Sevilla… It’s not all flamenco and tapas!

 “Sevilla” … It rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Images of whirling flamenco skirts, serious shoes pounding the wooden floors to the plaintive wail of a gypsy and his guitar…or late night parties filled with handsome men and gorgeous senoritas…sangria and tapas spilling over the tables as the revelers carry

on into the early morning hours. One has to wonder…when do these people actually work? Rose-filled gardens…fountains…and old

Or not…

Our arrival in Sevilla consisted of a terrifying taxi ride through those not so quiet streets that were barely wide enough to contain the car and a very slender pedestrian. My Google map had perfect instructions (which the driver chose to ignore) as he insisted that he knew where we were going and how to get there. My blood pressure rose as we twisted through dozens of ever narrower streets with more leaping pedestrians trying to get out of his way. Ken just laughed as I tried to explain (in my ancient and not so frequently used Espanol) that the Hotel Patio de los Cruces was NOT in the direction in which he was hurtling us forward.

He finally came to an abrupt stop –leaped out of the car-opened the trunk and placed our bags on the 4” curb and pointed down a dark lane. “Alla, senora, el hotel esta alla-no puedo ir al hotel –tienes que andar!” He might even have said “Buena suerte,” but I’m not sure. Desperate to disembark, Ken paid him and he tore off around a corner. I looked up at the street names painted on the buildings…took out the map – and begging for a favor from the virgin, whose image gazed down upon us from the tiles on the corner of the peeling stucco building, and began walking down an even narrower street. My relief was palpable and immense when we turned a corner and entered a sunny plaza with several tall iron crosses placed within a square with a wrought iron fence.

There on my right was our hotel! Fifteen minutes later we were in our tiny room (which looked out onto the plaza) and my granddaughter Alexis arrived to inform us that she had been on one of those streets where we had passed in a flash, and that she had yelled “Grams” and tried to wave us down only to be practically run over by said taxi driver!!!

“Welcome to Sevilla, Grams,” she said. “Glad you could make it!”

“Take me to your tapas…and some sangria,” I replied. And off we went!