A Place Both Wonderful and Strange – Tash & Ricki's Career Break Travels

I have Ricki to thank for the title above, after I brought out the Eliza Doolittle impressions. This despite him suggesting after last week’s blog that I must be trying to apply for a job as copywriter at the Sun!

As you will have gathered from the title this blog entry includes a visit to none other than Seville.

We have had planes and automobiles so far on our travels, so now it was time for trains. We had plans to visit both Córdoba and Seville, and as they sit on the same train line, it made sense to do them as a double bill. Unfortunately after booking our train tickets, the weather forecast deteriorated. Nevertheless, this just meant that we would be forced to make the most of the days rather than hiding away in our apartment.

That said, we did seek out an indoor option in Málaga on Tuesday, in the form of the Museo Interactivo de la Música.

Snaps from the museum including some interesting instruments

After noting the interactive element, Ricki had been clamoring to visit. Whoever decided it was a good idea to get a bunch of visitors of indeterminate music ability together and let them loose on some poorly tuned instruments had some interesting ideas for ambience! It was the perfect rainy day activity though.

Musical interlude over, on to our first overnight trip!

Córdoba boasts a rich blend of history and culture, evident in its well-preserved medieval architecture, such as the iconic Mezquita-Catedral.

This building was originally a mosque built in 784, before becoming a cathedral in 1236, resulting in a unique blend of Islamic and Christian architectural heritage. The repeating columns and arches added to the tardis-like effect where it was much larger from inside than I was expecting, and all the more impressive for it. 

Mezquita visited, thus ended our clear plan for the day. We wandered outside of the historic centre’s gates and battled across the rather blustery Roman bridge. This leads to a tower which has been converted to a museum of Andalusian life, where we decided to take refuge and hope that the inclement weather passed.

An unexpected highlight of this was the open rooftop where we could have excellent views back to the historic centre. 

We didn’t have any lunch spots picked out in advance either, so decided to see what looked good as we wandered through the labyrinthian streets.

Figuring that we would be enjoying plenty of Spanish food once we reached Seville in the evening, we opted for an Arabic restaurant, also in a nod to the heritage of the town. Whilst I really enjoyed my pastela moruna, a chicken and almond pastry, my dessert was a little more…interesting. I have since tried to look up “umaya” online, and it doesn’t seem to exist as a known dish. So my best guess is that the chef decided to combine mahalabia (a liquid middle eastern milk pudding) with haytaliyeh (a solid middle eastern milk pudding) and top with pistachio ice cream. My own suggested name for it would be “Dairy cubed”, in ode to both its lactose heavy ingredient list, and texture. The cubes of milk pudding were somewhat unexpected and Ricki unhelpfully compared them to tofu. Thankfully it wasn’t as unappetizing as that. However, while I have a taste for floral notes, even this was a little too much like melted soap for my liking. I am glad that I tried it, but once is definitely enough. 

The afternoon was spent at the Alcazar, the town’s medieval fortress, where we divided our time between the inside and outside areas, depending on the presence of rain showers.

So then on to Seville where we would dine and bed down for the night. It felt like the laws of science were broken, and we had to repeatedly check our watches, when the unthinkable occurred – our train arrived 20 minutes early! I guess the driver must have had a hot date lined up for that evening.

A missed turn on the way to the hotel led to a happy discovery for Ricki. A lover of the snackable potato¹, he was delighted when we passed a takeaway selling freshly fried crisps.

This would hold us over to dinner, when we did our own little foodie tour and went tapas bar crawling. Small plates and sangria, what’s not to love? Highlights for me were beef cheek croquettes and fried cuttlefish. And sangria.

We rounded off the evening at El Garlochi. While the UK has plenty of churches turned into bars, El Garlochi flips this on the head as a bar themed as a cathedral. The sanctity was in full force when we arrived, walking into the incense heavy, velveted interior where a pair of couples sat virtually in silence with no barman in sight. As it turned out, he was dipping in and out, drinking at the bar next door between serves. Well, as Ricki commented, don’t sh*t where you eat. The cash only payment system limited us to one drink each. So after our Sangre de Christo (Blood of Christ) signature cocktails, it was back to the hotel, presumably cleansed of sin.

The next day it was time to properly explore the oft acknowledged Europe’s sunniest city…if only we could find it. We may not have seen Seville at its best, but it certainly beats what we would be experiencing back home at least! And the temperatures, both in Córdoba and Seville, were ideal for walking between attractions. 

With only one day in Seville, there was much we didn’t get to see, but we caught all the big hitters. This started with another cathedral (sadly no whisky cocktails on offer here), the Catedral de Sevilla.

This is the largest gothic cathedral in the world, and true to form, felt like a bit of a warren. Just when you thought you had seen it all, another anti-chamber or chapel opened up.

Points of interest include Christopher Columbus’ tomb (though there is some interesting historical debate on whether his remains actually lie therein) and the Giralda. 

The Giralda is a thirty-something storey tower. Maybe to incentivise visitors to live virtuous lives, getting to the top felt like some kind of purgatory, endlessly ascending, thinking the next round would surely bring us back into the open air.

Finally we reached the gargoyle-adorned peak. Fearsome creatures, shrieking and gurning…and that was just the groups of school children. It was a great place to see the scale of the city.

Next we toured the Real Alcázar, the city’s palace complex, and then the Plaza de España. Both were beautiful, though I’d love to see the Plaza de España in proper spring sunshine.

Real Alcázar

Plaza de España

It was definitely a whistlestop tour of Seville. With direct flights from Edinburgh, we can easily return though. And having ticked some of the bucket list items off the list, means more time for tapas and sangria!

One thing I will not be buying more of here though is over the counter drugs. We learnt the hard way that Spain has some of the most expensive prices in Europe. I think the EUR 10 spent on ibuprofen was more painful than my niggling wrist (the usual pride stopped me from telling the pharmacist I had made a miraculous recovery when she rang it up). So lesson learnt, and putting it out here for any readers – when travelling to Spain, make sure you are well stocked on the pharmaceuticals!

To finish on a more positive note, I absolutely recommend the hotel (or “pension”) we stayed at in Seville, Casa Boutique La Pila de Pato. Although I’m sure the £40/night rate was partly symptomatic of last minute January availability, the room was gorgeous and location amazing. The superking sized bed has slightly ruined me for our apartment in Málaga though! 

24 hours after arriving in Seville, it was time to return to base. Sadly the 3 hour return journey didn’t have the same over-punctuality as the outbound trip! Overall a successful and enjoyable venture though, and we were straight back online to book next week’s…

1. You try coming up with another phrase for “crisps”! ↩︎