The Great Iberian Road Trip, Days 59-60: Happy Birthday, Livia!

 

On Wednesday 28 August, we did next to nothing, except go to the pool in the building and take a little wander to the promenade for some ice cream, cakes and coffee. Our time in the pool was curtailed by the arrival of an angry boy who kept trying to steal Dainoris’s surfboard and clinging on to it really tightly. To retrieve it, I had to unwind it from his wrist, all while he was trying to punch me in the ribs, face or abdomen. Bonny Bee put the surfboard on the roof of the heating shed but the little monster took the pole for the filter net and knocked it off. He eventually left us despite accusing us of several disproven acts of sabotage when his mother called him from a window above.

Apart from that, not much happened. I guess we’re kind of winding down now, before we return to Valencia on Monday.

On Thursday 29 August, Livia turned 7. Seven years already. How time flies…  so to celebrate, we took her to a shop to choose her birthday present. She wanted a bed for her new doll, but as we didn’t find that, she was happy with a pushchair for her. She asked to have pizza for lunch, and I found one a short car ride up the beach. It was quite an impressive complex with one section for burgers, one for pizza/pasta and one for ice cream and cocktails. It’s probably kicking in the evenings there.

The place was also right on the edge of the beach, so we headed over there next. Dainoris played in the sea for a while, Livia did her own thing with rocks and sand – she loves making structures and improving on them – and Milda just lay on the sunbed, as she really didn’t like the strong waves.

I lay on a sunbed, as did Bonny Bee, and we had a decent rest. I think we have also got a bit of fatigue from the nomad life. It’s been an educative and exploratory two months, but continuously unpacking our stuff, packing it up again and moving on has taken quite a toll on us. The idea was to use the time wisely, mixing work with leisure, and looking around to see if we had decided to settle in the right place. A by-product of this has been that we have seen what type of house we would like to live in once our house in Germany is sold.

And what we saw was that indeed, returning to the Valencian Community, even though we aren’t in our province, was a true moment of joy. There are parts of Spain that we definitely could move to, but Valencia is where we feel most at home.

Further joy has sprung up in recent days: the children have all started asking how to say certain things in Spanish. They began in the winter with “zumo de piña” and “pajita”, but now the curiosity is much greater. I think because they realise they’re going to start at a Spanish school in just ten days’ time! So now that even Livia has started asking how to say certain phrases in Spanish, I think the floodgates have been opened and we will see a lot more of this in the weeks to come.

I went for a swim in the sea, which compared to the Atlantic was like getting in the bath. However, the beach in Torrevieja is quite narrow and not particularly pleasant. A lot of it used to be rock until very recently, and under the water there is a fair amount of it sticking out and into the feet of unsuspecting members of the public (me) wading into deeper waters. My toes, toenails, heels and calves are all scratched and gnarled. More than they were before…

But once in the deeper waters it was fine. The waves were familiarly low and no so strong, but there was a treacherous riptide. Out further in the sea the waves were coming in at an angle, the most telling aspect of nasty undercurrents. After I was nearly swept out to sea back in June, I don’t take any chances, so I hung around where my feet could touch the bottom.

When I got out, Dainoris came to declare for the tenth or eleventh time that he was bored. This is because his close mate Milda hates the beach, and Livia likes the pleasure of her own company. I was also getting a bit bored of the place, so I suggested we go for a drink and a little sit down back in the huge leisure complex.

Then we jumped in the car and went back to our poky little apartment in the city. Just four more nights of our exile left…

The Great Iberian Road Trip, Days 57-58: On The Home Straight

 

On Monday 26 August, we woke up in the Sierra Nevada ghost town with the car fully loaded. I took the kids to get some breakfast while Bonny Bee collected the remaining objects and tidied up. We went in search of somewhere open, which was a lot more difficult than it sounded. Eventually we ended up in the very restaurant we ate dinner in the evening before. For three measly waffles, a pancake and a coffee, the bandits charged 36 euro and 70 cents. I caused a bit of a scene about that – imagine, you have a captive market; nothing else is open, and you’re miles from anywhere. You could stick a “1” on the price of the bill and nobody would be able to do a thing about it.

