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A long time ago (1993) I was living in a charming studio apartment down the street from where I live now. It was my first home in Sevilla, and a very pretty one, with a nice terrace outside the back door – and also heating & air-conditioning! But not only was it tiny, it was also very expensive, and so when I saw a for rent sign go up across the street I hastened to check it out, because I knew I couldn’t live anywhere else in Sevilla than on My Street. Turned out it was a recently renovated 3-bedroom, 1 1/2 bathroom apartment, semi-furnished, and about 1/3 more than I was paying for my little studio, and it also turned out that with a flatmate I could manage to make ends meet and enjoy having a lot more living space … and so that’s how I lived for eight years.
One of my ever-changing flatmates during that time was a lovely woman called Alejandra – a historian who was looking for temporary accommodation while she was doing research at the Archivos de India. That was in 1996. Four years later she was here again visiting with her family and we met again. And that was it, other than occasional emails and, more recently, “friending” each other on Facebook. And then about a month ago Ale told me she was going to be in Madrid doing research this summer and would love to come down to Seville for a week if I still had the apartment next door and a free room. So here she is! And as luck would have it, staying in “our old place” for the last week that I’ll have the second apartment.
And so yesterday Ale got here around 5 o’clock and, as she’d come down from Madrid on the fast train without having had any lunch, we immediately headed out to find a nice tapas bar with an all-day kitchen (most close from 4-8pm) and ended up at Bar Estrella. Afterwards we went to the Corte Inglés so Ale could get a few groceries for the week and on the way home stopped for a cold beer at Picalagartos, where my photographer buddy Antonio Cid works at weekends. And well, it was great. Especially how it felt like Ale had just been gone for about fifteen minute rather than fifteen years. We “connected” again immediately and felt really at home together, and so this should be a very pleasant week indeed.
Just waiting to see if she is up so we can go out for brekky at the Horno San Buenaventura and then think of something fun to do in boring-old-Sevilla on a Sunday. Oh, and you can see yesterday’s late lunch (Ale’s treat) below the links…
Most of you know how rich I have been in gifts these past couple of years since I got sick. Gifts of all sorts – friendship, money, presents, visits, and especially patience & understanding – and of course a lot of this sort of generosity usually can’t be paid back in kind. But you can pay it forward.
casa azahar 