Final impressions of our wonderful visit to not-so-sunny Seville!

As our time in Sevilla comes to an end, we can honestly say we have had some great experiences and really enjoyed our time in Spain (despite the unusually rainy weather we experienced).  We wrote about some of them in an earlier post Sightseeing in Sevilla. Here is a little summary of some final impressions of Seville from the both of us:

• Seville is a very social city and at the same time Seville is a very child/family friendly city.  Every restaurant/cafe/bar etc welcomes children and so often there is a playground nearby for children to play while adults socialize. We have been lucky with this!

• It is important to have a very solid/strong stroller for travelling along the cobbled streets.  Babies enjoy very bumpy rides here. It often put Olivia to sleep, but it is taking a toll on our poor old stroller.
• It seems we have been very unlucky with the weather (apparently this is unusual for this time of year).  Lots of rain which means lots of umbrellas on the streets!  Everyone is ready to quickly pull out the umbrella when the sudden downpours occur.
• Most women have long hair here (we’ve seen very few short haircuts).
• There is very little craft beer here – if you order a beer (un cerveza por favor or uno canas) you automatically get a light pilsner called CruzCampo.  Everyone drinks the same beer and it often costs less than bottled water.  They seem to have a monopoly! If you find other types of beer, it’s usually very expensive. Dave tried a couple craft beers here and there, but they were hard to find. The best he sampled came from a brewery out of northern Spain called DouGalls who had some decent pale and amber ales. The Andalusian craft beers available on tap all seemed to be lagers.
• Apparently it is so hot here during the summer that everyone goes inside from 1-9pm (for siesta and the air conditioning).  Everyone then comes outside to play and socialize at 9pm (kids included!).  Makes sense in the summer but pretty strange for us at this time of year, and hard to adjust to with three young kids.
• Our favoritelocal foods have included: Churros con chocolate, salted almonds soaked in olive oil, rustico loaves of bread – x3 for 90 cents – (bought fresh/warm in the morning), manchego cheese, Iberian ham, paella (meat or fish), Solomillo al Whisky (pork in whisky), large sweet strawberries, oranges, carrots, Calamari, Salted cod (We have not figured out how to cook the salted fish – Katy tried and it was VERY salty), cola del toro (bulls tail), large fresh shrimp (gambas).  Here’s Dave’s first delicious attempt at a seafood (calamari and shrimp) Paella (yum!)

• There seems to be a beautiful church on almost every street corner and they are frequented daily and are welcoming to the public.  Religion is a big part of the community here.  Young and old attend and seem very committed to their local church. It was great to see each church in preparation for Semana Santa. Last Sunday, we noticed a very large number of people entering and exiting the church next to our apartment.  There was a constant flow all afternoon.  Curiosity finally took the better of us and we decided to follow the crowd in.  We stood in awe as we gazed upon four “pasos” that were beautiful carved and decorated in golds and silvers, with statues of Jesus and the Macarena on top. We also witnessed one of the bands that accompany the procession perform at  the square. It was a lot like our pipe bands but with trumpets instead of bag pipes.

• The other religion here seems to be football. There are two teams in La Liga in Seville: FC Sevilla and FC Betis. Betis seems to be the most popular, especially in our neighbourhood, but FC Sevilla seems to be more successful. Nick and I were lucky enough to catch a match between Sevilla FC and Valencia FC. We were unable to get 4 or even 3 tickets together (in a stadium of 42,700 seats), which is unfortunate because Katy, and hopefully Matt, would have really enjoyed it. It also became apparent that infants were not really welcome in the stadium. We got there early, bought our scarf to support Sevilla and had a hotdog lunch. The game started with the entire crowd standing and singing the team song and it seemed many fans didn’t sit down the rest of the game.
• The game ended in a 2-0 loss, but Seville went on to win last week in Champions league play against Manchester United and their birth in the quarter finals has the city excited. Our trip ended with Nick asking for a soccer ball, which I happily obliged. There have been daily games of street soccer with Matt ever since.
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• Construction is constant here.  The outside of buildings seems to be kept intact and the inside is often gutted.  So much cement is being made at each site.  It looks like very complicated work – the workers seem to always be ‘patching’.
• Flamenco dance is a major art form here.  The flamenco dance performance we saw was truly wonderful at the Flamenco Museo.  Intimate theatre environment, stunning dresses, incredible dancers (male and female) – such intensity and strength in their performance. We didn’t realize they did so much percussion with their feet/shoes! They aren’t tap shoes but they are specific Flamenco shoes (a bit like character shoes) and they play incredible quick and wonderful rhythms with their feet.   The flamenco guitar playing is also beautiful – classical intricate finger plucking – it really guides the whole structure for the dance and voice.  The voices seems a bit less classical trained – it’s very speech like/story telling.  Lots of moving chromatic melismatic lines – and contrasting dynamics.  Perhaps reflecting the emotion of the story or the characters dancing? Even when not singing, they are always calling out throughout the performance (we wondered what they were shouting!)
• Flamenco dresses.  Every other shop here seems to have beautiful flamenco dresses.  Mixes of so many different colours and patterns. There are also beautiful tasseled shawls of all different colors and floral patterns.  I was in a department store this week that had a new stunning display of silk flowers for the hair set-up (I’m wondering if it was for Semana Santa or the April Feria?).

• Not to mention the children’s clothes for first communion…
  

  

  
• We had lovely visits from Peter, Will, Maria and three B-R aunties (Jane, Sue and Annie)!  Thank you for coming and sharing our Spanish experience with us.  It was SO lovely to see you all:)

• The Seville Communion was our other travel read for Seville. It put you right into the setting of Seville and gave you a feel for the city including the importance of the church, bullfighting, flamenco, the former nobility, Santa Cruz, Triana and the tapas culture. It was a good read before our visit.

Our next instalment will be from sunny (hopefully) Marrakesh, Morocco!