Sevilla in January Day 2 Plaza de Espana

I spend the evening sending increasingly annoyed messages to the ‘help’ number of our apartment to complain about the lack of heating and by the following morning they promise to send someone to check the hot air of the air-conditioning which is obviously not working. Obviously to me, but they are sceptical.

We head out in search of a market, a real mercado de abastos which is not a mercado gastronomico. On the way to Mercado del Arenal we walk past the Setas area. 

No luck, it's another mercado gastronomico and so early in the morning is still mostly closed, so we carry towards the river and across the bridge to Mercado de Triana, open but expensive. It’s cold, nicer in the sun along the river and chilly everywhere else. We end up in a Mas supermarket just on the centre side of the river and finally manage some good shopping: merluza, sheep cheese, proper olives, avocados, and head back for lunch more enheartened.

After lunch we go for a walk through the historical centre in the direction of Parque Maria Luisa. The sun is out, the temperatures are pleasant, it’s a Saturday, so there are a lot of people around, especially in the centre. We are learning the various routes to and from our apartment through the historical centre and I manage a lot better when I haven’t drunk a full glass of Pedro Jimenez. We go through the circular Plaza de Cabildo too. 

We visited Sevilla in 2013 and remember some parts of the park well and of course the fantastic Plaza de Espana, so the first thing we do is to sit in the Almeria section and bask in the sun. It is deeply pleasant, very different from the chilly temperatures of the early morning. The sun is warm, the ceramic tiles as well. There’s the noise of flamenco in the very background and someone attracting attention with castanets nearer, and a man making enormous bubbles with a bowl of soapy water to the delight of small children and watching adults. We stay a while.

It's difficult to find the willpower to get up, but when we do we walk towards the centre of the semicircle where a crowd of people are watching some improvised flamenco. We go up a few steps of one the bridges to get a glimpse. There’s an elderly lady and a girl who was walking by and decided to stop just for the fun of it. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a light coat and her boyfriend wearing a football t-shirt films her. She and the elderly lady, dance, just for the pure delight of it, and they’re good and it's a special moment.

We walk over the bridge and in the semicircle ‘square’ stop again on one of the benches while I telephone, and then meander back through the centre to our base. We are also pleased to discover that the air-con has been fixed and now sends out a reassuring blast of hot air! Hopefully the apartment will now warm up. A relaxing day.