilla and pushed the Moors out, the mosque was remade as a Christian church, and evolved over the centuries to became the cathedral it is now–at one time the largest in the world. It’s still the fourth largest, according to Wikipedia.

The Moorish influence still remains, chiefly in the form of La Giralda, the bell tower that rises above the cathedral. This used to be the minaret when the mosque was there.

You can climb La Giralda, and it gives great views of the Cathedral, and all of Sevilla, from the top. Climbing it doesn’t involve stairs, however. Instead, a series of 35 ramps takes you to the top. Apparently, the ramps were designed to be wide enough so the men who call the faithful to prayer, and the horses they rode on, could fit comfortably to ride to the top.

Christopher Columbus is also buried inside the cathedral, so you can go inside and flip him off, and he can’t do anything about it!

Tapas en Triana

We headed out that evening into our neighborhood of Triana for tapas and wine. Armed with recommendations from a friend of Erika’s, we wound our way through the streets looking for a place near us that he’d called out. Because we’re old and American, it was like 7:30 when we went out, so we were practically the only ones out. The Spanish start late!

After tapas and some vino tinto at a place near our apartment, we made our way to Calle Betis. It’s a beautiful nighttime walk along the canal, on a street that I imagine gets much crazier later at night.

Plaza de España

Did we start out the next day by returning to the Mercado Lonja? You damn well know the answer to that question.

This put us a long way from our main objective that day, the Plaza de España. No matter… I’d brought my DSLR that day, it was time for a small photo safari!

Though only built in the 1920s, the Plaza de España has a grand scale suggesting opulence from much longer ago. It was built for a world’s fair held in 1929–hey, that’s a great time for such a celebration of riches! I’m sure nothing will happen that year to make it seem highly ironic.

These days, the buildings are mostly used for government functions. And the plaza itself is used for housing camera wielding tourists. Like us.

Wine & Tapas Every Night? Yes Please

That day was a ton of walking, and we wanted to get out for a bigger night of tapas and wine. We needed to get back home for a bit, so we could crash and recharge for the evening.

We headed out that evening bound for Calle Mateos Gago, a famous tapas street just past the Catedral, in the Santa Cruz neighborhood of Sevilla. We had a few places in mind we wanted to check out, and otherwise were ready to let the evening take whatever shape it desired to take. Immediately it desired the shape of gambas al ajillo.

We saw that dish carried past us on the street to a table on the outdoor patio at one of the tapas bars. So we immediately entered that bar and ordered our own dish of gambas al ajillo.

We wanted to get more food from this place–but it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and we had places we needed to try. The next stop was Taberna Álvaro Peregil and… oh my, we had this thing:

Looking through the pictures to put this blog post together, I started instinctively looking for flights to Sevilla when I came across this one. I’d forgotten just how awesome our tapas bar crawl was. Good god, man.

To pair with that baked goat cheese dream, we each ordered a glass of a rich, decadent treat unique to Andalucía. Vino de naranja, or orange wine, is deep, deep red in color, tangy, and impossibly sweet from the oranges. It works beautifully as an after dinner delight, and it turns out it pairs wonderfully with baked goat cheese dream.

Finally, we visited Bodega Santa Cruz, where along with red wine (naturally), we had a small plate of olives, and some montaditos de pringá, small sandwiches the bar is known for.

Are you hungry after reading this? I’m hungry after writing it.

Next Time

Sevilla is another stop on our trip where, even though we were only there three days, it feels like longer. We made excellent use of our time, seeing and doing a lot without pushing ourselves. It was a perfect stay.

But I could have stayed longer, and would love to go back. Fortunately for us, though, the hits would just keep on coming. Andalucía had more regalos for us, and it was time to head to our next destination to receive them: Granada!

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next time!