Sorry for the lack of posting the past few days – hasn’t been too much to write about. We spent a day and two nights at Costa Caprica in Almada, Portugal – it’s a sleepy little beach town and all we did was sit by the pool. Since it was our first day spent sitting under the hot summer sun Chris got sunburned. Who saw that coming? Almada wasn’t even one of those cute, charming little beach towns, it was more like a ghost town beach town. Best food the town had to offer was a glorified funnel cake called farturas. We couldn’t have known, the reviews we read said it should have been a quaint stopover.

We arrived in Sevilla yesterday, checked into our hotel, did some work and caught a nap, then headed into the old center for dinner at a tapas place. Getting there was quite a trip – we programmed Bitsy to take us the short way vs. the fast way and we quickly became caught in a maze of one-way streets that were just barely wide enough for Bitsy to fit through. Not only are the streets narrow but they are flanked by 3 story buildings and the layout is far from a linear grid. Guess when they mapped out the city it was before rulers and t-squares. What seemed like an hour later, we were finally able to find our destination. That was only half the battle as we spent another half hour for parking. We were truly ravenous by this point. Our destination was a place called Eslava, which was rated #1 for tapas on Trip Advisor and we were definitely not mislead there. The food was authentic and delicious!!

Today it was close to 100 degrees here, so we didn’t venture out much during the day, but now that it’s cooled down a bit, we’re heading into the old center to explor, eat some more tapas, and hopefully watch a flamenco show.

Observations on Sevilla so far…

1.) Orange trees everywhere! The streets are lined with them and they look beautiful. Makes us wonder if its ok to grab oranges off of them and eat them? Also, homeless people must not lack in Vitamin C here.

2.) Definitely the place for the late night owls, outdoor seating everywhere and people just sit around till the wee hours talking, drinking, and smoking.

3.) Sevillans (sp?) have got to be master parkers! Cars are parked on both sides of a narrow street, leaving just barely enough room for a third car to pass through the middle. Finding parking is a feat in itself, more cars then there are sidewalks available.