A big blob blog….

We had no plan today until 6pm when we were expecting to walk over to Triana and have our Spanish cooking course. Then we got an email…

Apparently we were the only ones booked on the course. So it followed that the course was cancelled. Hmm..actually it was kind of pleasant to sit around on the upstairs terrace with no objective in place. We’d been for breakfast and returned about 10am. By the time we’d lounged about upstairs it was 2pm. We decided to go window shopping, not a pursuit we normally strive to carry out but we were at a bit of a loose end.

We walked up Sierpes, which turned out to be the main chain store street in Seville.We passed a sweet shop which was either very early with it’s Xmas decorations or they’d found them too difficult to take down, so left them up. We noticed lots of name brands which were not only Spanish but that were familiar to people in the UK too. Eventually we walked into El Cortes Ingles which is slightly similar to John Lewis or Selfridges. We saw instore advertising for a gourmet eating section on the fifth floor. Those escalators can make you dizzy.. There we found lots of high end food and drink, even small bottles of Fentimans soft drinks. There was a very expensive single malt whisky and a bottle of wine which retailed for nearly €1,500.

There was food court at the end and a rooftop seating area. We wondered about going outside when a friendly (and very proactive) waitress asked us if we’d like a menu in Spanish or English. We muttered “English” and felt obliged to sit down in her zone after she’d pressed a tapas menu into our hands. It was actually quite decent food, though 3pm is really a bit late to have lunch. Taking the escalators more slowly we descended regally through the lower floors, pausing on one or two to critique the goods. Eventually we managed to locate the ground floor and Susie bought two Economists and an English language newspaper. Heads spinning from this retail experience we came back to the apartment to recover.

Obviously we’d intended to eat whatever we’d cooked on our course this evening, so now we had to choose a venue for dinner. About 8pm we found ourselves in “Le Grand Bistro”, less than ten minutes walk away. Styled loosely on a Parisian bistro it serves dinner as well as tapas and we had fish and chips, though disappointingly the chips were crisps. However there was a mango sauce to go with the fish. It was rather nice even if it doesn’t sound it. We followed up with two very large desserts and coffee, then rolled back here.