I thought our stop on the way should be Almeria – I had heard a lot about it, not all of it good – but I wanted to see for myself. It was two hours’ drive along some of the most picturesque yet perilous roads past craggy mountains, over vast, steep river valleys, through tunnels and around deserts. We parked in the Town Hall garage and went for a walk. It was a revelation: such a pleasant and well-maintained city. Even the seemingly ubiquitous police were smiling.

The central square was so bright, I needed to squint to see it properly. The children were able to run, dawdle, chase each other and push toy trucks wherever they pleased. The first thing everyone wanted was a drink. I was happy with this idea, as it would give me enough time to locate a place to have lunch. The first place we came across was called La Taberna Del Loco, and it was one of those places which played covers of cool 80s and 90s rock songs but with that ultra annoying calypso beat. And it was really loud. We wouldn’t be eating here.

Just around the corner was a shady pedestrian road and it had two or three restaurants on it, one of which had very good reviews. After we got out of there, we landed at that place, and it was excellent – it worked as such: you get a drink and you get a bite-sized tapa. If you want extra, it’s 2 euro. We voraciously ate our way through the menu and it was glorious, although only the adults went for the pinchitos. These aren’t the same ones as found in other parts of Spain: these are skewers of pork or chicken covered in spices introduced by the Moors and cooked over charcoal grills.

For me, pinchitos are part of my childhood: high in the Andalucian mountains, the elders of my family had a house. In the town was a bar-restaurant called La Reja. We went there about four nights in every seven. It was a very special place nestled between the houses, and was an open terrace under long grape vines that provided shade in the day and beauty at night. And they made pinchitos that engraved a massive space in my early gastronomic memory. Back here in Andalucia, I was reminded of La Reja and those pinchitos.

I’m more at home in Spain than I ever would have imagined a year ago.

Now was time to get dessert. Walking a little further, we happened upon the central market – it was just closing but we had enough time to buy some cherry tomatoes, garlic, and other fruit and vegetables. I asked the stallholder where we should go for a dessert and her colleague sent us to an ice cream place about 10 minutes down the road.

After a delicious but cantankerous visit to the ice cream place, we headed in a foul mood back to the car where we sped off to our final stop on our tour, Torrevieja. It was still two and a half hours from Almeria, but I was hoping the children would maybe stop fighting long enough to have a sleep. And that they did. For a while.

A couple of hours later, having left Andalucia far behind and hurtled through the autonomous region of Murcia, the hallowed signpost appeared: “COMUNITAT VALENCIANA”. I was so happy to be back in my adopted home region, that I completely let go of reality and was pulled over by the Guardia Civil for speeding. It was the irony of all ironies: here we are, having almost accomplished a complete tour of the Iberian Peninsula, and I am greeted in my home region by a fifty-euro speeding fine… the officer was kind enough, very professional, and told me it wasn’t a great deal over the limit, but rules are rules and I took it as a positive omen.

Just fifteen kilometres further on, the town of Torrevieja appeared, as did some horrendous traffic jams, but we soon made it to our next address, and found a parking space just ten paces from the door. We were informed by the property owner about the procedure to enter the place: “When you get to the front door of the premises, please press buttons on the Intercom to allow someone in the building to let you in.” Well… I had never had such an adventurous arrival at a place… we pressed a number of buttons but nobody opened. In the end, some student type with an electric scooter was heading out and we were able to gain a foot in the door.

The next instructions said: “at the top left of the door is a small black box with a code. Type this number in and you will find the keys inside. It was fairly dark in the corridor, so it took a little time, but we managed to enter the apartment. Well I say apartment – more like a capsule with a couple of windows. But it was just a week and this odyssey will be over.

I’ll be totally frank – since the robbery in Setúbal, I haven’t really enjoyed the trip as much. Except maybe for Seville, but that was just three days and I could have gladly spent all summer there.

