A whistle-stop tour through Andalucia – One day in Seville

As with all whistle-stop tours, I guess, there is very little time to stop and soak up all the sights and plant the memories of each place and this is particularly true of our day in Seville.

I do have two very distinct memories. The first was a visit to the Plaza de España, built to showcase Spain’s industry and technology at the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and restored in the noughties. It is in the form of a huge semi-circle with a moat, criss-crossed by four bridges and with a fountain at its centre. What struck me most were the fabulous blue tiles covering almost every surface, including the bridges and the four alcoves which represent different provinces of Spain (look out for the photo of the Jaén alcove).

Following our visit to the Plaza de España, we were dropped off in the centre of Seville to have some lunch and visit the Cathedral. I see from my diary that I had a very pleasant lunch of shrimp tortillas and croquettes with another passenger before we made our way to the Cathedral. We didn’t have much time, you can tell that I didn’t stop to take any photographs. After a rather hurried visit we tried to leave but kept getting lost and arriving back at the entrance, the trouble with this being that it was a one-way system and they wouldn’t let us out! We came across three others from our coach and together spent twenty minutes, increasingly panicking, trying to find the exit. When we finally got outside, the main group had left and we had to hurry through the streets until we caught up with them at the Golden Tower just in time for a boat trip up the Guadalquivir river (which we had seen a couple of days before when we were in the mountains outside Baeza).

After our run through the streets, the river trip was pleasantly cool but we then had another rather hot walk back to the coach and we were off once again, this time to Jerez. It will be no surprise to learn that we were met at our hotel – the Sherry Park Hotel – with a glass of sherry.