Going to Málaga sometimes feel like I’m carrying on a love affair with another city. What if Sevilla finds out? I’d really hate to have to choose between them. Honestly, nobody was more surprised than me when Málaga stole a piece of my heart last summer. Up until then I had never considered living anywhere else but in my beloved Sevilla, but I suddenly found myself checking out areas of town that felt like “home” in the same way that my street in Sevilla does. I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t decide between beachfront or city centre, so just as well that this isn’t a decision I’ll have to make anytime soon, especially if I can keep having occasional visits like this week coming up…
I’ve been busy working on my revamped azahar-sevilla main page, which will soon (I hope) become a comprehensive and useful Seville info page. Hence I have moved the Sevilla blog over here, and by doing so have also started posting more day-to-day stuff there. Anyhow, most of the work I’ve been doing is still “behind the scenes” and unpublished, and includes a lot of first-hand research visiting places with my trusty camera. So yesterday morning Nog & I took a walk over to the Feria Market, which I hadn’t been to in years, and we had a very nice time. It’s actually Seville’s oldest market and although it was tempting to get some very inexpensive fish we decided to stick to vegetables as we still had lots of errands to run and didn’t think the fish would survive long in the 45º HEAT.
First off I should confess that I’m not actually interested in football, though I’ve occasionally watched important matches. The UEFA Cup final in 2003 comes to mind. And so last night, just before the Spain/Netherlands World Cup final began I suggested to Peter that we go out and find a bar showing the game on television. We first tried Cervecería Giralda across the street but it was packed out. Then I remembered that when I was giving a mini tapas tour the previous week I took my client to Casa Roman – there was a match that night too and all the staff were standing around like meerkats, eyes glued to the telly. So we went over there and, sure enough, same scene but not overly-crowded. In fact, we even managed to pull up a couple of chairs quite close to the “action” and grab a couple of beers. The match had begun.
As football matches go, it wasn’t a very exciting one. But it was fun to be in the midst of a small yet exuberant crowd who were very vocal about, well, everything. In fact, I was enjoying their reactions more than the match itself. But then as they went into extra time I started to get excited too. Could we win? Hell yeah, we HAD to win. I found myself perched on the edge of my chair and when Spain scored their winning goal I was up on my feet laughing and cheering and yelling with the rest of them. I’m so glad I went out to watch this with friends and neighbours – it really felt wonderful sharing all that excitement and happiness. On the way home we stopped by the fountain in front of the Cathedral as I was sure it was going to be full of crazy revellers – and I was right.
