Iberian Sprint: Day 7 Seville

Soundtrack: “La Isla Bonita”, Madonna

Our last full day in Seville. We started with a little wandering the local streets, a bit of shopping. As luck would have it, the nearest barbershop to out apartment was the eponymously names The Barber of Seville. I’ve been holding off on the shaving so that I could get a shave here, and when they said they could fit me in at midday it was perfect timing. I just hoped there wouldn’t be any singing, or at least I wouldn’t have to sing.

We found a little place for breakfast not too far away, down a side street and while they had an English menu, it didn’t look like they get a lot of tourists. There were three seating sections: outside for the smokers, inside just some large open windows from the smokers, and further inside. We ended up in the passive smoking section. While Spain seems to have at least got to the point of not allowing smoking inside, the definition of outside appears to include doorways. The service was haphazard: I got to show that I knew the spanish for knives and forks when they brought food but no cutlery, and my eggs and ham were okay (at least they weren’t green). L’s spinach omelette was very green, and again tasted ok.

Back at the Barber of Seville there was no singing, just a slow and meticulous shave. I think I got the new guy, as he had to pause a couple of times to answer the phone. And by new guy, he’d probably only been there for 40 years. He managed to shave the parts of my face I wanted shaved, and just trim the rest, so I didn’t have a repeat of my Macao nightmare. So I’ll chalk that one up as a double win: no impromptu singing required, and no unexpected hair loss.

Seville takes its siestas very seriously, shops start closing between 12 and 1pm, some 2pm, and then reopen around 4 or 5pm. Unless you’re looking for food or souvenirs, there’s a good chance you’ll find a sign that says “Cerrado” blocking you from your quest. You just have to do what the locals do, and go eat and rest for a while.

We took a short rest as we’d booked into a short flamenco lesson. L is a huge fan of taking dancing lessons wherever we go, because she’s an incredibly talented dancer. I’m far less talented, and more of an improvisational dancer (i.e. give me a couple of drinks and I’ll at least move a little mostly in time to the music). I’m not a fast adapter to choreography, it takes me a while to work out which foot is right and which is left, even when I colour code my feet with different socks. I feel for any dance instructor that has to have me in their class, as they’ve got a lot of work to do.

Fortunately for our instructor E, flamenco has a few bits that work in my favour, as enthusiasm can get you a long way, and my attempts were nothing if not enthusastic. Unfortunately it also has a few bits that are quicky for a novice like me, it involves structured movement of all 4 limbs simultaneously, sometimes hips too. I suspect there were moments when I flailed wildly and in the wrong direction.

E also took us through the roots of flamenco, how it’s been influenced by many other dance and performance styles through the centuries, which kind of explains why it’s a bit of a pick and mix of styles. Flamenco also changes depending on the mood style, from sad or angry through to euphoric. It’s a complex thing, so fortunately we weren’t expected to master the whole deal in the hour lesson. E also let us in on a Seville secret, when Sevillanos say “Ole!” they put the emphasis on the first letter, not the last.

End result, I did okay. I ended up less sweaty than the salsa lesson in Cuba right before the thunderstorm, I managed to mostly move the right appendage at the right time, and I didn’t fall over. I’ll call that a win. There is also video evidence, however I’ve told L that she can only show others if she buys me a bottle of whisky. Maybe I should also stipulate that anyone who watches it also buy me a bottle.

Dancing done, we grabbed tapas on the way back to the apartment. Here I learned that ensaladilla might translate as salad, it’s actually what they call Russian salad or potato salad, so my ensaladilla of tuna and vegetables wasn’t a a green and leafy thing with some tuna, it was starch all the way. Tasty, but a lot more than I needed. We also munched down on an Iberian tasting plate of delicious ham, sausage, and cheese. I also tried what seems to be another local brew, Cruzcampo, a malt-forward Spanish pilsener style that tastes good yet for reasons unknown comes in large glasss that are only half full. I also picked up a cookie from a weird shop we’ve been walking past a bit, the cookie had a solid condensed milk filling. Sweet and tasty.

