Day: January 5, 2024

Went for my daily coffee wander this morning here in Seville.

Looking at google not much was open till 11 but a few places open around 9. Spain really is a night place, and given how hot it is supposed to get here in summer I understand why.

I headed out at 9:30 to take my chances. Didn’t have to go far, found this awesome little (big by local standards) cafe just around the corner.

Very happy place, couldn’t understand a word of what they were all saying , but the laughing and joking it was obvious the joke was on the Barista as one of the other staff slapped him on the back with a flour covered hand.

Coffee was awesome too, probably the best one I’ve had on this trip so far. Seville just keeps getting better. It’s also a super clear sunny day.

Today was a relocation day. We are saying goodbye to Madrid and Hola ! To Seville. Our train wasn’t due to leave till 11:53, and the station was only a few minutes away so we were in no hurry. I’d told the apartment owner we would vacate at 9:30, but we had a call at the door at 8am from the cleaner who had got the wrong instructions. Also our pre-booked cab for 10am never showed up, so I was getting a vibe that today would be a disaster, however we just grabbed two cabs from outside the apartment.

At the station, things looked up, we had over an hour to wait, and just by luck there was a table at a cafe and they had the best station coffee I’ve had in Europe outside Italy. Madrid Atocha station is so much better than the hell on earth that the other Charmartin station is. I somehow managed to load the small micro-nations worth of luggage we have onto the train and found our seats.

Train only about 50% full, glad we were not heading to Barcelona, as the queue for that train was insane though (a while before I need to stress about that one). Pays to get on the train early, the luggage storage section filled up quickly.

Not far out from Toledo heading south and I’m amazed at how similar the countryside here is to parts of south western New South Wales in Australia. Lots of similar red soils. A few things that give it away that we are no longer in Kansas, Toto, would be the odd stone buildings that are couple of centuries old and the tens of thousands of Olive groves.

The train was over 30 minutes late into Seville, and a local was kind enough to tell us we could claim 50% of our trip cost back. I’ll be looking into that over the coming days.

Got a taxi to our apartment and OMFG peeps, prepare yourself for a metric shed load of Seville spam over the next few days, this town is drop dead gorgeous. The streets are super narrow, every corner we turned the streets just kept getting more narrow. On the map everything seems far away but the streets and blocks are so tiny everything is actually so close.

The apartment we have is just amazing. Have only been here a few hours and already love it. We were starving after a few hours on the train so got some tapas just around the corner. Already wishing I’d doubled our stay in Seville.

We just returned from a walk in the evening and got some great pics. Interesting fact on the orange trees around Seville, the oranges are too bitter for human consumption directly, but they make great marmalade and are used for lots of other purposes. Apparently the council employs people to pick them when ripe, and there are over 30,000 trees here in the city.