The last leg of the Spanish journey is based in Seville. My original itinerary would cover the Santa Cruz neighbourhood in the morning and the signature landmarks such as the Royal Alcazar, Cathedral de Sevilla and Plaza de Espana etc in the afternoon on the first day. But as is our norm, we skipped most of the original itinerary. We had brunch at Alameda de Hercules and found our way to Palacio de las Duenas Seville and that’s all we covered for the Santa Cruz neighbourhood. Then, somehow we stumbled our way to Setas de Seville (see pic above, it was actually taken on the third day though) which I didn’t even put on the agenda because I wasn’t sure that it was close to anything.
I had booked dinner at a place close to Maria Luisa Park but due to the drastically changed itinerary, we had dinner again at Alameda de Hercules because that was the closest location where restaurants clustered that was in proximity to our hotel. We basically just had dinner at the first restaurant we came to since it was on the list of recommended restaurants from our hotel. We ordered the egg with asparagus and seafood paella (for lack of anything else that appeals) and neither was good. The asparagus tasted like what Cantonese call sword beans (not fresh beans either but leftover beans) to me and Mum commented that “it must have been leftover from several days ago and reheated”; the colour definitely says it’s leftover- that tinge of dark green with a sense that it’s wilted. The seafood paella didn’t really use fresh ingredients either even though it has sufficient seafood in it- mussels, calamari rings and other stuff. But none of the seafood tasted particularly good, the calamari rings basically tasted like frozen stuff.
Day 2 was spent at Cordoba and we were pretty much lost already once out of the Cordoba train station while trying to get to the Mezquita (I tried to look for an information booth at the train station but couldn’t find it) so we ended up getting a taxi there. After the obligatory photoshoot of the outside and the courtyard, we got another taxi to the Alcazar Viejo area for the Patio Festival because according to online information, it was the most beautiful area. The rest of the day was pretty much spent queuing outside each house on the San Basilio street. To be honest, the queuing up was a bit tedious and each of the patios were really tiny. But the photos did come out great overall. Then again, we actually stumbled across one business that was part of the Patio Festival near the Mezquita and perhaps because it didn’t have the crowds, I actually felt it was a better experience than the San Basilio patios which just had the advantage of having many of them clustered close together so you could visit them all in one go by going down one street. The Festival was done at around 2pm and we didn’t actually get to go into the last house we queued up for which was finally not on San Basilio. We languished at the Cordoba train station for a few hours because I had prebooked a return trip. For dinner, we went to Alameda de Hercules again and had seafood pizza. Actually, I did not book dinner for that day because I was unsure whether we would go to Eslava Calle or have seafood pizza. We went to Eslava Calle first because it was closer but apparently we had to sit at the bar if we did not have a reservation and so we chose pizza at the end. It was okay but not great.
According to my initial itinerary, we were supposed to visit the Triana and Macarena neighbourhoods but since we still have a bunch of Seville landmarks to go, we completely scratched that. The morning was spent trying to find our way to Setas de Seville to retake photos for me because my face was completely dark in the set of photos taken on day 1 at Seville. We had lunch at the nearby plaza where we ordered black paella (again for lack of anything else that appeals and I was curious whether it would have a different base than tomato sauce, and the answer is nope). Slightly better than the dinner version to be honest but Mum’s already sick and tired of paella by this third encounter and told me explicitly “no more paella”.
We spent the afternoon of the third day visiting Torre del Oro and then Plaza de Espana and called it a day. To be honest, Torre del Oro wasn’t that interesting and the riverside was quite boring if not for the fact that the local flora of purple flowers attracted Mum. Plaza de Espana was way more picturesque with the marble columns. Maria Luisa Park was just right next door but we couldn’t be bothered visiting it after Retiro Park since it’s nowhere as famous and we figured one park is enough for one trip. Actually, before Plaza de Espana, I think I was trying to find the Royal Alcarzar unsuccessfully but we came across an unknown palace, snapped some photos of it and just decided to go to the Plaza de Espana instead because it was way closer. I booked dinner at a place that offered roasted suckling pig and both me and Mum were looking forward to it due to Segovia. But the restaurant didn’t live up to its beautiful interior design at all. The roasted suckling pig was really oily such that there was a very thin crispy skin covering a whole layer of fat AND the meat was very tough and completely tasteless. We did order an appetiser of crispy artichokes that was okay but not great.
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