All of the guidebooks were very, very serious about avoiding taking a car into Arcos de la Frontera, so we parked at the very bottom of the hill on the outskirts. This little guy watched us walk by at the beginning of our hike to the top.
It is a very serious, straight-up, 20 minute walk to the top of Arcos de la Frontera. Grueling, you might say.
But we made it, and stopped at the first place we saw for refreshments.
And churros. Churros are big in Andalusia and we had so far managed to not have any at all! You dip them into hot chocolate.
Like Ronda, Arcos is situated on a cliff with dramatic views of the landscape.
Unlike Ronda, there is not much to see or do there. After seeing the town, I was even more grateful we had chosen to stay at the hacienda. It definitely would not have been worth figuring out how to get our luggage into the center of the historic area.
This church is at the very top of the hill. Its original tower was destroyed in an earthquake in 1755 and the new one doesn't quite seem to fit.
This is the interior entryway for someone's house. They all looked like this, more or less.
The streets in Arcos were definitely the craziest we had seen yet. There were lots of times we would be walking along and see a parked car and have no idea how it got there.
We stood and watched cars squeeze through this little alley for a few minutes.
Another church - the whole upper town was a confusing maze of streets and it was difficult to really get a good idea of the town's layout.
After exploring for an hour or so we headed back down the hill. It was much more pleasant on the return trip.
Seville was only about an hour away, so we set out once again on the highways. These huge bulls loomed over the highways all over the southern part of Spain. Creepy!
So I had figured that by the time we reached Seville, Ben would be more or less used to driving in Spain and we wouldn't have too much trouble getting to our hotel, which was located near the Alameda de Hercules, considered a sort of hipstery area. There weren't too many turns in the directions, but the streets were very narrow and there were people everywhere. Ben almost had a nervous breakdown. But we made it.
We stayed at the Conde de Torrejon 10 apartments, which were absolutely perfect. I had booked a studio but they upgraded us to a 2-story apartment! The women who work there were over the top friendly and excited to see us, too.
Like almost every place we stayed in Spain, we had two twin beds pushed together. Is this the way private homes are in Spain too, I wonder? It actually makes for better sleeping because there is no fighting over the covers.
We even had an interior patio! I could live there.
After settling in and calming down from the drive, we walked over to Alameda de Hercules to get some lunch. The whole area is lined with patio dining. I think we only ate indoors 2 or 3 times during the entire trip.
The extremely cheerful lady at the hotel recommended Casa Paco, so that's where we went, and I think it was probably the best of all the food we ate in Spain. By this point, we were pointing at items on menus with vaguely familiar words in them and eating whatever showed up. These items pictured were bacon-wrapped dates with some kind of sugary sauce poured over potato chips (!), white and green asparagus broiled with cheese, and chicken with some kind of delicious sauce. I don't even really like chicken and I could not stop eating it.
After lunch we started wandering around, heading first over to Plaza de la Encarnacion to see this controversial thing they've built over the square in the last couple of years. It was definitely a bit weird in the middle of historic Seville but we liked it.
We walked down Calle Sierpes, one of the oldest parts of the city which is now the central shopping district, and ended up along the Gran Via in the touristy historic core. We were a bit taken aback by Seville, to be honest. There were so many people wandering slowly and aimlessly in practically every corner of the city - it was very much like being at Disneyland on an extremely busy day, except everyone seemed to live there. We are businesslike walkers and it got frustrating pretty quickly. I asked our hotel lady later if Seville is always so crowded and she said it isn't - April and October are apparently the busiest, because the weather is so nice. I guess everyone else had the same idea I did.
They were also having a procession for some reason, which as far as we can tell is a very slowly marching brass band playing really loud music with some people behind them holding huge gold crosses. It was neat to see.
We walked down to Plaza Espana, which was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition (like a World's Fair, but only for Spanish-speaking countries). It had fallen into disrepair over the years but they have recently began a renovation project to save it. It's gorgeous!
After this we walked back to our apartment for relaxing before dinner. I also did some laundry, which apparently tripped the breaker because all the power went out in the entire apartment. It was pitch black outside but fortunately I had upgraded to iOS 7 before the trip so I had easy access to the iPhone flashlight! We eventually found the breaker box behind a mirror downstairs - thank goodness. It was this incident that made me decide I really need to shell out for the international phone plan the next time we travel. If we hadn't been able to get the power back on I don't really know what we would have done.
We went back over to the Alameda de Hercules and chose a different patio spot for dinner. Again we ordered lots of tapas, and finally chose the jamon iberico, considered to be the finest ham in Spain. It is very expensive in the US, and was actually not available here at all until the last several years. It was worth the hype!
This was our latest night of the trip. We finished dinner around 11:00 and people were still arriving - they really do eat that late in Spain!
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