On our first morning in Spain, we awoke to sunshine and weather warm enough to open a few of the French doors for some nice European coffee time. Not bad for early December.
Crossing the border from Portugal into Spain means jumping ahead one time zone. These days, that puts sunrise around 8:15a and sunset around 6:15p, making it hard to roll out of bed even at 8a. This will definitely take some getting used to.
Our Euro-African Journey (So Far...)
Apparently things weren’t always like this. In the early days of universal time zone adoption, Spain used the much more appropriate time zone: UTC+0 (GMT).
That changed in 1940 when Francisco Franco moved the country forward one hour in a show of solidarity with Nazi Germany.
Many people attribute Spain’s late eating and socializing habits to this change, as the sun doesn’t set until somewhere between 6:30p and 9:30p throughout the year.
Heading across the Triana bridge and into the Centro, we pass the grand former central railway station. Sevilla’s main station was moved outside of the Centro when the high-speed rail came to town in the 90s.
These days, this impressive building is a semi-functional shopping center.
A coffee and a bite to eat at a trendy little cafe to fuel us for some serious pavement-pounding.
Spaniards are serious about their meat—both cured and fresh. This was a display just off a pedestrian walkway.
Every street-side bar and cafe we pass is packed this morning.
Lori led us to Las Setas—the largest freestanding wooden structure in the world. I can’t tell you why it exists or what it is exactly (art installation? giant parasol?).
Seems like no matter what time of day it is or wherever we go it’s just one big festival here. It’s nice to be able to retreat back to our Triana apartment for some down time and quiet school time.
One day, Lori wanted to check out the parks in and around the old Expo grounds. We started off at the Triana Tower.
The boys had fun playing on a little climbing installation that was half under construction, but we did promise them a legit playground.
It took us a little while to find it, but we eventually did, tucked into an inner courtyard accessed through a tunnel.
In 1992, Sevilla held a world’s fair to mark 500 years since Columbus’ 1492 voyage. Expo ’92 attracted 41 million visitors and transformed the city in a lot of ways.
Sevilla’s modern bridges, highways, and launch of Spain’s first high-speed train all resulted from the expo.
Yet, the 500-acre expo grounds sits largely untouched, in a state of decline, with most of the structures crumbling and disused, but for the bicycle path that ties it all together.
We regularly see rowing teams practicing on the “river” in the morning. It’s nice to see the locals using their waterways—and this one seems particularly useful. That might be because it’s not a river at all (it once was, over a hundred years ago).
Prior to the 20th century, Sevilla was extremely flood-prone. At the turn of the century, engineers tried something unconventional to protect the city: They re-routed the river farther from the city center, terminated the old river on the north end, and installed a series of locks leading to the new river on the south end, creating a controlled reservoir. It fixed the problem. No more flooding.
Another interesting tidbit of Sevilla trivia: It’s the only major port city in Spain that isn’t located on the ocean (it’s about 60 miles inland).
On the way back, we thought we’d take the floating boardwalk put in for the Expo. It’s not doing so well these days, and I’m even surprised they permit people to still walk on it.
Dock boards creaking and even cracking beneath your feet (with plenty of holes here and there) is always a fun adventure with kids.
Autumn leaves—something the boys don’t get to experience much.
Lori came down with the flu. Then Riley, promptly followed by Noe. Somehow, I was spared, which of course meant I was caring for three sick individuals for over a week.
Before the boys got laid up in bed, I took them out for a string of random outings. It was pouring down rain for much of the time, so there wasn’t a lot to do from day to day (unless I wanted to pay up the nose for it—Spain is not Mexico…).
So, rainy evening walks before bedtime…
Trying out new coffee shops for brunch…
And various chores and errands.
The laundry was reaching a tipping point and we hadn’t yet found a functional place to get our laundry done. Lori had been in charge of that one, but then she fell ill, so it landed in my lap.
The next day, Riley woke with a fever. So, Noe and I made a point of being out of the apartment for most of the morning. Figuring out laundry seemed like a good way to pass the time.
