Meng's Travels: Sevilla

Monday, June 22, 2015

Sevilla

Why Sevilla and not Seville? Well....in Spain they call the city Sevilla, so when in Spain do as the Spaniards do. However, Seville is still an appropriate name for the city, in English.

We took a 3-hour bus ride from Granada to Sevilla. There is a bus almost every hour. It costs about €30 or $33 each. It's a big comfortable bus that sits about 50 passengers. This is a typical bus that connects big towns and cities all across Europe. They are inexpensive and convenient. We could've taken a train, which also runs regularly and may cost slightly more.

We arrived at the bus station in Sevilla and took a taxi, costing about €10, to the hotel. Our hotel, appropriately named Hotel America, is located right in the city center. We only had to walk about 2 blocks to the pedestrian mall, where there are numerous shops and restaurants. The mall leads through Avenida de Constitution to the Cathedral and the Alcazar palace and the General Archives of the Indies. In the early days, Sevilla was a major port city, and therefore, has many important buildings and monuments. Today it's still a fairly big city, population about 1 million. Click here to read more about Sevilla.

We took a "free" walking tour of the city. "Free" means you tip the guide based on what you think the tour is worth. It motivates the guide to do a good job since his/her income is based on the tips. The tour was supposed to be 2 hours but it ended taking 3 hours. It was very informative and we learned a lot about the history and the landmarks around the city.

Two things that we wanted to do, that Sevilla is famous for, were seeing a bull-fight and a flamenco dance. We were told that the weather was too hot and there would be no bullfights. We did walked past the bull-ring arena though. We were able to get tickets (€20 each) to a flamenco dance at the Flamenco Museum. It was a small theater and the lighting was not very good. Anyway, it was a good experience to see a real flamenco dance.