That evening, we went for a walk and to find some food. I didn’t feel like cooking. Torrevieja is quite a cosmopolitan place and we stumbled on a North African restaurant. The call of a tajine was too loud for us… I had a lamb tajine with olives and sultanas, and Bonny Bee opted for a chicken tajine with some fine spices. Both were exquisite, although I got he feeling the cook went light on the spices for fear of upsetting our European tase buds. We usually tell the person taking the order to cook it as it should be, but we forgot this time. The children had some tacos with Moroccan-style filling, and they miraculously ate it. We all slept pretty quickly, even though it was hot and stuffy.

On Tuesday 27 August, we woke up in a sweaty heap – more so than Seville, and I think it’s the humidity here on the Valencian coast. I bought us some food and cooked a lunch of tagliatelle ragu, then we went down to the building’s main attraction: the pool. Tiny but adequate for our purposes, the children loved making their own fun in there. In the early evening, we took a walk to the main road by the beach. The road was long and caused Dainoris to obviously get agitated, but the promise of ice cream at the end took the edge off his routinely sulky and resentful temper. So he just kept saying “I don’t wanna go for a walk” in a whiny and persistent manner.

We got there, and suddenly, as if by way of a miracle, the smiles returned and the moaning ceased. For a while. One of the things I had been meaning to do was to get Livia a cuddly toy. Milda has a rabbit and a chick, the latter being loaned out to Dainoris at bedtimes. But Livia lost her own rabbit back in Germany before we left, and all other replacements were just not as good. Plus it’s her seventh birthday on 29 August.

To a chorus of “we’re tired” by Dainoris and Milda, we passed a toy and game shop on the way home and my plan was to sneak Livia in there for a few minutes, buy something, and meet the others a little later on at the playground. Bonny Bee was content with taking all three in the shop, but I had grave misgivings. These misgivings would prove to be right – Livia took thirty seconds to identify the doll she wanted: a lovely tousle-haired stuffed figurine. We could have been out of that shop in no time and nobody would have been any the wiser, but now Livia had something, the other two started demanding a present too. Milda even threw her chick and the rabbit on the floor of the shop and declared that she didn’t like them any more. In fact, she went utterly berserk. And Dainoris gave a stellar performance as The Boy Who Never Got Anything.

We tried to placate them with some smaller stuff, but they wanted to go for things larger than Livia had. And that was when we decided to teach them a life lesson: if you can’t be happy for your sister when her birthday is on the horizon, you don’t deserve a reward. Imagine the absolute meltdown that confronted us as we left the shop with just one thing… Bonny Bee was holding on to Milda, but Milda resembled more a swarm of incensed wasps with a hand. And Dainoris had chucked himself in a mournful pile of snot and tears on the pavement. They were both wailing like a pair of car alarms on low battery.

If there’s one thing parenting has taught me, it’s that we aren’t there to be popular. We aren’t there to keep the peace by giving in to every demand. We are there to provide a moral compass and set an example, and not to be everyone’s best mate. There are limits to our patience, but there are no limits to our determination not to blink first every time we are presented with a new demand.

We made our way to the playground in the square outside our apartment block, very slowly while this meltdown was going on. Dainoris’s crying had gone from total indignation to feeling the need to cry out of principle. Milda had been saying she was tired of walking, but I knew that as soon as we reached the park, all this would be over. Just before we turned the corner into the playground, I said to Milda “If you’re tired, you’ll need to have a rest!” And she agreed. Reverse psychology often works when one element is hidden from the subject – and to her credit, she didn’t suddenly say “I’m better now”, and run off to play. She really did sit with us for a good five minutes.

We went home for something to eat before bed, but two of them didn’t last very long…

The Great Iberian Road Trip, Days 55-56: Welcome To Pandemonium

 

On Friday 23 August, we had a very important appointment. Back in spring, when I put this trip together, I bought some tickets for the Alhambra. You have to book them well in advance if you want a choice of time and date. But to me what is pretty disturbing is that they also want your ID card or passport. I understand the need to keep fraud low, but other places have systems in place that don’t require such far-reaching measures. In any case, I don’t have anything to hide, but it’s the principle of the thing.

