July 25 - 26, 2015
We made a wish list of all the places we'd like to go, then narrowed it down to the top five. Leea crunched numbers. I have no idea what that means, or what it entails, but somehow we convinced ourselves that we could do this without spending more than we would have spent finishing the Camino and what we are saving by not being at home spending money. Not to mention how much John is contributing by only eating beans and rice.
We checked out the train schedules and Leea wrote down the time of the one we wanted to take from Palencia to Madrid. It's the fast train, the AVE, that doesn't make many stops. Then in Madrid, we will hop on the cercanicas train to get from Chamartín station to the Atocha station and catch the train to Seville. Easy Peasy. Well, it would have been easy, but when we got to the train station in Palencia and I went up to buy the tickets, I asked for the tickets for the next train to Madrid. I didn't realize that there was a puddle jumper, a train that stops in every small village along the way. That was the next train, the one we wanted was the train after that. Oh well. It just meant that we would arrive in Seville a couple of hours later.
Leea just rolled her eyes when we read the tickets and realized what had happened. Anyway, we got on the train and for some strange reason, we got seats in the car with the engineer in the front. And, no one else was in the train. So I grabbed the seat I liked best. Leea stayed in the seat she was assigned. Leea had both of our tickets. When the conductor came around she handed him the tickets. He looked at the tickets and he looked at her then he looked at the ticket again. I thought it had something to do with me sitting in the wrong seat. But, no. He didn't even realize we were together. He said something to her and she looked at the tickets and realized that the top ticket he was looking at was my Dorado ticket, the discount ticket for those over 60. He thought she was trying to pull a fast one. We got it straightened out and we all had a good laugh. He didn't care where I sat.
Since I had a good window seat and not much to do, I decided to do a narrative photographic series of the train trip by photographing the stations as we stopped in them. I'm pretty pleased with the results. I still need to cull them and edit them. So what was a minor setback turned out to be a fun project.
- View From The Train
We arrived in Seville about seven in the evening. We took a taxi to the hotel because the train station is a long way from the Santa Cruz district in the central area. When you stay in the Santa Cruz district the taxi has to let you off at the boundary because there are only winding little streets and passages only big enough for one or two people to get through. No room for cars. It's magical and worth carrying your bags a block or so.
Our hotel is amazing for less than $50 per night.it is small of course, but after albergues, it seems like a luxury. We room in what would be called an atelier in France. The elevator goes to the fourth floor, our room and one other are tucked up in the fifth floor. We have to walk a short flight of stairs after the elevator. But we have a view from our window of the top of the cathedral and we are close to everything.
I went out to do something and got lost. It really is a labyrinth of little passages. Leea sent me a message after about an hour asking if I was coming back. lol, Leea was sleepy and didn't want to eat, so I went out and dined solo. I had a yummy bowl of spaghetti carbonara.
Yesterday, our first full day, we slept until eight or so, stretched and went up to the rooftop terrace to have café and tostada while looking out over Seville. Lovely. The cost of the breakfast was the same as in the Camino. What a deal.
After our nice breakfast we went to find the hop on hop off bus, or as Leea and I call them, the Hoppy Bus. We love those things. It gives you an overview of a city and an idea about what you might want to spend time seeing. We rarely hop off and hop back on, we just ride around for an hour looking at everything. This time, we stayed on after the first loop, because what we wanted to see was the Plaza de España.
When we hopped off Leea was hungry so we stopped at what would be the equivalent of a Woolworth's cafeteria. Leea doesn't get many of my cultural references because she was born after the ice age. So I had to update it to K-Mart cafeteria. That she understood because her grandmother, Anna Rose, John's mom used to take her to Kmart all the time when she was a kid and she loved it. Well, she loved her lunch here too. It was a plate filled with baked chicken, a fried egg, French fries, and a large baked pepper. lol, I got full watching her eat.
- Plaza de España
We walked around the Plaza de España for a while. It is a beautiful space. Then we walked through an extensive garden on our way back to the hotel for a siesta. After siesta we did laundry. This hotel even has a place with a washer and dryer. It cost 7€ to wash and dry. This is a great luxury when you are hotel traveling with only two sets of clothes.
We had a dinner of tapas about 9:30 pm at a place recommended by our friend Michael Naughton who is a foodie. We ordered three to share. The portions were so large that the two of us couldn't finish them. They were yummy. Then it was home to bed. I took a different way home and we got a little lost, but it only took us a few minutes to find our hotel again. There is a reason this blog is titled Queen of Lost. ;)
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