To Seville, Flamenco
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October 17
Mosque Baths & Alhambra Museum
This was a travel day. We had pre-purchased tickets for the 1:20 p.m. train from Granada to Seville. This gave us time in the morning to see the places at The Alhambra that we didn’t get to see the other day, as they were closed by the time we got there. Em, Deb, and I set out to hit these before heading to the train station. Chris opted to rest at the Airbnb.
All the Alhambra places targeted for this morning are clustered close to each other, so that enabled us to visit them all in short order. First stop was the St. Mary Church of the Alhambra. This is a nice but fairly simple church with a rich history depicting the “Catholic triumph over Islam” as it was built on the site of the Alhambra’s former great mosque. Take that!
Then on to the very cool Mosque Baths, a Moorish bath house dating to the 1300’s. This is just around the corner of the church on the Calle Real.
Finally, we hit the impressive Museum of the Alhambra. which contains some amazing artifacts from ancient times onward. It is surprising that there is no fee to enter this museum.
We saw almost all of the museum, but had to cut out of the last room to be sure we made check-out time at the Airbnb at 11:00 a.m., and also our 1:20 p.m. train to Seville. We easily could have spent another half hour in this museum.
Train to Seville
Back at the Airbnb we grabbed our bags, and Chris, and then walked about a mile to the train station. The station was very busy. After finding the correct platform through the crowd we grabbed a quick bite to-go from the cafe at the station and ate while waiting for the security line to begin moving people through to the track.
The train left on schedule and we arrived in Seville about three hours later at 4:00 pm.
It was about a 20-minute walk from the Seville train station to the Airbnb that Chris booked for us. This Airbnb was much larger than the one in Granada, and better appointed. There again was a rooftop terrace, but also much larger, and there was a washing machine. It was in the Santa Cruz neighborhood which is a great central location, and near the Seville Cathedral and Real Alcazar. The host gave us a very thorough run down of everything. He recommended a place to see flamenco, which we went to that night after dinner.
Before heading anywhere, we chilled for a little bit on the rooftop terrace.
The weather was again very comfortable for being outside. At about 7:30 p.m. we headed out for dinner at El Riconcillo, the oldest bar in Seville, serving food since 1670. The Airbnb host recommended this place. The host did not tell us that the place is so popular that reservations need to be made at least a week in advance. When we got there, it had not yet opened for the night, and there were dozens of people, with reservations, waiting for it to open. It was like a Taylor Swift concert.
So, we rambled on to a restaurant very close by that obviously benefits from the Riconcillo overflow tourists, like us. But seeing several locals eating there convinced us to try it. The simple, inelegant Taberna Manzanilla was perfectly fine for us. We ate outside in a small square. The service and food were both good…a fine local dining experience.
Dive Bar Flamenco
After dinner we headed to La Carboneria, to catch some flamenco, as recommended by our Airbnb host. Meandering down some tight streets, we found our way there around 10:00 p.m. This place can be described as a dive bar. Loud, drinks and tapas bought only at the bar, cash only, beer on the floor, long benches, shared tables, and best of all, flamenco! It was very informal, no cover charge, and it almost seemed like it was “open flamenco night”, but it really wasn’t. It just appears chaotic.
The shows come every 30 minutes, and we just missed one so we found seats near where the flamenco dancer would be, had some drinks, talked with people around us and waited for the next show. The couple next to us were from Australia. They had been to Ronda, Spain before coming to Seville, and they were adamant that we NEEDED to go to Ronda if we could while in Spain. We took them up on it, as I write about later.
After about 20 minutes the next show started. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed. There was a guitar player, a singer/wailer, and a female dancer. There really wasn’t a stage, they just made room for the dancer on the barroom floor. It was great. Very raw, and lots of energy and sweat. They did their thing for about 30 minutes, after which we headed out. The dancer was taking collections and posing for pictures just outside the bar area in the adjoining courtyard. Not realizing there was a line for pics I just went right up to the dancer, dropped money in the box and posed with her. She was very accommodating and friendly, but the people who I cut in front of weren’t as much…oops. This was a great take and introduction to Seville. We spent about an hour here.
From here we returned to the Airbnb rooftop terrace at around 11:30 for a nightcap.
Off to bed.