I was a little worried about driving out of the urbanisation up the mountain, what with a rock festival due to start today. I was in no mood to return and find all the spaces usurped by out-of-towners. But that was the risk we took. Forty-five minutes later, we arrived at the vast tree-covered parking area behind the Alhambra and were directed to the first section, the furthest from the entrance. I explained about the kids and that they can’t walk too far in this heat, but the guy said it was already full all the way out to here. An ominous start.

We walked towards the gate, a good ten minutes away, to be greeted by a line of tourists jostling for position to be permitted entrance. It was one of those disorganised queuing systems with three lines and you have to guess which line is going to go the fastest. We had to produce our IDs and put our belongings in a scanner to get in, plus the tickets on my smartphone needed to be validated. It was a fairly impersonal experience, but it got us in the door. As someone with an ADHD personality, all this completely scrambled my brain. And the sheer number of pushy tourists everywhere sent me into a spiral of bad-temperedness that would need some time to deal with. Livia was also suffering from a similar experience and had started acting impulsively, so she needed some guiding.

We moved gradually towards the entrance of the Palace of the Nazaries – we had access at 12:30 and were required to be there on time – but firstly we negotiated the cypress-lined pathway through the grounds to the other end of the complex. Be mindful that it is going to be impossible to capture a picture without another visitor in it. Anywhere. To get to the Nazaries, you have to actually leave the main Alhambra complex and queue up again to go through the same bureaucratic process over there. Just before you enter, there is a building that has been turned into a toilet and refreshment centre, based over three floors. I was incredibly irritated by all these people standing around, sitting on parapets and benches, hanging around in groups.

Let me take you inside my world a little: when you go into a railway station in the middle of the rush hour, and you have just a few minutes to locate the platform of your train before it leaves, you are faced with a number of obstacles that you see everywhere. These include luggage placed indiscriminately in the middle of the passageways; gormless individuals exiting outlets eating food or checking their phones and not looking where they are going; teenage dirtbags sitting on the floor in a circle ignoring each other as they bash the screens of their smartphones; old people dawdling in narrow walkways unaware you want to get past.

The list goes on, and the overload of noise from announcements or random music or other people’s conversations or those large cleaning vehicles with the round brushes whirring through makes the whole experience miserable. Because when you’re in a hurry and you are confronted by all this commotion, you make mistakes and you become more and more stressed and more and more likely to cause yourself to miss your train. Your ability to think straight is compromised, and you see everyone else as guilty of conspiring to ruin your peace.

This is what it can be like when we go to a place like this.

It is so hard to cope, so difficult to concentrate and focus on viewing the place, the actual reason for my visit, that I constantly need to reset my internal thought process. The best way to deal with all this is to just block everything and everyone out. But… add into that three self-obsessed toddlers and their mother who has delegated responsibility for the excursion to me, and I am a walking time bomb. This place was different to a railway station, but no less awful. There were the same gormless tourists around, and a few Instagram bozos all vying for position, pushing each other out of the way to get the best picture. If the flamenco performance in Seville the other evening was awful, this was by a very long margin worse.

This was the central square in the capital of the land of Pandemonium; the painting of crowds even Brueghel would have had trouble completing; there was not a moment that I wanted to stay there. But I did, because we had paid to go in and we needed to make the most out of it.

Being confronted with this torturously tiresome shower of cretins is the greatest distress we can face. We think we see injustice, spitefulness, intentional disregard for others everywhere, even though it is most probably just a random configuration of events. From the young people monopolising the few seats around the place, to the guy standing in front of the main object of the area while his partner takes a photo of him; from the three people walking side-by-side very slowly so nobody can get past, to the treacherous rat who steps in front of you as you are trying to take a photo, we see injustice and malice everywhere, even if none is in fact intended.

And we also make our feelings known: being passive-aggressive and handing out a few barbs is a way of letting people know we aren’t coping very well. Children like Livia tend to do weird things like licking arbitrary objects or splashing in water, throwing stuff, eating leaves, punching something or someone, shouting random words in inappropriate places, taking off clothes, scratching, pushing, lying on the ground and cackling, and other things. As we get older, the ways of handling these things becomes more streamlined and less haphazard, but the notion that you are in an inhospitable place full of those who would harm you rarely dissipates, even if others around you don’t share your impressions.

