We're off to sunny, sunny spain! January 2nd

Seville.

We had an easy drive from Espiche to Seville. Lasting all of two and a half hours.

When I was down this way in the late 80's there was no bridge just a open car ferry, kind of like the one's you see crossing rivers in John Wayne movies.

Surprisingly, the bridge was the only piece of rough road, seems like neither country wants to pay for its upkeep, a tad concerning.

Found the apartment without too many wrong turns. Seville is very flat and in a sort of grid pattern. A grid layed out by Picasso maybe?

After meeting Jesus, nice guy not surprisingly, and getting the keys, we headed out.

The period between Christmas and January 6th --when the Spanish really celibrates something or other to do with Jesus and god and stuff -- is spend like crazy getting presents and stuff time.

There is supposed to be a 20% unemployment rate in Spain, you wouldn't guess it from the number of people out and about, all done up with shopping bags in hand.

One of the stores had an escalator that was busier than a London tube station at 5 pm. We headed home.

We saw a cool exhibit call "Guardians" its the rusty fellows in the picture, they were pretty impressive in person. Included in the same square was a craft market. More like Gucci than Galiano crafters.

All around the city are racks of bicycles for rent. The system seems to be pretty well used as we saw many people riding around on them.

On the way home we walked pass a grocery store knowing full well that there was one near to the apartment. It was closed, nuts! So we looked on the Google God and found a LIDL not far away.

The LIDL was rubbish, looked rubbish, had rubbish product and terrible staff. There payment system was so old it couldn't take VISA, after telling us they could, GRRRRR!

We got what we could -- with cash, nothing is very expensive -- then found another grocer down the road a bit. It was a bit better but not much. Portuguese shops are better in every way, SHOCK!

The apartment is very nice if noisy. The windows have all the noise insulation effect of rice paper and the woman up stairs likes to ware her heals all evening.

Cats fight, people whistle at each other, cars with hip hop blarring go by, dogs howel, old men hack up a lung, the airport is busy and you cannot sleep. Back to living in a BIG city is a shock but that's ok, it is SEVILLE after all.

Ciao.