No8Do, Sevilla
I fully recommend taking the train from Madrid to Sevilla. Super fast, free Wifi, a café full of snacks and treats, and time to sit back and relax as olive groves and sunflower fields zoom by.
If you’ve been following my blog posts about Spain, however, you’ll be familiar with the fact that nothing on our trip went according to plan: missed flights, lost luggage, cancelled hotels—and that’s the short of how Matt and I ended up at the Madrid train station (with two cancelled train tickets to Sevilla in hand) trying to rent a car to Sevilla.
By God’s miracle alone did we find the very last automatic car available for immediate pickup (thanks, Hertz). We stuffed it full of our newly-recovered luggage and zoomed down the expressway south.
The drive from Madrid to Sevilla is full of amazing history. Madrid is the land of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, and during the drive southwest, I kept hoping to spy the famous La Mancha windmills, but we didn’t pass close enough to Toledo to get a view.
We were on a mission, and so we only had time to stop at the tiny town of Trujillo for a bocadillo, some Pringles, and a Gatorade. Trujillo, which is a tiny town in the province of Cáceres, contains an old Arab fortress that we briefly spied before jumping back on the road south.
Upon arriving in Sevilla, Matt faced the precarious situation of trying to navigate the extremely-narrow one-way streets to our hotel, which was directly in the middle of Sevilla’s old quarter.
Sevilla is the fourth-largest city in Spain, but it honors and exudes small town vibes. Situated on the banks of the Guadalquivir River in southern Andalusia, Sevilla in June was undeniably hot hot hot. During the period of Muslim rule in Spain, this city was part of the Caliphate of Córdoda, until the Christian kings incorporated it into the Kingdom of Castile in 1248.
One of Sevilla’s most impressive sites, and a stunning example of Mudéjar architecture was built on the site of a tenth-century Muslim fortress: the Real Alcázar de Sevilla, or the royal palace of Sevilla. Along with being featured as a location for the Water Gardens of Dorne in Game of Thrones, the Alcázar is a UNESCO world heritage site.
The word “mudéjar” refers to the Christian Iberic architecture and decoration style, which was heavily influenced by Moorish craftsmanship. The best example of Mudéjar at the Alcázar is the Palacio de Don Pedro, built in 1364 by King Pedro, who drew on Islamic traditions to design the palace.
The Alcázar itself underwent total renovation, restoration, and redesign by Castilian Christians in the many centuries following its original development in 913. The palace features Muslim and Christian architecture and design side-by-side, with Baroque facades, Mudéjar plasterwork and tiles, bright gold ceilings, and verdant gardens.
We entered the Alcázar through the Puerta del León on Plaza del Triunfo, which was the garrison yard of the original palace. Every room was its own masterpiece.
In the Salón de Embajadores, crowned with an enormous wooden dome filled with star patterns, we could imagine thrones flanking the hallway as King Pedro entertained visitors.
In the Patio del Crucero, we strolled above the gardens on a series of raised walkways with large, open windows through which we could pluck oranges from the trees at eye-level.
In the Jardín de la Danza, our voices echoed back at us in the vault-like quarters of the Baños de Doña María de Padilla.
There is much and more I could say about the Alcázar, but I’ll leave you with the photos. We spent three hours here, but easily could have filled an entire day.
Our exit from the Alcázar took us into a central plaza filled with outdoor cafes, gelato shops, tree-lined avenues, and college students.
The University of Sevilla, at which Matt studied for three months in college, stands right in the thicket of Sevilla’s main city center. Because Matt is so familiar with Sevilla, he knew the exact place to bring us for dinner: Cien Montaditos, ¡por supuesto! Cien Montaditos is a diamond-in-the-rough. It’s a chain restaurant throughout Spain that serves one hundred types of montaditos (thus the name). A montadito is a tapa-sized sandwich, filled with a variety of toppings. Along with two glasses of tinto, a bowl of olives to share, and some fries, we tried six montaditos that evening: grilled chicken, onion and aioli; mozzarella, tomato, and pesto; tortilla española; brie, arugula, and honey mustard; calamari, roasted peppers, and aioli; and caprese.
