R. and I have really tried to embrace the Spanish culture and lifestyle, and part of this has meant completely readjusting our body clocks! The Spanish work on Spanish time! Siesta is very much a part of life here, and one's chances of getting much accomplished between 1 - 5pm are relatively slim as most places still close for "siesta" which involves a lazy lunch and a nap! As a result, our days have gone something like this:
Wake up anywhere between 9 - 10am. Head off to a nearby cafe for breakfast. Visit at least one sight or monument in the morning between 11 - 1pm. Find somewhere to have lunch round 1 - 2pm. Head back to the hotel for an afternoon kip. Wake up round 4 - 5pm. Head out to do some more sightseeing, stopping in between for beers and tapas. Round 9 - 10pm start to think out finding somewhere to have a light supper. Head back to the hotel round midnight.
By Spanish stadards, this is a very tame schedule! We should, ideally, be hitting the bars after dinner at midnight before stopping by the clubs round 2 - 3am, before heading home!
The fact that it's only getting dark close to 10pm, and the warm summer weather, does mean that it makes sense to get the most out of the longer days - especially when the evenings are markedly cooler! The hotels are also very humane in their approach to checkout times - most have a check out of noon.
On Sunday morning I was eventually woken by the bells sounding from the church across the street from our hotel. When I blearily check my watch, I was atonished to see that we had managed to sleep until 11:30am! What a wonderful life!!
While we sat having breakfast on the little square in San Fernando, planning our route to Seville, a church procession made its way up the street in front of us. Even though it was a small church and San Fernando is a small town, the fanfare was quite impressive. A full marching band accompanied the procession as the congregation made its way up the street and into the church. The pomp and ceremony appeared to be in honour of a tiny little white-haired priest, who solemnly walked beneath a canopy, dressed quite literally in his Sunday best. It was really lovely to catch a glimpse of this aspect of Spanish life.
It was well after midday by the time we were back on the road and headed to Seville. The drive from Granada to Seville via Ronda, Jerez and San Fernando, while a little hair-raising at times, has been such a wonderful way to see Spain. The countryside is so varied and so beautiful. There have been so many postcard moments:
We arrived in Seville in the late afternoon, and made what we thought would be a clever decision to drop our bags at our hotel first, before dropping the car off at the train station...Well, one should never underestimate the narrowness of old town streets in Spain! Thankfully we were in the tiny little Ford Ka, and R. was able to deftly navigate our way through the most incredibly narrow and winding streets. There were a couple of times when GoogleMaps said to "turn left" and I was convinced that there could never be a street to turn left into, and suddenly a street would appear that would require the tightest of turns to get into - and there was no way one could get back out! But we found our hotel, dropped off our bags and made it out of the maze that is Santa Cruz!
Seville is filled with orange trees...and as we walked from the train station back to our hotel we saw tree after tree laden with fruit.
After a walk through the old Juderia quarter of Santa Cruz and a stroll around the massive cathedral - the third largest in the world, after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London - we stumbled upon a flamenco show. Flamenco is an art form that combines song, guitar and dance and originated amongst the Andulucian gypsies in the late 18th century. It was a wonderful performance - the music and song is haunting and filled with emotion that is also expressed through the dancing. All in all, it was a fantastic introduction to the vibrance and emotion of Seville!
