Seville Nov 11 - 13, 2000  Our Travel Experience More Photos Ratings Tourist Info

Our Travel Experience

We were extremely happy with the weather in Seville. It wasn't hot, summery weather... but it wasn't the cold/windy/rainy weather we'd just experienced in Madrid either. Both of us had to stop just outside the train station and take our outermost layer of clothing off before walking to our hotel. From the hotel, we went straight to eat at a Tex Mex restaurant we saw advertised in a tourist information guide. On the way, we stumbled upon the Cathedral where a wedding was being held. The city was very pretty at night and there were numerous horse drawn wagons in use. Thus, the whole town smelled of horse, but it wasn't bad.

Seth had a few things he wanted to do in Seville. One was to see a Flamenco show. Another was to see a Moorish building in the city and finally, he hoped to get his hair cut at a Barber in Seville. We were disappointed with what we were able to do in Seville actually because everything was closed from Sunday afternoon through to Tuesday. And it was on the Sunday afternoon when we really first started to talk about how we had only just over a week left in Europe and that we weren't going to be able to see what we wanted to.

We did get to see a Flamenco Show and were both very impressed. We especially enjoyed the various cameo performers who would dance on stage alone. One man moved his feat so fast that your eyes could not follow his movements. Another woman wore a black and white polka dotted dress with a 20 foot train. The train and how she whipped it around as she danced was an integral part of the show. Tara had never seen anyone dance with noise makers in their hands and was intrigued by the music that was made by hand-held wooden noisemakers and even just numerous people clapping. Tara thought all the female dancers looked alike since they all had long, black hair that was tied tightly into a bun. Seth, however, thought the female dancers were very distinct and swore that one of them could have been our friend Eileen. The only disappointment of the show is that we were distracted when photos of ourselves were handed out and then re-collected when we didn't want to purchase them. Overall though, we're very glad we woke up from a nap and went to the 10pm Flamenco Show.

Sunday's plan was to see the one tourist attraction that Seth really wanted to see: the xxxxx. We'd been given a tourist guide from tourist information, so we checked ahead of time on the opening hours. On Sunday, the xxxxx was only open until 2:30pm, so we planned accordingly. Our hotel did not offer breakfast, so Tara went out to a small local shop and in halting Spanish managed to buy some fruit, meat, cheese and bread. Thus, there was no hurry getting out of the room in the morning. We left the room a bit after 1pm and arrived at the xxxxxx slightly after 1:30pm. We were extremely disappointed to find the doors shut tight and a sign on the front saying "closed on Sunday from 1:30pm to Tuesday 9:00am".

The bad experience with the official Seville city tourist information guide containing the wrong hours is just one example of how poor we found the whole country of Spain to be at providing tourists with any help, support or information. Of all the countries we'd traveled to over the past four months Spain was by far the worst. And, seeing that we'd been to: England, France, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, San Marino, Monaco and Andorra.... we had a fair idea of the type of tourist support you receive around the rest of Europe. Spain was the worst all across the board:

• The trains & train stations were not labeled well

We arrived into the Port Bou station at about 10pm and needed to find the train to Barcelona. The train was listed on the TV monitors in the station, but we could not find any signs leading us to track 1. Also, when Tara asked for a train map for the country, she was told that they didn't have any. Tara's quest for a train map continued for a week and she finally gave up after asking in Barcelona tourist information office, Barcelona Sants main train station and the Madrid Charmartin train station. In all other European countries, Tara had been able to get a map of the trains when she wanted one.
• People working at information counters were in general unhelpful and not at all friendly.

We always like to stop into tourist information when we arrive in a new city because typically they are able to help you find lodging, give you a map and a brochure about the city. We didn't have any real problems with the tourist information offices themselves, but we found that we couldn't really get the information we were looking for. For example, we did not want to take the 4 hour bus from Barcelona to Andorra, we preferred to use our train pass. Two people at two different tourist offices were unable to tell us the train route whereas the Lonely Planet guidebook spelled out three different route possibilities by train. The train station information employees were also unable to help us get to Andorra. We were in the end stuck on a train leaving Monserrat for who knows where since no one working in the train or train station could help us. Nor was there a map anywhere where we could help ourselves.
• Train employees selling tickets were especially rude

