So today we get to explore Seville. We worked out where the hop on hop off bus has a stop near us – still a 20 minute walk away, and we bought tickets for the bus for 18 euro each and they cover two days, two different day tours and a night tour, as well as two free walking tours. Given the other hop on hop off experiences we have had this was very good value for money. Off we go on the bus and we enjoy looking at all the important things and try to get an idea of what to do while we are here. After a while we get hungry and the bus stops in the centre of town and we hop off.
Spain is a very strange place, the people are nice, but they don’t speak as much English as the other places we have been and even if you try Spanish it will be the wrong one and get you nowhere. Hola and gracias work reasonably well. So after a rather strange conversation with the waiter and much grunting and pointing we ordered coffee and tea and two croissants with ham and cheese. Simple enough hey! No, even pointing and indicating with two fingers we still only got one croissant. Not sure what happened there, but it was fairly large so we had half each. The waiter was pretty rude, anyway.
We wandered around the streets and shops for a while and found it was a great shopping area. The streets are narrow to keep it shady and cool, good idea because this is the hottest we have been 38-40 each day. We wandered off the see the Metropolis Parasol. This amazing structure is very modern and a bit weird, but you can walk under it and you can take the lift to the top of it and walk around the top getting great views of Seville in the burning heat and part of the entrance is a drink at the café on the top level. You need it after walking around on top in the sun. I can’t describe it very well, except it is kind of like a bee honeycomb curvy, wormy umbrella. You will have to google it.
Under the Metropolis Parasol is a museum that is an archaeological dig from 300 – 400AD. It showed an area where they salted fish and the walls of various buildings and rooms, as well as artefacts. Some of the mosaic floors were amazing and told the story of their lives. There was even sewerage and drainage channels and brick pipes. Quite amazing. We spent a couple of hours wandering around reading the interactive computer screens and learning about early Seville.
We went to the Tourist Information booth at the main department store and found out that there was a bus we could catch that would go past near our hotel from basically anywhere on the circuit around the city. Yay! We could reduce some of the walking in the heat. We went for a walk through the shopping area and found a lovely cool hotel dining area where we shared some tapas. It was beautiful! We caught the hop on hop off bus back to the Plaza De Spania which was built in the 1930s and houses the government offices and is just an amazing curved building decorated with wonderful mosaics, staircases, wooden and mosaic ceilings. It had water features that you could row a boat on, a central fountain and a massive plaza. You should look this up on google too, it’s quite amazing.
We wandered through some gardens and had a sit for a while, and then yay! We caught the bus back to the Hotel. Tonight for dinner we went to a local Italian Restaurant and had pasta. It was yummy!
