04 Wednesday Jul 2018
Posted in food & drink, friends, gastronomy, getaways, sevilla, shopping, spain, tapas, tapas bars, tapas tours
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friends, jabugo, jamon, jerez, mrs o around the world, sherry, tapas tours
Remember when Mr & Mrs O (Ana & Simon) were here in March? Well Ana has just written this lovely blog post about our time together in Sevilla along with her other adventures in Jerez and Jabugo. Have a look…
A Weekend In Seville with days out
to Jerez for Sherry and Jabugo for Jamón Ibérico
29 Friday Jun 2018
Posted in hotels, restaurants, sevilla, sevilla staycation, spain, tapas, tapas bars
Tags
alfararia 21, casa montalvan, hotel, sevilla, tapas, tapas bar, triana
A Friday afternoon stroll to Triana to look for a new food dish for Morcilla (don’t ask) turned into a delightful surprise visit to brand new tapas bar and restaurant Alfarería 21. This is part of a larger project by Paco Arcas, who owns the nearby Las Golondrinas bars, which will include a boutique hotel. The entire project comprises 3-4 buildings and I was first shown around the site a few years ago, before construction had begun. Then in March Paco took me on another tour of the site and the transformation was stunning.
Anyhow, it turned out that the Alfarería 21, housed in the old Casa Montalván ceramics factory, had just opened the previous day and so of course I couldn’t resist stopping for a couple of tapas and a chat with Paco. The menu is still provisional and so changes will be made, most likely to include separate menus for the bar area downstairs and the first floor restaurant. And the hotel is due to open soon. The rooms I saw in March were gorgeous – can’t wait to go on an overnight “staycation”. More photos below…
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25 Monday Jun 2018
Always a welcome sight upon arriving in Sanlúcar – the beautiful Plaza del Cabildo. Here for the last two days celebrating Día de la Manzanilla.
21 Thursday Jun 2018
So this morning was THE BIG DAY. After several months of tests, including the original PET scan, then a colonoscopy, endoscopy, blood tests, a CT scan with another follow-up CT last week… I was finally going to get my results. To hopefully tell me what is going on with the mysterious “area of inflammation” they found during my last PET scan in February.
I won’t lie. I’ve been a bit of a mess about this since they started “investigating” this inflammation. I do my best to live in denial and just carry on with my life, but when it comes to stuff like booking a tapas tour a few months in advance, I am left wondering if I’ll actually be able to do it. Likewise with my summer plans. I’ve been putting everything on hold until I got the “go ahead”. Which was supposed to be today.
Except it wasn’t. I got to the hospital and after more than an hour in the hot and crowded waiting room, I was shown into the oncologist’s office… only to be told the CT scan results hadn’t been processed yet. WTF? My oncologist looked surprised and said – “oh, didn’t they call you yesterday?”. Well of course they hadn’t fucking called me yesterday, otherwise I wouldn’t have been there. Also, I wouldn’t have lost most of this week in a state of suspended emotion, not daring to feel or hope… JUST IN CASE. And so I sat there not believing this was happening. Then the doctor pulled a date out of the air – July 5th – to meet again, saying that FOR SURE the results will have been processed by then. Well, what choice do I have?
I walked out of the hospital feeling a whole whack of mixed emotions. In some ways I was relieved because “no news is good news”. Well, maybe. But I was also annoyed at having lost my entire morning, not just the 3 hours getting to and from the hospital, and waiting there, but really the whole day up until then. BUT… what saved the entire experience from total disaster was… my taxi! I always taxi to the hospital and then usually walk back, mostly because I am so stressed before going that a taxi is a comfortable and easy way of getting there.
Anyhow check it out. I got into the taxi, not paying much attention. Then I noticed the big JAGUAR logo on the dashboard screen. And so I stupidly said to the driver – THIS IS A JAGUAR??? Then I went all fan girl, saying how Jags were my favourite cars and that I couldn’t believe that I was in a Jaguar taxi. The driver informed me that not only was this was the only Jaguar taxi in Sevilla, it was the only one in Spain. WOW. I told him that I was going to the hospital for test results and that I took this as a positive sign, and also that it was so cool that I’d be arriving there in style. And bless him, he said he was sure this meant everything was going to be okay. Then he showed me a photo of his friend’s taxi – the only Maserati taxi in Spain. I’m telling you, this totally MADE MY DAY. Being driven to the hospital in a Jaguar XF.
Meanwhile, I now have two more weeks of hellish anxiety until the next oncology appointment. I wish I would have asked my driver for his card so I could always call him up when I have to go to the hospital…
20 Wednesday Jun 2018
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Here you see the landmark Edificio La Adriática in Avenida de la Constitución, now reduced to housing cheap & cheesy souvenir shops. Below was once a traditional family-run shop in Calle Francos that is now a tacky “express market” catering to the tourists living in all the holiday apartments in the area. It’s bad enough that we’ve already lost Barrio Santa Cruz to this sort of crass tourist-focused commercialism, but now it’s spreading further afield. There is almost no more affordable decent housing in the Casco Antiguo. Likewise, independent shops have been closing in droves, only to be replaced with shit like this.
Yes, tourism is one of the most important industries in Sevilla. Heck, it is also (in part) how I make a living. But by destroying the centre of town like this, what will be left to attract people here? Before long what was once one of the most charming and beautiful cities in Spain will soon become a wasteland filled with tacky shops, awful bars and restaurants, and streets filled with huge tourist groups. Wait… soon become? It’s already happening. Shocking that the local government is just looking at the short term profits. You’d think the Spanish would have learned by now that if you over-fish an area then soon there is nothing left. I hope there is still time to turn this terrible greed-fueled trend around.
casa azahar 