Seville Cervantes Hotel

I have always loved the novel Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. In the story, Don Quixote is a middle-aged gentleman from the region of La Mancha in central Spain. Obsessed with the chivalrous ideals he read about in books, he decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked. But what adventures he has!

The writer Miguel de Cervantes lived primarily in Seville between 1596 and 1600. Because of financial problems, he worked as a purveyor for the Spanish Armada, and later as a tax collector. In 1597, because of discrepancies in his accounts, he ended up in the Royal Prison of Seville for a short time.

Because of my love of the story, we are staying in the old section of Seville in the Cervantes Hotel on Cervantes Street. Maybe I had a Don Quixote moment when I booked it… But I couldn’t resist.

We arrived by train from Jerez, in the early afternoon and took an inexpensive cab (our first in Spain) to the hotel.

We settled into our room and then went out for a late tapas lunch at a recommended outdoor restaurant. The food was great - a seafood salad, spaghetti with garlic and shrimp and an artichoke dish, topped off with a huge slice of a yummy cake (like three leches) that we shared. In fact we shared the whole meal. It was all so good.

When we returned to the hotel, we made some plans for how we were going to spend our week here. We booked a flamenco show for Sunday and just checked out a few things that we wanted to look into.

Our room was nice but too warm and stuffy and the door needed oil as it creaked loudly. The lady at the reception suggested that we could change rooms tomorrow. Perfect.

All in all a good travel day. I think we are going to enjoy our say here!Read more