The effort it takes to walk into a public space on our own is extraordinary; courageous even. The feeling you have is the equivalent of entering a wedding reception while the father of the bride is giving a speech to the silently attentive guests, and everyone looks round at you in disdain for disturbing the vibe. So the whole experience was really just Bonny Bee and I trying to keep Livia from flipping her lid and at the same time making sure Dainoris and Milda didn’t have any bright ideas. The fact we were in one of Spain’s most prestigious buildings was secondary and the day was more like an out-of-body experience.

As you can see from the photos, it was a lovely place, despite the crowds, but most of it went past in a fug of irritation and stress. Before we went to the Generalife, a more spacious and relaxed section of the complex, we had lunch at one of the inns, in a delightfully shady courtyard. I do like a place with character, and the fact we were on our own table meant I didn’t feel threatened by other guests.

The Generalife was an oasis of calm after the would-be outdoor airport departure terminal we had been in earlier. The gardens, spilling over with flowers and shady trees, made everything worthwhile. I had recovered some semblance of a good mood, and we had a better time there. Livia and I walked together through the gardens and had much more pleasure than earlier.

We left the place in a better frame of mind than we arrived, although Bonny Bee was pretty frazzled by it all. I had coped by trying to block out all the nastiness around me, but she had been at the brunt of several blows to her sanity and strength. We took the road back to Sierra Nevada (after a few GPS mindfarts) and had a decent rest after the upheavals of the day.

In the evening, I visited a supermarket to get something to eat but there was hardly anything left. I still managed to spend 24 euro on a few bits, which I found outrageous. This is really a captive market here, where the shops and restaurants are conspiring to rip the gullible visitors off. Put it this way: I won’t be coming here again any time soon. Instead, we went to one of the few restaurants that deign to open in the summer months and had what we thought was a small and rather plain meal, but nevertheless cost one and a half times more than our banquet in Antequera.

The children were still coming down off their plane of tension, and it showed, to the extent that their mother needed to return to the apartment for a break before the coffee had arrived. She was exhausted and overwhelmed, and I totally understood. It had been a most demanding day.

The following day, we did absolutely nothing at all. We went out for an expensive lunch and a short walk, but most of it was spent trying to process the events of the previous day and regaining our strength ready to tackle a daytrip to Granada on Sunday.

EXTRA PHOTOS:

The Great Iberian Road Trip, Day 54: And Up Into The Fridge

 

On the morning of Thursday 22 August, we left our delightful little apartment in the centre of Seville, in the furnace of southern Europe, and walked to our car in the oppressively hot car park where I repacked our stuff and we headed towards the Sierra Nevada, a complete contrast to what we had been used to down at sea level for the last 49 days, since we left our first stop in the Sierra de Urbasa.

I was looking for a place to stop on the way. I would have loved to go to Cordoba and see the Mezquita-Cathedral, but it was just too far off our path. Malaga would have been another good stopover but again, we would have had very little time there. However, in Malaga province, is the town of Antequera, an inland expat stronghold, but a lovely place to stop for a while. And it was only a nine-kilometre detour.

On the way, we passed through the dustbowl of emptiness between Seville and Antequera, stopping at one of those roadside cafés so prevalent throughout the yellow parts of Spain. These are institutions – usually with cold lighting, a metallic countertop with a few tapas in a glass display, some radio music or the TV blaring out in the corner, and a couple of old geezers chatting to the boss. This one had gone the full distance by selling lottery tickets, olive oil and multi-use camping knives. There was also a large dining area with wooden tables and white table cloths with coloured trim. In Spain, you instantly know you are in a place you can take refuge because it smells of bread.

Here is the thing I have noticed about Spain: it is totally underestimated. When people go to Italy, they often go for the history and culture. But Spain unfortunately set its bar too low very early on in the 1960s by promoting mass tourism rather than promote visits to its cultural hubs. Apart from the obvious ones like Venice, Rome, Naples and Florence, Italy has a host of very visitable cities, like Como, Bologna, Catania and Padova.

