Day 7: Walking & Flamenco

Another relaxed day today. Didn't do anything in the morning beyond a brief walk with Schnitzel, and some home-made pasta for lunch. Nicer weather today so in the afternoon we decided to walk back down to Plaza de Espana, since we'd only briefly checked it out earlier in the week.

It was originally built for a World's Fair-type exposition in 1929, and the facade of the building has a mural+map+heraldry done in mosaic tiles for every single province in Spain. We wandered around the giant courtyard and admired the artistry, discovering along the way some of the provinces we'd never heard about before. Nice to look at, though it was quite warm in the sun.

Afterwards we wandered into the Jewish quarter and found a tiny little bar down an alleyway, shaded by orange trees and whitewashed houses. Sat here and had a couple of local wines as we watched people clatter over the cobblestones - lovely environment!

Back to the apartment for another rest before heading out around 7pm. Dinner at one of the restaurants we'd been to earlier in the week with fantastic tapas, one of the best rated in Seville apparently! This time I had oxtail meatballs with cauliflower and carrot cream, while Shandos had the pork cheeks in red wine sauce that I'd had earlier. The city was quite noisy at the moment, as a lot of English football fans were in town for a game - Leicester City were playing Sevilla FC in the Champions League knockout stages (the game ended 2-1 to Sevilla).

After dinner we wandered down another maze of narrow streets to the Flamenco Museum, the only one of its kind in the world! We had tickets for a flamenco show at 8:45 which had been recommended to us by our AirBnB host as one of the most authentic in the city. Happy to report that the performance was brilliant!

Despite my impression of flamenco being focused on female dancers, the male lead stole the show with a ridiculously energetic performance, though the lady was also quite good. Fantastic guitar work as well, though I wasn't hugely fussed about the singer. The vocal style is very different from what we're used to in western culture, and it's also in Spanish which doesn't help - my rudimentary Spanish can't keep up until she sings "te amor" 10 times in a row! Still very talented though, and we stumbled out into the chilly night both impressed and buzzed from the performance.

Long walk back to the apartment, broken up slightly by the purchase of a delicious gelato - tarte queso (cheesecake) and Mars for me, dulce de leche for Shandos.Read more