Seville Day 3 - Flamenco
Another cloudy morning to start with! Today was our last full day in Seville so our plan was to explore places we haven't been to like the rest of Plaza de Espana which include Plaza de America and María Luisa Park then flea market on Feria and Metropol Parasol. When we get to Plaza de Espana, it was getting cloudy again! Our dream of having blue sky and white puffy clouds photos was not getting any luck! Early in the morning, the fountain haven't even turned on yet, and the plaza was nearly empty so great time to take photos with a tripod :) That is the only problem of going on vacation only two of us, there's no one to take photos of us together! Especially now that both of us use DSLR cameras, we are not comfortable to hand over an expensive camera to a stranger to take photo of us and that person might not even know how to use a DSLR camera. I do carry a point and shoot with me to ask other tourists to take photo of us once a while but most of the time, he/she will take a photo of us two and totally ignored the view of the place! However, it's still better than no photos together hehe!
Here we are again in Plaza de Espana, tripod set and smile!
2nd floor at the plaza, the walkway is closed...I wondered why they closed majority of the section on the 2nd floor??
Beautiful beautiful Plaza de Espana; my favorite plae in Seville!
It was very cloudy that not even a spot of blue so we decided to move on to Plaza de America. We walked through María Luisa Park which is big, there were some signs here and there to point you to the right direction to get to Plaza de America. I was a little disappointed, since it was under renovation! Here's the Museum of Arts and Traditions of Sevilla right across from Plaza de America:
There's a little park right near the building and we saw a grandpa feeding pigeons with his granddaughter and we went over and did the same. I have a bag of crackers with me and oh boy those pigeons were not afraid to fly to you to get food! I was holding crackers in my palm trying to break them into smaller pieces, and those pigeons somehow know it and just flew up to my and start picking woah! If you ever want to take photos of holding pigeons, come to Plaza de America haha! They are better than the pigeons at St. Mark's Square in Venice; at least there are no one in your photos!
Hubby attacked by pigeons LOL!
On our way walking back to the hotel, I spotted this lovely bright flowers:
We walked to the shopping street of Tetuan and it was empty! Let me tell you this, do not go on shopping or plan your shopping day on Sunday, everything is closed in Seville!!!
So we decided to head to lunch which we decided let's headed to the further part of Seville. I found two restaurants that are highly rated: La Azotea and Barajas 20 Tapas in which they are close together. It was about 15 min walk from the Cathedral to La Azotea and when we got there, it was closed for lunch on Sunday! Then we walked to Barajas 20 Tapas, it is also closed for lunch on Sunday!! What a bummer!! Then we walked to the flea market on Feria thought flea market should open on weekends. WRONG!! It is also closed on Sunday! Oh my!!
Alright..so now we tried to headed back to the center tourist area hoping to find a restaurant that is open for lunch. We passed by Metropol Parasol, the "mushroom" structure:
They closed the stairs to walk up :(
We passed by Casa De La Memoria at Calle Cuna (the place we wanted to go to watch a flamenco show) and it was open! We walked in and purchased our ticket! There are two show times, we picked the one at 7:30 so right after we could have dinner. The lady said there's no reserved seating so be here 15 min early to get good seats!
By the time we got back to the Cathedral area, hubby wanted a place to eat a whole plate of shrimps. So we found a restaurant right near our hotel, EFE Café. Another wrong choice...the waiter barely speaks English and their service is very slow! I ordered from a set lunch menu (it was like 9 euros for a salad, a main, and a drink) and hubby ordered 1/2 portion of shrimps around 8 euros. The shrimps were just okay, not the jumbo shrimps we wanted.
Food was just okay as well. Not impressed with this lunch! Then we waited for 15 min for the bill OMG!! The waiter kept forgetting it blah!! Finally the bill and he charged us two times on the shrimps, the bill clearly listed 8 euros, 9 euros, and 8 euros again!!! Then, we had to wait until the waiter to come over and asked, and he said that's the whole portion of shrimps. I told him, we ordered 1/2 portion not the whole portion! He said the other waiter mixed up, he wrote whole portion instead of 1/2 portion and what we got was the whole portion! I found it very suspicious since if he really messed up, why not the bill listed the whole portion price which is 16 euros at once instead of listing the 1/2 portion 8 euros twice??? And 16 euros for 16 small shrimps???? Gosh! I was not happy and finally he crossed out the 2nd charge of 8 euros, the updated total was 21.5 euros. I paid cash and leave; don't want to stay there any longer! GRRRR!!
Despite all the unfortunates, it was clear blue sky by now! I really wanted to go back to Plaza de Espana for photos and hubby felt it so he said let's head back. Love you hun!!! The light quantity and quality really make a big difference on your photos! Just how I dreamed about it...blue sky with white clouds:
Gorgeous colors!!!
Since walked so much today, we headed back to our hotel to rest. We took a nap and headed back out at 7 pm. We got to Casa De La Memoria at 7:15 and the first row was already full of people! We sat on the second row facing the middle of the stage. This place is like a room, with the stage on the center and then two rows of seats bracketing the stage. There are also seats up on the 2nd floor as well but I don't think the view is good from the 2nd floor. The seats and the stage is very close less than 3 feet away from the 1st row! The place was half filled I would say and the performance begins exactly at 7:30. There's another show at 9 I think. A young lady walked to the stage and said no video of photo during the show!! The performers will have some time at the end for us to take photos!! Awwwww I was so ready for some action photos! Well, I guess we'll just concentrate on the performance then!
First, two guys came to the stage, one is the guitarist and another one is the singer. He sang a traditional Seville song, although we couldn't understand the lyrics, but it sounded good. The whole song was pretty long, then the flamenco dancer came out! She's young and she performed well! It was our first time watching a flamenco, it was very good! Her dance lasted at least 10 minutes wow! Then back to singing again for few minutes. Another male dancer came out and danced for another 10 minutes or so. I liked how they arrange the 1 hour show, we get to see both female and male performing flamenco. Lastly, the female joined and they both danced together. That was the best part, liked the interaction. Afterwards, she indicated photo time (it was short only a 2-3 minutes so get your camera ready and click click click)!
It would be perfect if they let us take photos during the show...I guess hard to tell people to not use their flash? Anyways overall, it was a great show!
On our walk back to the Cathedral area, we were checking out menus to determine where to have our dinner. We walked by a cafe, forgot to check its name but it was right after the Church of the Savior (by looking at Google map, it looks like it's Cafe Universal). We saw a list of tapas in their English menu. Tapas time wohooo!!!
We chose to sit inside since it was a bit windy out. The cafe is very classic and cute:
Here we go again with our tapas....we ordered 7 dishes!!
1. Seafood salad mix, it was a good appetizer tons of seafood with vinegar sauce (on the left)
2. Avocado stuffed with seafood salad, it was our favorite! The avocado and seafood salad fit so well together, perfect combination (on the right)!! It was so good, I wanted more!!!
3. Fried shrimp, it was crunchy (on the left)
4. Pork with mushroom on a sauce, good as well (on the right)
5. Another fried shrimp, this one is also crispy and good!
6. Main course, hubby ordered a garlic shrimp, pretty good!
7. I ordered a sirloin steak......urg the steak meat was from a very old cow! We had a hard time cutting it and forget about chewing it! This was the only dish that we aren't satisfied with, well it's not their cooking, it's the meat itself! We learned that beef in Spain aren't that good quality, so better to go with pork. They have very tender pork!!
It was a great meal and the bill came to 39.6 euros with two sodas. Not bad at all! I would recommend this if you want to dine nearby before or after the flamenco show!
