I had visited Sevilla in 2007 when my good friend Connor was living there. We had such a good time watching Flamenco, exploring the winding streets and doing la marchas (literally “marches”. Basically a pub crawl from tapas place to tapas place, where you try the speciality at each place) that Sevilla quickly became my favorite city in Spain. I had been singing it’s praises to Amanda ever since then and we were excited to check it out together.
Sevilla definitely still has some of the best food in the world and it is still ridiculously cheap for all that you get. Our first night there, we ate at El Patio and had Iberian pork cheek with sherry, boccarones (mild white anchovies), fish adobo, and of course plenty of red wine. Then we went to a newer place called Cervezeria La Surena where you can get a bucket of 5 beers for 3 Euros. The next morning, Amanda went for a run along the river and fell into some sort of cactus prickles. Meanwhile, I was eating a ham tostada (not like a Mexican tostada. It’s basically just a toasted baguette with olive oil and ham on it. Delicious!) and some fresh OJ. Later on, we went to Dos De Mayo a crowded place where in typical Sevilla fashion you just yell out your order. Somehow, somebody always hears it and brings your next dish to you. We had some big cups of Sangria, shrimp salad, squid meatballs, and bacalao (cod) with potato lasagna and some ox tails.
The next day, we ate at the bar at Taberna Colonias. This time we had a big jar of Sangria, carrots in a vinaigrette, octopus in a different vinaigrette, amazing eggplant salmarejo, and a quail egg with some ham on bread. Then we walked around the beautiful Alcazar (like a medieval muslim castle/palace) and walked around the gardens. Then we went to see an incredible Flamenco show. It was a really small venue that was basically in a courtyard between a few buildings. There couldn’t have been more than 50 people there and the show was unreal. It was so passionate and emotional that it almost moved us to tears. Then we went for our last meal at a fancier (but still very cheap) place called Eslava. We had a duck fillet, olives with beans, scallops, and a pepper stuffed with hake and egg on a boletus cake.
On our final morning in Sevilla, we went to the big cathedral in the center of town. We saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus, then walked up 35 ramps to the top of the tower so we could see the views out over the city. Then we made our way to the airport so we could catch our $50 flight to Bilbao. It’s kind of strange but for some reason air tickets are often cheaper than train tickets in Spain.
