SEVILLA - BARCELONA

Seville and train sleeper to Barcelona

Barcelona, CATALUNYA, Spain
Pension Palacia Hostal
Day 46, 47

We´ve arrived in Barcelona! What a gorgeous seaside city, from what we see so far!

I´m so glad Greg booked a sleeper for the train trip to Barcelona! When he booked it on Saturday, i was stuffed up with the flu and spent 3 hours in bed trying to recover and today feel so much better.

It bumped, screeched, rattled, knocked, swayed and rocked while we tried to sleep but after a 12 hour journey, here we are in our ´new home´a hostal that was recommended to us by a guy at the train station when we arrived! It´s €40 for the night, has internet access, a kitchen, is central and close to the Ramblas and beach! The double bed is tiny tho..but Greg and i are known to fit in a single! haha!

We´ve survived our first Eurail journey!!! We have 2 months to use it and 15, 24 hour periods to use it. This is the first of two Eurail tickets we have. This one we´ll use for southern Europe with a month break in the UK. Then we have another two month pass that we´ll use for northen Europe.

It wasn´t so bad though. We were in first class with a sleeper. I pity those going on a long trip like that sitting up a seat. We paid an extra €49 each to be upgraded in our Eurail ticket but it was worth it. At least we don´t feel like something the cat has dragged in now!

So here we are....and we´re going to go search the town now!

Columbus' monument















Will let you know what Barcelona is like next time...love to all xx

PS Margie and Peta - we´re ¨hoping¨ to get to Andorra! Silvia, we´ll be going to Italy soon! Jaak, we´ll be in Belgium in July!

FLAMENCO IN SEVILLA

Seville,
ANDALUCIA, Spain
Day 44, 45

After missing out on seeing the flamenco two previous times - once because it was full and the other time because we arrived from Portugal and didn´t realise Spain had day light saving, we finally got to see the Flamenco! And it´s so beautiful, what a treat!

We arrived at the El Arenal Tablao Flamenco Restaurante a little earlier to find everyone else had arrived at the same time..so we lined up..and as we were approaching the door this young spanish trio turned up to go to the front of the long queue and just as we were wondering what made them so special....we were told they were part of the show! Ooops.

Anyway..we got seated, in the very front row, and a guy came and put a serviette on our knees, expertly flipped out...and started serving Tapas. In our €53 we had tapas included..

They were prawns and fish and like an entree...two more plates of these came...chicken etc and finally a dessert. We watched a couple attempt to eat the more expensive meal and decided it was a good thing to do...not have the dinner. Especially seeing the show started at 22.30!

The main act was fabulous, included an older female and male flamenco singer, 2 flamenco guitarists and 2 main male flamenco dancers and 4 main female dancers. So much passion, clapping from soft to loud and energetic, to singing, to clicking with the tongue..to just the expression on the faces.














A wonderful night! Good Food, good wine, good dancing!













Seville (Sevilla as they call it here) is such a beautiful city. Founded by the Venetians and has a long history of takeovers from Roman to Iranian to Spanish.

We did a city tour and went on a ferry cruise..saw a perfect boat for Sam sitting in the marina! Princess Mariana. Luxury boat that has a helicopter and launching pad!

We´ve been lucky..the weather was beautiful, the place is beautiful. And a city we´d definately love to come back to .. to experience Holy week and the Abril Faire.