No, I haven’t gone mad, well no more mad than usual. Watching a streamed version of Sky News tonight I heard Gareth Southgate (the England soccer team manager) talking about Englands forthcoming match with Spain….tomorrow…..here in Seville. This would explain the peculiar sight of a young guy in a Newcastle away shirt passing me tonight. Luckily, the game is being held at the home stadium of Real Betis, a few kilometres south of Seville city centre. I like football but not enough to disrupt a holiday…

Anyway, back to normal programming as it were…

We walked up to Pan Y Pui as planned for breakfast and were welcomed as old friends. It’s nice when people remember you, we even got our coffees free. We’d had some thunder earlier this morning and couldn’t really luxuriate on our rooftop terrace as the cushions were soaking. It was warm and sunny when we left though and we wandered up to Calle Cuna, where they’ve opened a second branch of Pan Y Pui. It may be our second breakfast spot, though they were equally as busy and offer a full English (not to our particular taste) including ‘scumble egg’ or so the blackboard in the window announced. We strolled on, recognising some places from last year and walked down towards the cathederal.

Susie had researched a small plaza situated slightly off the tourist trail which she wanted to see. Of course we couldn’t find it and had to stand in a queue for 15 minutes at a tourist information office, only to be told it was just along the street and through an arch. It was really lovely, a collecters fair was taking place with coin, stamp and other dealers selling and buying. It can’t be that much off the tour trail, as a walking tour arrived while we sat at the central fountain and they all dutifully handed in their headsets and then set off again. Obviously the next part was either uninteresting or could be conducted at normal speech levels. Either way, off they went following a lady with a fan topped extended car aerial. I’d still like to carry an umbrella and hold it aloft while walking down the street, just to see how many people follow me.

We walked across to the Alkazar to see how bad the queues were, as we have prebooked tickets for tomorrow. Even the prebooked line was lengthy and the tourist information lady wasn’t too helpful by telling us that we could turn up five minutes before our entry time. Obviously she was too busy to take much notice of the queues standing outside her door.

Now in search of lunch we found a tapas bar which was ok but not super. It was interestingly decorated though, with hats and old photographs. At this point we returned to the apartment and called it a day. Another full day tomorrow..I might even find an England scarf to wear. Maybe not, unless I want to go round the Alkazar on my own…