Sunday, March 17, 2002. 07:00.

Location: Hostal Bienvenido, room 19, Seville.
Weather: Cold, scattered cloud.

I´m sitting in a solidly-constructed but unheated room on the rooftop of the Hostal Bienvenido, a low-budget guest house in the Barrio de Santa Cruz district of Seville. I realized as I was going to bed last night that I hadn´t done a journal entry all day, so I have to go back to Evora to catch up. That was Friday afternoon.

I poked around a couple more narrow streets and tried (unsuccessfully) to find my way into the Capela dos Ossos of the Igreja de São Francisco. Eventually I gave up and headed back to the train station.

My route to Seville was suggested by the inter-rail.org web site´s computer. I´m not sure if it would have occurred to a human agent. It involved a short train ride back to Casa Branca, then a train heading north towards Porto, which I left at Santarem, there to intercept the Lisbon-Madrid night train. This convoluted trip meant that I avoided having to get from on Lisbon train station to another, which was a good thing. It proceeded very smoothly, so around 10:45 I was being shown to my bunk in the train.

The room was pitch black. The other three beds had been occupied by travellers at previous stops, all attempting to get some sleep, none especially enthused about me blundering in (and even less enthused about the loud woman on her cellphone outside in the corridor). I quickly stowed my bags, stripped down to underwear, and switched off the tiny overhead light in the bunk.

I expected to have some trouble sleeping, but four nights in Lisbon with the streetcars outside my window had inured me to the sounds of the rails. I shortly dozed off for one of my best night of sleep so far.

We were awakened about half an hour before arrival by the guard pounding on the door. He moved off down the corridor and we blearily collected our things. One of the other residents of my compartment was an American from New Hampshire, Lee. As he and I turned out to both be headed for Seville, we set out together across Madrid to the correct station.

The subway proved to be easy to navigate, extensive, and reasonably priced. We had to go 15 stops, but were soon at Madrid Atocha. Here we lined up for reservations on the high speed AVE trains to Seville. We weren´t able to get onto the 10am train, and had to settle for the smoking section on the 11am train. This gave us some time to grab some breakfast, pick up picnic supplies for lunch, and sit in Atocha´s lovely indoor park.

Lee turned out to be a retired Wall Street investment banker in his early 40´s, who´s spending a year living in Frankfurt and travelling all over Europe, before deciding what to do with the rest of his life. He´s thinking of becoming a botanist.

We found our way onto the train. They had a metal detector set up for baggage, but none for the passengers, which seemed a bit pointless. Our train was actually comprised of two of the AVE trains joined head-to-head, so it was very long, and our car (naturally) was right at the far end.

Onboard, service was well above normal: in-seat audio, and ¨Mission Impossible 2¨ (in Spanish) on the monitors. We whisked away to Seville with a brief stop in Cordoba.

Seville greeted us with glorious sunshine. [Don´t get excited, it´s cloudy again now.] We picked up tourist maps and headed into town. After a few minutes, we were in the Barrio de Santa Cruz, a neighbourhood of old stately homes with complex little atria set right next to each other on either side of narrow alleyways. When we went up to our rooms in the Hostal Bienvenudo, a british T.V. crew were completing a travel spot on the hostal, with a camera sweep over the rooftops from the patio outside our doors, the blonde announcer chirping something about charming views and repeat visitors, and omitting to mention the lack of central heating. Lee and I arranged to meet for dinner at 8, and he headed out to see the town while I had a badly-needed hot shower.

Afterwards, I made my way outside and quickly found and internet café [where I´m writing this]. Actually, it was right around the corner from the hostal. I put in half an hour catching up on email and trying to catch up of the journal, but my time ran out so I moved on to exploring more of the city.

In comparison to Lisbon and Evora, Seville seems full of tourists. They filled up the sidewalk cafés, eating dinner at un-Spanish early hours (i.e. before 9pm), and were in such numbers around the cathedral that I moved straight through at top speed and didn´t even try to get a photograph. I wandered down to the river, looked out over the city, and wandered back again, stopping for a small pastry en route. Orange trees grew in the many parks and planters, and moorish influences could be seen in much of the architectural details.

Lee and I managed to get lost several times on the way to a restaurant, but eventually tracked down the Pizzeria San Marco, an impressively beautiful establishment with ochre-coloured walls, tiled floors and blue- and white-painted woodwork on the railings and staircases. The food was unfortunately not as good.

Lee, who is off to Grenada today, was not able to get a train reservation later than 7am, so with the prospect of a cold night ahead and an early morning, we headed back to the hostal and wished each other bon voyage. In fact, the warm blankets made the cold night quite bearable, though I´m still considering cancelling my second night and moving on. For now, though, it´s time for breakfast. I think I´ll start with an orange.
posted by Tom at 7:23 AM | link |