After filling up, Matt showed me his old stomping grounds—the bridge of San Telmo that crosses the Guadalquivir River, the Golden Tower (Torre de Oro) on the banks of the river, the Catedral de Sevilla and the Plaza de Triunfo beside it, and finally, the Plaza de España.
As we crossed into the Plaza de España from the Park of María Luisa, we came upon an outdoor café sparkling with string lights and playing Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon. We had a little dance under the trees before entering the Plaza.
The Plaza de España is a huge outdoor square in the shape of a half-circle. Two enormous towers flank the north and south edges, and a moat runs through the center, accessible by bridges representing the four ancient kingdoms of Spain.
The Plaza was built in 1928 to showcase Spanish industry and technology for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. The area is filled with nods to Spanish history—tiled fountains, pavilions, walls and lush palm trees and orange trees are reminiscent of the Moorish influence we experienced at the Alcázar; brightly-colored alcoves pepper the rim of the plaza, each depicting a different province of Spain; government buildings rise high around the square. You may even recognize this plaza as part of the City of Theed on Planet Naboo from Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones!
We were lucky to reach the Plaza right before sunset, and the sun threw a warm golden light across all the buildings.
We crossed the bridges and admired the people rowing boats through the park, lingered by the alcoves depicting our “favorite” provinces of Spain, and climbed to the tops of some of the buildings for views of the city.
After taking in the Plaza, we headed back into Old Town, where we spent the rest of the evening popping in and out of stores, eating dulces, and listening to guitarists serenading the cafes.
Around midnight, just as the sun finished sinking beneath the horizon, we escaped for a drink on top our hotel’s rooftop bar, which treated us to a beautiful view of the Cathedral.
I have skipped over the part of the story where things went wrong in Sevilla—only because things then went really, really well. On our car ride from Madrid, Matt got an email notifying him that our hotel in Sevilla was overbooked and they were canceling our reservation. Before we even had a chance to panic, our hotel re-booked us at one of the nicest hotels in Sevilla, which promptly upgraded our room on arrival, valeted our car for free, gave us complimentary drinks to the bar, and provided us with free breakfast. Thank you, Hotel Rey Alfonso!
Breakfast at Hotel Rey Alfonso was insanely good—we ate churros and hot chocolate, coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice with champagne, tortilla española, fried eggs, hard-boiled eggs, fresh watermelon and strawberries, crepes with raspberry preserves, potatoes, yogurt, and ham (for Matt).
Stuffed, we then crept through the streets of Sevilla as the morning broke open. It was a Sunday, and all the church bells were tolling nine, but the city was still asleep. We talked softly as we wandered through narrow roads lined with apartments, whose windows were left open from the day before and whose balconies were covered in hanging plants and flowers. We peeked inside the Cathedral and watched nuns and priests wander in and out of mysterious passageways buried into the stone walls.
We turned a corner and ran into a farmers market of sorts, and then turned down another narrow street and ran into a group of teenagers racing cars up and down the road.
We took one final look at Sevilla from the Metropol Parasol (Las Setas de la Encarnación), which is the largest wooden structure in the world, shaped in the form of a giant mushroom. From the top of the structure, Las Setas offers beautiful views of the city.
If you’ve reached the end of this post, you may still be wondering what No8Do means.
Matt taught me this. The pictogram “No8Do” appears on everything in the city–the flag, buses, street signs, manholes, government buildings. Legend has it that King Alfonso X took refuge in Sevilla when his son Sancho led a rebellion against him. In gratitude to the city, Alfonso X gave it an expression, No me ha dejado, which means “it has not abandoned me.” The “8” in No8Do is actually representative of a wool skein (in Spanish, madeja). No-madeja-do. No-me-ha-dejado. A little bit of phonetics fun to end this post!
Next stop: the train to Granada!
