2016.09.30 (Tavira – Seville[Spain])

Last day of the month, time to move on and change countries! We had an early breakfast at the hotel and walked to the bus station for our 9:06am departure for Seville. Our Eva bus was, as expected, very comfortable but offered poor wifi. We lost an hour to the time zone change when we crossed into Spain. We walked 15 minutes from the bus station to our very nice (and expensive) 3+ star hotel. We spent a fair amount of time reviewing our transportation arrangements for our next travel segment to Nerja. We discovered that the train was very expensive in Spain. We considered walking for the rest of the trip! Before heading out to explore the historic city center, we confirmed with the hotel staff our understanding that restaurants in Spain started to open at the earliest by 8:30pm. Along the way we had some ice cream to sustain us. Although the atmosphere and the views around the cathedral, Spain’s largest church, were nice, Jenny did not appreciate the smell associated with many horse driven carriages. I thought Séville might’ve wished to invite Montréal’s mayor for a visit. After a long stroll in the center, we stopped at a grocery store for some supplies before returned to our hotel. We headed out again after 8:30pm for some tapas and a glass of sangria to mark our first day in Spain.

2016.10.01 (Séville)

We started our morning at a local café for coffee and croissants as we could not be tempted by the hotel’s breakfast at 12 euros per person! Arriving at the historic center, we saw our first queue of tourist waiting at the cathedral side entrance. Upon reviewing our guide book, it suggested that we could skip the queue by purchasing a combo ticket from another nearby church. We were disappointed that the combo ticket was not offered as the Cathedral was closed today for some religious ceremony. Nonetheless, we visited the 2nd largest church in Séville. We followed our guide book’s proposed walk. Along the way, we purchased tickets for a one-hour Flamenco show scheduled for 8:30pm that evening. After some tapas and wine, we headed back to our hotel for our siesta. I took the time to use my voip softphone to call Mastercard to complain about my declined train ticket purchased yesterday. This type of experience had occurred on all five trips to Europe even after notifying MasterCard about our travel itinerary. Their excuse this time was that the accounts were being transitioned from Sears Mastercard to Scotia MasterCard. Hopefully, their security folks understood my level of frustration. We had some fast food on the way to our Flamenco representation. The streets and plazas were overflowing with activities. We certainly learned how physically intense Flamenco dancing was.

2016.10.02 (Séville – Nerja)

We had a taxi waiting for us at the door of our hotel this morning. The relatively fast train brought us to the coast, namely in the town of Malaga, where we hopped onto a bus that brought us to the once believed fishing village of Nerja – which now resembled more Playa del Carmen on the Riviera Maya in Mexico. We checked into our Hostal (not hostel) and went for lunch at a very busy restaurant. Back to our room, we reviewed our remaining travel itinerary and opted to make some adjustments. We started to book our hotels and transportations for the remaining cities we planed to visit. In the evening, we went to another restaurant recommended by Tina, our very friendly hostal owner.

2016.10.03 (Nerja)

We started our day at a nearby café with a beautiful ocean view. We opted to visit the cave of Nerja this morning. We had our tickets purchased on-line in case of long line-ups. We waited for the local bus some 30 minutes beyond its scheduled arrival time. The cave’s visit was very informative. Back to our room, we packed our beach supplies and Tina lent us beach towels and an umbrella. Before hitting the beach, we stopped at a beach-side restaurant, which was kind of a local institution offering an all-you-can eat paella plate. After our jug of sangria, we were glad the beach was only across the street. The sand and water were very pleasant – somewhat in between our Salema and Tavira experience. In the evening, our stomachs were still full with the lunch time’s paella – hence we only had some ice cream.