The worst was the guy in Monserrat who grunted at us and practically threw out change at us when we said we needed to buy tickets. Also, there was a price listed on the window for a combined cable car + train to "xxx place in France to get to Andorra xxxx", but when we asked for it, he just said "NO" and so we bought a ticket only for the cable car. Our attempt to buy a ticket when leaving Seville is another prime example of how rude we found the train employees. Tara went out early to get information on what the best route to Geneva, Switzerland was for today. Tara had a limited train schedule and saw that we could take a fast train from Seville to Madrid, then an overnight train from Madrid to Paris and then another fast train from Paris to Geneva. She thought that maybe there was another route. The woman at the counter couldn't even find the route Tara had and she kept saying "no - not today. You cannot go today. Trains only run tomorrow." When Tara explained her idea, the woman just huffed and then printed out the schedule for that route. When we went to buy tickets for this planned route, it was even worse. We had 30 minutes before the train from Seville to Madrid left. There were machines to take a number from, so that you're served in order and we took both a domestic number and an international number. After we took the number, we saw that there was a special window for tickets to Madrid, so we bought out tickets there. We were confused about where the international window was since there were not signs stating "international" above any ticket sellers in the immediate vicinity. When we asked, we were rudely directed to window 9. Then, from window 9, we were directed to window 7. The woman in window 7 did have a piece of paper in her window saying "international". So, we asked if we could buy our tickets here. She really didn't even speak to us. She just ignored us. We asked again. She pointed to the number machine. We showed her our number and she ignored us again. In all other train stations in Europe when we'd taken a number, there is a counter somewhere saying "now serving number xx". We saw this for domestic, but not for international. So, we asked her again which number was being served now. She ignored us again and made some nasty sounding noise. Well, we gave up. The guy who finally ticketed us in Madrid was no friendlier and he even had us routed through this God-awful daytime train route that got us into Geneva 5 hours after Tara's mostly night-time route. He'd given us no indication of which trains he was booking us on and it was only because Tara peeked through the window and saw "Barcelona" on one of the tickets instead of "Paris" that she queried it. It was such a typical way to leave Spain, that we laughed about it (after we showed him the better route and had our tickets for that!).

Getting back to our experience in Seville. We missed the one tourist attraction that Seth really wanted to see since the opening hours published in the official Seville tourist information were wrong. After we found out that one place was closed, we sat on some steps near the cathedral. We ended up talking to American student who had taken one year off of college after taking her medical school examination tests. She was living in Seville and enjoying it. When the friends she waiting for arrived, we headed off to see the cathedral. We then found out that the Cathedral was also closed for the whole day. We were glad we peeked in the night before when it was open for a wedding! We then started just walking around town some talking about what we wanted to do. The big choice was if we should take Monday (when all of Seville was closed) and try to see maybe Cadiz on the coast or maybe Gibraltar.

We finally came to sit in front of a big fountain in front of a pretty building surrounded by a rose garden. It was a nice and sunny spot. We were reminded of Florida since we could see many palm trees swaying in the breeze. It was also beautiful when a large group of white pigeons would suddenly fly together in front of the building. We sat there and talked and talked about what we should do. In the end we decided that we can't see everything and that it would be easier all together to just have a final night in Seville and then start towards Sophie's in Geneva the next day. So, we packed up and started walking back towards our hotel on the way to find lunch.

We didn't find lunch, but we did find the bull stadium and a nice bench from which to watch the sun set across the river. By the time we found an Irish Pub for dinner, the weather had turned cold. We had a yummy tapas dinner and then decided to rush back to our hotel for more clothes instead of freezing on a boat tour. Well, we were so sleepy by the time we reached the hotel that we never made it back out for the boat tour.

The next morning, there was a point when we thought we would be flying from Seville to Geneva. However, the price a tour agent had quoted Tara for the flight was only for youths... even though Tara clearly told her (in Spanish) that she was 31 and Seth was 36. Oh well, the price for adults was so, so much, that we traveled on trains after leaving Seville for nearly 27 hours!
 

The first leg of our journey was on a fast train from Seville to Madrid. The scenery we flew by was gorgeous, but very dry/desert-ish looking.

The TexMex restaurant the 1st night. The Irish Pub this 2nd night. The very beautiful tiles we saw everywhere:

 
 

 

Category	Rating	Comments
Overall Experience	7
Ease of Journey	7
Accommodation	5
Activities	7
Coolness	7

 

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