I mentioned over here, after having seen my third or fourth meh film in a row, that I couldn’t actually remember the last time I saw a film that really wowed me. Well, it finally happened a couple of weeks ago when Susan & I had another “girls’ Saturday night out”. Except this time we started with lunch …

We tried out a new place called Jan El Jalily and, while the assorted starters were quite yummy, the couscous was rather disappointing and left us wishing we were back in Tangier.  Nevertheless, we ate it, which prompted Susan to say afterwards … “Don’t worry we can walk it off on the way to the wine bar”, which has to be one of my favourite quotes of all time.  The reason this was going to be our next stop was that the Jan El Jalily doesn’t serve any alcohol!!! But then we realised that we were in time to get to the matinee showing of Slumdog Millionaire, so we decided to hit the wine bar later. And on the way up the stairs at the cinema I spotted this poster for an upcoming film that seemed timely…

It turned out that our timing was perfect because the cinema wasn’t even half-full, we got very good seats, and sat down to watch one of the most delightful films we’d seen in ages. I mean, okay, there were a couple of eye-rolling moments, but overall we loved it.

However, we were left in an awkward situation afterwards as it was 6.30 pm and both the wine bars options we had been considering were closed until at least 8-ish. So we wandered back to the centre of town and had a drink at the Bar Laredo terrace in the Plaza San Fransciso, which is quite a good place for people watching. After that we wandered around for awhile and then decided we need a snack, so we stopped in at Bar Europa and got the waiters to pose for Sevilla Tapas. Excellent tapas there, btw.

Then it was finally time to hit the wine bar. I chose Puracepa because it has intrigued me for quite awhile. At first I thought it was  just a touristy place that sold wines and typical Andalusian food products, and upon closer inspection it seemed to be more charming than that and so I wanted to try it out. And it turned out to be quite a find. Although it is actually called an “abaceria” (grocery store) it is much more than that. The owners and staff are very friendly and clearly love wine and are happy to talk about what they have on offer, which made our visit there both very pleasant and educational.

It was one of those days that just seemed to work out without any real plan.

Have you seen Slumdog Millionaire? Did you love it?