After walking around Triana following up on the few leads I had, we found a laundromat that looked like it would work for us. Noe and I finished our walk, went back to check up on the sickos, and headed out once more with a big bag of laundry.
The machines at the laundromat didn’t take a card—only coins. There was a coin machine next to the machines that too €5 and €10 bills. I only had €20s. So, off we were to find a shopkeeper who would be willing to make change.
The proprietor of a nearby shop took pity on me and my New World Spanish, and we returned to the laundromat ready to roll.
There was one washing machine available, so I threw our clothes in, dialed-in the appropriate settings, and proceeded to feed the coins in…which the machine promptly spit right back out at me.
After trying this for a while, a woman came over and started to wildly gesticulate something while speaking to me in rapid-fire Castilian (Spain-Spanish). I tried to explain that the machine seems to be broken and had eaten one of my coins and won’t take the others.
Finally, I decided the only way to get rid of her is to pack up my clothes and wait for another machine. This seemed to do the trick.
As I was sitting on a bench with Noe waiting for a machine to free up, he said, “It’s too bad we weren’t able to use that machine. The kittens in the picture are so cute!”
What Noe? Kittens, where? “The kittens on the machine.” I thought to myself for a moment, why on earth would they have a picture of…”
And then it dawned on me. I scanned the instructions again. Nope, nothing. Then looked up and saw it: “Zona Mascotas” (Pet Zone). Eww. It’s a machine for pet stuff.
Just then, a “human” machine became free and we promptly jumped in. In all my dealings with laundromats, in all the countries…Never have I ever…
Once we moved on to the dry cycle, I thought Noe deserved a little treat for helping me out the past few days. On the way, this caught my eye.
I know from my days working in TV that apartments in the U.S. usually have what’s called a Master Antenna TV system—essentially one antenna for all the units. Apparently, Spaniards don’t like sharing their signal or the apartments are too cheap to invest in something like that here, or something else. No clue.
Here we are, nearly a week into our time in Sevilla, and we hadn’t yet gone inside the Triana Market (our neighborhood’s historic municipal market). Noe’s treat gave us a good excuse to tick that one off the list.
Every ounce of my soul wished we could get through an entire Jamón Serrano leg before the end of our stay in Sevilla, but I knew it wasn’t possible.
At €15 for an entire leg it was hard to resist. What I really wanted was Jamón Ibérico, but at €1,500 a leg, that one was a lot easier to pass on.
Think I’ll just have to settle for Serrano slices and Ibérico tapas [maybe].
Later that day, the inevitable happened…
That’s now 3 for 4.
To the chagrin of Lori (whose flu cycle was far from over), Riley was up and at ’em the next day. So…I headed out with Riley for a day on the town. This time, we crossed the bridge and headed to Centro.
I thought he might like to take a look at the fancy Christmas display at El Corte Inglés (think Christmas section at a big-city Macy’s). While other kids bounced around excitedly, Riley took one lap around and said, “Yeah, I’m ready to go.”
But… But… But… Okay.
Needing to find something that would interest my oh-so-easy-to-please 7-year-old, I led him on a ten minute walk to the other El Corte Inglés (there are several in Sevilla). This one had a book section AND a toy section.
We lingered in the book section just long enough for him to notice all the books were in Spanish (he reads Spanish kids books just fine, but has a sort of passionate aversion to them) before heading on to the toy section.
This is where he pulled out a wad of money and told me he wanted to get something for his brother for Christmas. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to find something small enough to fit in Noe’s backpack that wouldn’t break the bank. We didn’t find it at El Corte Inglés.
Earlier, we had passed a place called Toy Planet, which I mistakenly took for a low-cost alternative to El Corte. A 15-minute walk later, I realized my assumption had been very wrong.
We’ll keep looking, I told him.
To buoy our spirits, I thought a coffee shop stop might be in order. It’s rare these days that I get to just hang out with one of my boys and chat over a treat. The past two days I’ve gotten to do it twice.
Meat empanada and dark chocolate brownie to share, and a batch brew coffee (for me).
