All while we were in Seville I kept hearing in my head Miles Davis playing Sketches of Spain. Seville was mesmerizing; the pace slower compared to Barcelona with a beautiful hypnotic rhythm much like Davis’ Sketches of Spain a combination of jazz and classical Flamenco music. Seville was hot and humid but bearable; July or August certainly is not the time to visit. It rained a little but not enough to alter any of our plans if we had them. The beauty of our visit to Seville is that we had no plans we just let Seville take us through El otro lado del Rio, the other side of the river where it is less historic and where most reside and pass many moments.

Roaming the tiny cobbled streets, smaller than alleys really, we would stumble upon an important land mark or another. On one of our walks we stumbled upon a statue of one of Seville’s most famous figures in history “Don Juan”. Of course the guys wanted to be photographed in front of their “hero”; we obliged and took the silly photo of the three Don’s.

Seville is the center of bullfighting in Spain, so they say. One of the highlight of our visit in Seville was the Museo Taurino Sevilla. This museum is inside the Plaza de Toros de La Maestranza which holds a permanent exposition of paintings, sculptures, bullfighting costumes and a bullring! We took a tour and learned about the art and ritual of the fight. One thing we learned was that bullfighters are very religious; make sense since the outcome is not always in favor of the bullfighter although it really is most of the time. We all really found this experience quite enjoyable.

Although the pace of Seville was a bit slower than Barcelona the tradition of dinning late in the evening was the same. We had better dining luck in Seville than in Barcelona our hotel was high tech with a computer in each room so we were able to do a little research before venturing out to dinner at night. Restaurant Salvador Rojo http://www.restaurante-salvador-rojo.es/Ingles/introduccion.htmrojo.es/Ingles/introduccion.htm was my dining highlight. The restaurant is located just across the street from the historic (everything is historic in Seville) Hotel Alfonso XIII. Salvador Rojo is a restaurant that a foodie would enjoy! It was a rainy evening and we were a little tired so we decided to dine a little early that night so we made a reservation for 9:00pm, because the Spanish dine so late we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.

Salvador is one of Andalucía’s most inventive young chefs, having won many a prize for re-inventive Andalucian dishes. The gazpacho was the best I have ever had in my life, with your typical ingredients of tomatoes, onions, garlic etc. but what gave the soup the dept was the unusual ingredient of pureed yams. I am bound and determined to find this recipe, simply outstanding!

Our last night in Seville we dined at a lovely little restaurant El Colmaito DE Cai. Since this was our last evening in Seville we decided to dine more like the Spaniards and have dinner at 10:00 pm. This was another wonderful experience; the owner greeted us when we arrived offering us a table inside or out, we chose a nice table outside.


The owner of the restaurant was very friendly and he asked where we were from when we responded San Francisco he told us that he just returned from a three week visit. While in San Francisco he said he dined at Delfina’s, Chez Spencer, Bar Tartine and he had ice cream from BiRite Creamery; all of these places are our favorites so I was confident we would have a great meal, and we did! I had garlic shrimp and a mushroom risotto; the shrimp were delicious seasoned with garlic, hot peppers and salt in a hot bubbly olive oil. The risotto was rich, creamy and yummy!



Seville’s old world charm was magical, truly Sketches of Spain!
Stay tuned for Madrid....