The evening’s entertainment was, you guessed it, more flamenco. Well, this was the whole reason for coming to Seville, it certainly wasn’t the oranges (as our guide told us yesterday, Seville oranges are quite bitter, no one eats them, they ship them all to the UK to make marmalade as they’re perfect for that). Seville is flamenco ground zero. The show venue was about 3km away, so we figured on getting a Bolt. The app said that would cost 18 euro, and the nearest driver was 18 minutes away. Fortunately a taxi pulled up and dropped passengers off right in front of us, and the driver said it would be between 7 and 9 euro. So in we hopped and away we went. The final fare came out under 8 euro, so I tipped the driver an extra 2.

The show was more cabaret style flamenco, promising several styles. We’d booked the tapas and show ticket, and arriving around 20 minutes before the scheduled start of the show we were the first ones there. It was a bit weird, as we got shown to our table in an otherwise empty room, though they assured us we wouldn’t be the only folks attending. We ordered drinks (no drinks menu, so when I asked “what wine?” I got white wine, while L was fine with sangria) and after not too long our cold tapas came out. They were generous portions: pickled vegetables with a small fried egg; eggplant chips with a couple of long pastry sticks containing prawns (they obviously missed the gluten free request); and my new “favourite”, ensaladilla. All three were okay, not the most fabulous but generally tasty. Our warm tapas came out during the performance: some beef croquettes that had a gluey texture; a pork steak that was a touch overcooked, with potatoes that tasted a little unusually sweet; and mushroom and scrambled eggs served in a pastry dish (again, they missed the gluten free thing) that was okay. Performance great, food average.

Out booking said 7-8.30pm, and at 7.01 pm the place was still almost deserted, a family had come in but that was it. At 7.02pm three bus-loads of Chinese tourists shuffled in, dutifully setting up cameras and taking their places. At 7.03pm the show started.

The show was good, lots of twirling and spinning and guitar and dancing and stomping. One of the dancers looked a dead ringer for Kevin Kline, and a lot of the time moved like Kevin Bacon in Footloose, though occasionally throwing in a step that was very John Cleese. For a lot of the show there were two guitarists and two singers at the back, though one singer seemed to be doing most of the work. There were lots of throwing the skirts around, and clapping; some numbers were more theatrical, telling a story, while others were just great dancing. Not sure about the number that sliced in music from the 1812 Overture, but hey, that’s flamenco. It’s a crazy style, it really is, and after having spent a couple of days encountering its many forms I’m not sure I’m any wiser. It seems to have no fixed time signature, a number might start as 4/4 but could well be 29/pi by the end. When and how to clap also seems to have its own individual interpretation. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could create a random number generator based on when dancers perform certain moves.

L felt we hadn’t done enough steps today and my step count of just over 3,000 agreed (though I didn’t have my phone counting my dance steps and stomps) so we decided to take a gentle stroll back along Seville’s “pond”. Seville used to have a mighty river flowing right through it, this was a major inland dock where cargoes from the “New World” were unloaded back in those days. Then during the Franco regime the river flooded once too often, so they blocked off one end completely, made the other end narrow, and built a completely new canal to bypass the city. It seems to have fixed the flooding, but the end result is a semi-stagnant waterfront, especially in summer. It’s a nice stroll in spring twilight, taking it easy while joggers and cyclists race around. Seville has it’s own equivalent of the Montemarte tower of Paris, a tall and modern building that folks generally joke that the best place to see Seville is from the top, as it’s the only place you can’t see the building. It was controversially built as places like this have rules about construction that affects the skyline, but as it was technically built outside of Seville they found a loophole. Step count satisfied, we had one last binge at a souvenir shop then headed back to the apartment.

Tomorrow we have an easy morning, then an afternoon train to Madrid.