Decidedly NOT! We found ourselves riding the city bus that we thought went to the estacion des autobuses. The desk clerk at the hotel specifically said we could take bus #s 10, 11, 33 or 3 to the bus station. He wrote it down for us. We hopped on number 11 as it was the first one to come to the bus stop. After riding for 30 minutes and not recognizing that we were anywhere near the bus station, we were asked for our tickets by the inspector, since the bus was coming to the end of the line. He didn't speak any english, when I asked him. So I pulled out the map and asked, Donde esta la estacion des autobuses? He gestured to follow him, we got off the bus, he walked us across the street to another stop and held up all his fingers and said "Diez". Of course, bus 10 goes to the bus station. Dave has a deja vu moment of being a little lost in Dallas.
We wanted to make the noon bus to Seville, but got to the bus station at five past, and there was a huge line waiting for tickets. We didn't trust ourselves to use the automatic ticket machine, so waited in line half an hour. Tickets for the 2:00 and 3:30 buses were sold out, so we got seats on the 4:30 bus and decided to walk to the cafeteria and get something to eat. We ordered sandwiches, agua and a bag of patatas. We had been wanting to try a specific flavor of ruffles chips (otherwise known here as patatas) - jamon (ham)! They were as good, or bad, as we thought they would be. After a bite of lunch we decided to have some pastries and coffee, since we had another 3 hours to wait. There is no such thing as decaffeinated coffee is Spain, as there was also no such thing in the Netherlands, so we have severely restricted our coffee intake, since we only drink decaf at home. We then decided to head to the bathrooms for a quick break and then to the ticket area to procure our tickets for the rest of the trip, since we know when and where we are going. The lines had died down, since it was now siesta and most everything closes from 2-5 here in Spain. The ticket machines had a an English screen, and we worked on getting the tickets for the buses we wanted for the rest of the trip! Now all we have to do is get to the bus stations on time to make the right connections!
We finally got on our bus at 4:15 and it promptly pulled out of the terminal at 4:30. We arrived in Seville at 7:30, which is kind of rush hour time. We were glad we were not driving in the mess of traffic. We got off the bus, collected our luggage, and headed for the taxi line. We got into the first available taxi and showed him the map of where we wanted to go. Again, not a lot of English going on in this part of the world. He related that he could get us close, but that the area our hotel was in is in a pedestrian zone and he could not drive all the way there. They have taxi/bus-only lanes here so you can get places quicker. He zipped around and made gestures at people who were not supposed to be in the taxi lane and made quacking sounds at pedestrians who did not move out of the way fast enough. We went down some pretty narrow (2.2 meters wide) streets. He stopped and showed us where we were on our map, we paid him and set off to get to the hotel.
Dave has done a pretty good job picking out hotels on this trip. We are staying in Seville in a 16-room hotel on a pedestrian passageway that has a really nice rooftop sitting area and nice room. The bathroom is pretty small, but it has a shower/tub, toilet, sink and bidet all crammed into it. The desk man was very nice when we checked in and he directed us to a nice restaurant with good tapas. He also speaks great English! We walked around the neighborhood to get a feel for where we are and then had a nice dinner with 3 different tapas and beer and wine. Strolling musicians were out and we heard several accordion and guitar players while dining.
Tomorrow we are off to the Alcazar, the cathedral and possibly the bullfight museum and maybe some flamenco in the evening. Weather is in the 80s and Dave is wishing he had brought some shorts along!
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