Hola Sevilla!

We made it to Spain, finally! We were looking forward to Seville and had planned three days of sightseeing. Unfortunately, it just didn’t turn out that way. Best laid plans and all that….

On our last night in Portugal we experienced leisure battery issues, as in they drained pretty quickly while we were boondocking and the whole system shut down. Thank goodness we have flameless candles. This seemed like the same issue we had a few weeks earlier, regardless, it was clear we needed professional help. And thus we spent literally an entire day at the garage for a diagnosis and ultimately getting new batteries. We were expecting to have to replace our batteries soon-ish when we bought Bijou, so we figured we might as well do it now before heading into Morocco.

We should have been out of the garage and well on our way to the Plaza de España by noon, unfortunately one of the batteries delivered for our job was cracked and it took a few hours to get another one. While the shop closed for the traditional break at 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m., we headed off to do some much needed grocery shopping. By the time we returned to our camping spot the sun was well on its way down. 

Indeed, new batteries seem to have helped, but they have not solved our issue entirely. The rest of the problem can maybe be chalked up to user error. I think what we have discovered is that we are plugging in all the things as though we have 840 watts of solar and a 2800 watt inverter like we did in Scoopy. Alas, we have approximately 200 watts of solar (we’re not totally sure, but that’s what we’ve been told) and 200 amp hours of battery and a 1500 watt inverter. Kind of overkill on the inverter, really. We never turned Scoopy’s inverter off, but we really have to be judicious in the use of the one we have now. Mostly it just takes a little forward planning on our part. Always learning.

So there went a full day of sightseeing around Seville. On our second day we decided the Cliff Notes version of Seville was in order to get us started, so we took the Hop-On, Hop-Off tour. Sadly, it was not up to par with other similar tours we’ve done and we were left knowing nothing more than when we started. But we did find a few places we wanted to return to, first on the list was a place for lunch. And wow, we scored a homerun on this choice! We had what must be one of the best meals we’ve had in all of Europe, an enticing array of tasty tapas! 

After lunch we walked to the Real Alcazar, a UNESCO Heritage site and spent some time tourIng the buildings and walking in the gardens. It was a beautiful place and not as crowded as we feared. The whole place is kind of a mish-mash of styles, given it’s “500 years of construction” during which time there were wars, conquests, overthrown kingdoms, a couple of earthquakes and so on – you know, the kind of stuff that tends to result in structural modifications. As you pass by the English-speaking guides, you’ll hear words like Islamic, Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque. Personally I could not identify all of these, but I am no expert, obvs. 

Seville is a fun city to explore and is famous for Flamenco dancing and we really wanted to see a performance. The problem for us is that the Spanish don’t even get started until late in the evening when we are already tucked in for the night. We might have every good intention of going out and seeing a show, but once we’re home and comfy, forget it. It’s not going to happen. While exploring the downtown area, we were thrilled to come across a street performing Flamenco dancer.

We finished our outing at the Plaza de España where we were treated to yet another group of performers, this time Flamenco dancers and musicians. They were all really fun to watch and very good at the art of Flamenco. You can see them in action in a video Steven put together of the day’s highlights here:

We left the Plaza late in the day to make our way home. We were parked in a lot that was fairly close to the old city that also offered an overnight rate for motorhomes. It had all the amenities and it was perfect, if not terribly attractive. 

On our last day in Seville it rained hard. Steven braved the storm and went out to shoot some photos, I stayed dry by staying home. We both enjoyed our day. The next morning we packed up and headed southwest to Cadiz on the Atlantic coast. 

I’d like to tell you we did a lot of fun things in Cadíz but we did very little. The reason we were there was to wait out Gloria, a storm that had killed 13 people and ravaged the east coast of Spain. She was heading our way, although a mere shadow of her former self. We managed to get out to buy a few things on our list in preparation for our visit to Morocco, but when the rains came, we mostly stayed in and planned. We actually needed this time because we had done very little in the way of planning prior, so it felt good to finally get a handle on our route and the process for traveling to Morocco. So I guess we’ll leave Cadíz for another day!

NEXT UP:  Morocco, finally! 

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