Spain- Part 1…..

…..we arrived in Seville, pronounced “Sebeea” by the Spanish. We found our hotel -Hotel Amadeus and it was charming - classical cd’s in the rooms, instruments everywhere for the use of guests. Breakfast the next morning was brought up to us on the rooftop terrace, clear blue skies and white buildings. We had been told by a relative of our employer, not to bother learning any Spanish as “everywhere” the locals spoke English…..yeah right....maybe four star and up…….certainly not at ground level!!!!!!
Ordering food was our first problem, our first night we ordered “tortilla” – obviously Spanish, bit of an omelete, we thought we couldn’t go wrong with that. What we ended up with, in a Tapas Bar, where the waiter was also the cook, come barman, come proprietor, was a HUGE slab of potatoe and egg, reminiscent of a stucco type piece of architecture heated up in a microwave. However, he did redeem himself by singing passionate flamenco music and we suspect that is where his true vocation lay!
Learned a thing or two about ‘proscuitio’ though – most bars have them hanging from the ceilings and we imagine that part of the curing process continues with bar smoke and fug… then after they have showed up as part of your tapas they meet the eventual fate of the one we saw at my left shoulder as we sat alfresco!! We never did truly crack the food thing, we were constantly misunderstood, mislead, misguided and miserable with our food, with one or two exceptions (more about this in another blog). Experiencing food was one of our big expectations - and like most of our preconceptions of this trip it bit the dust! Spain for us was full on and in your face……we loved the sign at the river bank – linguistic evolution?
To be continued…………….xxxxxxx