Conversely, in Spain, the hordes flock to the worst parts of it: Torremolinos, with its soulless blocks of concrete hastily put up to accommodate the lowest common denominator; Benidorm, the poor person’s Vegas, what Croydon would look like if it were by the sea; Marbella, the place where influencers come to die. Let’s face it: there are quite a few places along the coast of Spain that could do with a few bulldozers and wrecking balls. Not to mention the odd extradition.

But I would say without hesitation that cities like Valencia, Sevilla, Malaga, Salamanca, not to mention Madrid and Barcelona, can match or even surpass the standard of culture and liveability of any other place in Europe. But the Spanish are (believe it or not) incredibly critical of their country. Yes, there are a lot of issues here, but the advantages of living in Spain outweigh those problems by a hefty margin. In no other country have I seen such a level of engagement in the community as I have in Spain.

And yet, there was a recent survey which asked Europeans if their country’s culture was superior to others. Paradoxically enough, but unsurprisingly, Greece was at the top with 89%. In the middle were most central European countries from Poland to Italy, Germany to Ukraine, with scores hovering between 45% and 55%. The UK was 46%, Sweden typically low with 26%. But Spain’s was a mere 20%, the lowest in Europe, three percentage points below Belgium and Estonia. And yet there’s more culture in the little finger of a Spanish Abuela than in some entire countries.

We parked the car in Antequera’s central parking garage and took a stroll around the streets of the old town. There was a mix between some busy places and empty streets. Google Maps told me there was a cluster of restaurants about 300 metres away. Milda was incredibly tired, but I didn’t want to settle on the first place I saw, especially as some of them were empty or had rather unattractive décor.

Turning the corner into one of the empty streets, I saw a restaurant hidden between some trees and buildings, and I was sure it was the one we needed to go to. The proprietor was a merry and good-natured soul with a special knowledge of how to keep children happy. The menu was another work of art and had plenty of mischievous dishes to keep us fully entertained. This is another place we shall return to.

Continuing our journey, it started getting higher. After Granada, we took the road to Sierra Nevada, a spectacular road of around 30 kilometres, that goes on and on up the mountain until it comes to a halt in the urbanisation closest to Mulhacén, continental Spain’s highest mountain. On the way, we passed ravines, lakes, giant shards of rock rising out of the land, and views as far as the sea, still a good 50 kilometres away.

If this road trip has done anything, it has opened the children’s eyes to new concepts: they now appreciate spectacular panoramas, understand the beauty of nature, and ask to stop to take a look. When I pulled over next to one of the numerous inns on the way up the mountain, Dainoris and Livia asked to get out to take a look. The adjectives they used to describe the view in front of them told me they were on the right path.

When we reached the top, after a series of twists and turns that kept me very busy and alert, I passed the offices of the agency in charge of our apartment for the next four days. I sent the others to a café on the viewing platform and went to get the key. The guy was really nice, and gave us a bigger apartment at no extra cost. It was located in a white building with diagonal façade and balconies that reminded me of those apartment buildings in Monaco that look out over the Mediterranean.

But when I got there, we were round the back with just a close-up view of the rocks. Normal people would be quite upset to have had their view removed, but I wasn’t. I had been informed that there was a rock festival in the square right in front of where the apartment I originally asked for was located. In this new building, the apartments at the front would most probably feel the brunt of the noise, but round the back we would be protected. I was quite thankful for that.

After such a huge afternoon meal, bread, ham and cheese were on the menu for the evening. But I had to find a supermarket. It was about half past seven, so normally plenty of time. When I got to it, the shopkeeper said “sorry, we are closed, so please be quick.” And I couldn’t help wondering if this town was an exclave of northern Europe, because I don’t know a single place in Spain where a supermarket closes at that time.

I gathered what I could. Supermarkets in places where there are no permanent residents tend to have the basics, and forgo the quality. So you might find only white bread, maybe some appalling UHT low-fat milk rubbish, and chocolate-covered cereals. This place was no different, but at least it had ham and cheese. We fed the children and tried to settle them into bed. The day after was going to be exhausting.

