Around the world in 2 years!: Sevilla: 6/6

Even though Sevilla is Spain’s 4th largest city, it definitely had a “small-town” feel.
Let me back-up to our fun-filled (and extremely long) drive to Sevilla from Madrid. True to my family tradition of driving everywhere, I opted to drive to Sevilla rather than fly or take a train. I had to come to Granada (also in the South of Spain) for 1 week for work, so I though – why not drive?
Jason, a fellow Internal Auditor, is on the Italy audit and decided to join me in Sevilla for the weekend. Since there’s a limited amount of money available to us for the weekends, we tried to save some money by me driving both of us to Sevilla. His flight got in around 9:30pm, so I picked him up at the Madrid airport and off we went!
It started out well, but turned into a little adventure. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a pretty decent sense of direction (thanks Dad!) and I absolutely hate getting lost!
Apparently no one in Spain really uses a map for driving and just relies on their GPS. I don’t really like to rely too much on technology, so I still printed up directions on http://www.viamichelin.com/. Actually a really great site for driving directions in Europe!
Unfortunately, between the darkness and the talking, I got a little distracted and at some point (probably when we stopped for dinner) the GPS reset itself and had a completely different address as the ending point! I didn’t think to check it and we followed the GPS for a good hour (through winding back roads and up and over mountains) before I became really uncomfortable with the emptiness of the roads. We checked the GPS and realized that we were still going South, but not to Sevilla!!
By this time, it was already around midnight (keeping in mind that the drive from Madrid to Sevilla is a 5 hour drive). It took us another hour to get back to the highway and on track, and we ended up FINALLY getting to our hotel in Sevilla at 4am.
On a positive note, I normally would have flipped out at the thought of getting lost, but I was more concerned with finding our way back and kept my cool…
Our hotel, Hotel Inglaterra, is located right in the Plaza Nueva in Sevilla, a really cute shopping square and a great location (walking distance from everything!) As June starts tourist season, most hotels were sold out. The hotel I really wanted to stay in (our fellow colleagues stayed there a couple months ago using points), was approx. $800/night and more Starwood points than I had! We ended up coming across it during our walk on Saturday and I can see why it cost so much! See the attached picture of the Hotel Alfonso below.
Picture of the Hotel Alfonso:

After an exhausting night, we both slept in until around noon and then grabbed some brunch before exploring the town. This time I was able to follow our walking tour as suggested in my Rick Steves’ Spain book…and I’m glad we did! What a gorgeous city!!! EXTREMELY clean (they have sanitation workers clean the streets on a nightly basis) and quiet city! There are approx. 700,000 locals and the rest are tourists. We walked around for almost 5 hours and saw the main Cathedral (gothic architecture and one of the largest of this kind in the world) as well as some gardens and just getting lost among the small streets. We stopped along the way to break from the heat and enjoy some ice cream and later in the day we enjoyed a nice, cold, refreshing beer on our way back to the hotel.

The Giraldi Belltower

one of the many plazas
Even with all the walking, this was one of the more relaxing and enjoyable weekends I’ve had…maybe part of it was the company. In the evening, we had reservations at El Arenal to enjoy a typical Flamenco dance ( show) while we ate Tapas dinner. The food wasn’t bad but the show was pretty amazing. They had 3 guitarists and 3 singers and what appeared to be a family of Flamenco dancers (both men and women). See the pictures attached below. The only other time I’ve seen people move their feet so fast was when I saw a traditional Irish Dance in Ireland (basically like the River Dance)!

my weekend companion and I pre-dinner/Flamenco show

Dinner and the show ended around midnight and since both of us were pretty exhausted…we opted out of the Sevilla night-scene and headed back to the hotel. We figured there would be plenty of time for that in Barcelona when we meet up again in a couple of weeks (along with 3 of my other colleagues coming from Italy).
There wasn’t much time to do anything on Sunday as Jason had to catch an early train back to Madrid to fly back to Rome. I hung around Sevilla a little longer to do some souvenir shopping and bought the CUTEST little Flamenco dresses for my nieces. All the regular stores were closed on Sunday, so I just relaxed with a Frap. And did some people watching in the Plaza before heading out for Granada.
The drive to Granada was actually pretty nice. The weather was great and the landscaping consisted of endless fields of sunflowers, mountains in the background, and tons of vineyards!

I’ll be in Granada for 1 week for work (during which I’ll be trying to do a little sight-seeing here as well) and then drive back to Madrid where I’ll catch a flight to Ibiza!!