Monday 23 May 2016
I feel stuffed, but in a good way. Too much salad, which is possibly not a bad thing, is it?We arrived in Seville on a BA flight from Gatwick, which was quite uneventful. The best part was my first holiday G&T, served from a tiny plastic bottle. In the truly dreadful film The Grey, the last shot of the film is Liam Neeson attempting to fight off a pack of wolves using broken miniature spirit bottles. If he had plastic ones like I did, he would have been eaten much more quickly.
We got the EA bus into town and found our Air B&B in San Sebastián square. It is in a block of 19th century flats close to the city centre, and we have a room overlooking jacaranda trees in full lilac coloured bloom. Pepe showed us around,and his daughter Klara is our hostess. She gave me a kiss when we first met, a Spanish tradition I heartily approve of. The flat is traditionally furnished in Spainish style, lots of dark varnished wood and cool tiled floors. I'm sure it's ideal when it's 40 degrees in the summer.
We were both quite hungry so we followed the tram lines into town until engound some cafes . A garrulous waitress persuaded us into her Lebanese cafe. Not having a clue about the dishes on offer, we chose a big one which looked like the equivalent of a meze, a bit of everything. It was a healthy choice, a massive pile of salad, hummous, tabouleh, falafels, and other Levantine dishes. Two juicy lamb kebabs came with it, not in the least like the traditional English donner kebab.
As we sat outside the cafe, thousands of football bans in the red shirts of the local club Sevilla steamed past on the way to their stadium. They had reached the final of La Liga yesterday, but were beaten by Barcelona, so I'm guessing the fans were celebrating coming second.!
Lots of police cars came past, and then a band and two double decker buses, which I guess contained the team. For about ten seconds I got quite excited about football, but it soon passed. As I sit here taping on my iPad, lots of fireworks have erupted, which I think is yet more celebration of coming a valiant second. At least I think it was fireworks, they could have been shooting the defeated team.
