Life, the universe, coffee and travel
Emma and I did a 3 hour cycle tour (a 3 hour tour..) around Seville today that takes in most of the historic sites (no entry to them, just viewing from the street). Had a wonderful sunny morning although it was quite cold (5-10c). I love doing cycle tours you can cram in a lot more sites than just walking and you get closer to them than bus tours.
So they say that the Oranges in Seville are too bitter and not for general consumption. I’m like “I’ll be the judge of that thank you, challenge accepted!” So after finding out that picking one isn’t really illegal (taking a trees worth might be a different story), I picked one. Here is the result….
So what does one do when one is eating their way across Europe ? Why a food tour of Seville of course !!
This will be the 7th food tour I’ve done, I discovered these back in 2017 when in Paris (secretfoodtours.com), and I’ve tried to do one in every city I visit. We have one coming up in Barcelona soon too. My benchmark has always been the very first one I did in Paris and this one would have to rate up there with that.
Here is the French one I did a few years ago. French Food Tour
Our first stop was for Churros, this is done in the Seville fashion which is slightly salty dough, with thinner chocolate sauce. Of course it was totally delicious.
The second stop was a tavern off a side street, that if you didn’t know it was there, you would miss it. Obviously the locals know about it, as it opened at 12:30, we went in first and within 2 minutes it was packed solid. Amazing place with old earthen wine tanks from the 1850s along the walls (not in use – just for effect – but what an amazing effect).
We were loaded up with the good stuff quickly, three drinks. Spanish Vermouth, Manzanilla (very young white sherry) & Orange wine. The Orange wine was my favourite.
We were given three types of food to try – Montadito de Pringá (mixture of meats in a sandwich). These were amazing.
After this we moved over to a sit down restaurant with some amazing Spanish tiles. The standout dish here was the pork cheeks in a sweet sherry sauce. There was also Jamón, and some delicious eggplant fingers with crumbed coverings. All washed down with Tinto de verano & Solera
The last stop was a bar where we were served yet more drinks : Rebujito (a Sherry cocktail), with some delicious pork kebab sticks (Pinchito moruno) and small mushrooms with alioli (Champiñones con alioli)
As always, these food tours give you a real look into the local food culture and you learn things, see things and taste things you would probably miss if doing them yourself.
A big thanks to Camila who was our guide for the day.
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.
It's all about the coffee 