EXTRA PHOTOS:

 

The Great Iberian Road Trip, Days 52-53: Seville Code

It was Tuesday 20 August. We all woke up incredibly late. I couldn’t believe Dainoris and Milda had actually remained in bed until well after 9… then I remembered we were one hour ahead of Portugal. Although to their credit, they did stay in for more than half an hour longer than usual. I guess we all needed it – nobody had slept particularly well for the last few days, but I’m guessing the full moon had something to do with that. Livia usually looks after herself, but when she’s bored she might come to wake us up. Not today though, she was last.

The itinerary for the day was this: we would walk a kilometre to the Alcazar of Seville, a massive Moorish palace to the south of the centre, and to break the journey for Milda, we would stop for lunch on the way. In Spain, in many places, you need to book online well in advance, especially in the summer, and lots of places ask for proof of ID, which I find to be a total infringement on my privacy. Who on Earth do they think we all are, to treat us with suspicion? This is one of the least desirable things about life in Spain: the need to prove who you are for even the simplest of things.

We spent the morning mentally preparing to venture out in the August heat of Seville, one of the hottest cities on average in Europe. When lunchtime came, we hit the streets and despite this city’s reputation for being a cauldron of sticky heat and discomfort, it was surprisingly bearable – more so than Valencia last summer, to be frank. We walked along the narrow pedestrian streets of the Casco Antiguo before we turned into the Plaza Nueva, where the city’s administrative buildings are found. It, of course, has a number of shady trees and a statue of San Fernando as its central point.

Just beyond the square, the grand thoroughfare that leads to the cathedral opens up, but just before then is the Calle Joaquin Guichot, and a row of very inviting-looking restaurants. The first one was a place called El Favorito, which despite changing hands not long ago, maintains its original décor. There are the high vaulted ceilings, a pink marble counter which seemed fun to work on, the original dining tables and a belle époque interior style with very colourful walls and floors. I have only seen this type of design in northern and central Europe. It was not so full, but it had a real buzz, and could easily have been a Grand Café in Prague, Budapest or Paris.

The menu was astounding – great treats such as roasted pepper salad, pisto andaluz (a type of ratatouille), goat cheese croquettes, codfish with octopus ink-infused alioli, or just a plain ibérico sausage. Fancy spinach with chick peas? Cuttlefish balls? Anchovies in vinegar? They’ve got it. Their whole menu was a poem. And this is where I think the Spanish have a great advantage over the Italians: the Italians named and continue to name dishes (whole recipes) after the place they were created or the person that created them, whereas in Spain many dishes are written on the menu mainly with their ingredients. And this is how Spanish food can adapt and improve.

I ate a salmorejo so thick, it was almost the consistency of crème patissière. The portion of sausages, eggs, chips and confit of onions that arrived for the children was so moresome that I forgot about my own plate, especially as two of them decided it was “yucky” because it was covered in onions. Ah well, more for me…

So after this feast of delights, we stumbled, bloated and heavy, out into the hot Seville air towards the Alcazar, along past this city’s immense cathedral, as well as a dozen emaciated horses cruelly attached to tourist carriages, and found our way to the Lion Gate, the entrance to the palace. We passed through security, a common measure these days, and we found ourselves in one of the most impressive historical monuments that exist anywhere on Earth. It is truly astounding, and to their credit, the children found this place pretty awesome too.

I won’t go into detail, as the photos are self-explanatory, but if you have never visited the Alcazar, you will not be disappointed. The only bone of contention that I have is the internal cafeteria, which is an utter disgrace. For five soft drinks, two coffees, three Cornettoes and a couple of sad cakes that had sat in their display case, we paid nearly 40 euro, which was scandalous.

The gardens were beautiful with their tall palm trees, wandering peacocks and ceramic fountains. The interiors radiated with richness and colour, with a deep attachment to their Islamic heritage. The waters of the inner courtyards glistened with the perfect reflections of the backgrounds. And even without the pushy, sharp-elbowed tourists that frequented these places, the experience was just as amazing.

The impressions made this day I think will be difficult to forget, and I hope all of the children will look back at this experience with fondness. On the way back to our apartment, we passed a few shops and made a rare foray inside to buy a few souvenirs. Now that we are entering the final phase of our road trip, we can make a few exceptions. Until now, we tried to save space and not clog up the car entirely, but it’s not such a problem. We went back to the apartment and collapsed on the sofa, watched TV and had some bread before they went to bed.

What a day.

Let me be clear here: this is not a promotional text on behalf of Seville, I promise. But I have to declare that this is a magnificent city. Spain has a wealth of cities that would obviously be the capital in about two dozen other European countries. And Seville is one of them: when you walk around this city, it has a host of grand buildings that stretch out well beyond just the centre.

On Wednesday 21 August, we decided to take in the city and get a feel of the place. Retracing some of the route back to the Alcazar, we took several ways that we didn’t have the opportunity to visit the day before. Despite the raging temperatures, it was surprisingly bearable. Yes, leaving the house had been like switching on the hairdryer, but there was a cool breeze that was blowing off the sea a little way further south.

At lunchtime, we found ourselves near the place we had been to the day before. There are several in a row, so we decided to try another one, virtually next door. The menu didn’t really set my pulse racing, I’ll be quite frank about it, but I changed my mind when the food came – it was beyond delicious. We ordered a tomato salad with the crunchiest tomatoes possible, plus olive oil, garlic and chopped basil. We also asked for some patatas bravas. Every place does these things differently, but in here, the salsa brava had obviously been made using some of the other elements left over from cooking, because it was rich, thick and warm. I personally opted for the pork ribs, which had been slow cooked in wine to make a thick rich sauce. I could have cut it with a plastic spoon, that’s how tender it was.

We passed by some shops to do some more souvenir acquisition – the children had wanted some flamenco dolls. After a brief rest at home, we went out to watch a flamenco show. For me, the evening was a living hell. This type of show inevitably attracts the kind of tourist I utterly despise, but we wanted the children to see some of the culture. The woman selling the tickets a day earlier, which cost us over 80 euro for the five of us, told us to get there about half an hour before the show to guarantee some good seats, as it’s done on a first-come-first-served basis.

We did get there half an hour before the 6pm show, but she was frantically making some calls. Then she announced to us that the show would be delayed by up to half an hour, because the Vuelta a España was passing through Seville, and the artists, who lived outside the city, were stuck in traffic. So to appease the children, we went for a drink at a café thirty metres away. We returned less than half an hour later, and good that we did, because people were being let in. I wanted the children to have good seats because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to see, but the front rows had been reserved.

I was furious.

Being told they were first-come-first-served, no reservation, and then to find “RESERVED” on all the seats at the front, I felt totally hoodwinked. When I delivered my complaint to the same woman who had sold me the tickets, I was presented with the usual generic apologies followed by a corporate smile. She offered us the higher seats at the back, but if one adult sat in front, Milda would have a very difficult time seeing anything. At the moment, the row was empty. But for how long?

The show started and we thought that would be that, but about 10 minutes after starting, in walked a family of four including a huge, round-shouldered father, who put himself right in front of Milda. Now I was really upset. They had come in, making a scene that there were no seats with a decent view (HELLO…??? YOU ARRIVED TEN MINUTES LATE TO A SHOW THAT HAD ALREADY BEEN DELAYED BY 20 MINUTES!!!) but despite the usher having offered a seat in the central aisle near the back, he was still deeply ungrateful and squished his enormous figure onto the seat in front of Milda.

I was sitting on a seat at the very back behind Livia and Dainoris. Livia had started talking, saying that the footwork of the flamenco dancer was too loud, which made a Chinese woman on the row next to us talk directly to Livia telling her to be quiet.

Well…

I let it slip the first time, but the second time I gave her an extremely barbed, highly-charged retort which kept her quiet for the rest of the performance. I mean, the performance was really really loud, so I don’t know what made her order Livia to be quiet. If you want silence at a performance, go to the opera.

As I already said, this type of event brings out the worst type of tourist. And here we had the culturally unaware, the self-unaware and the kind of chap that flies Ryanair and demands an upgrade, all in the same cluster of seats. It was the longest hour of the entire road trip, and I was relieved to get out of there. We were all particularly frazzled after all that, and went straight back to the apartment to clear up and pack bags.

The day after, we would leave the relative heat of Seville for the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. 

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