Weather Costa del Sol * property for sale in Spain * villas for sale on Costa del Sol * weather forecast * apartments on the Costa Calida * cheap car hire * discount flights * low cost removals




The weather is fine, the sun is shining and the best property investment deals in Spain can be found through our free property finder service. However, this service is reserved for the serious buyer who knows where they want to buy in Spain. If you are collecting information or doing research please use our property databases. You will also find links to cheap flights, low cost car hire, discount removals and a whole range of other money saving services.

We checked in at the Hotal Alcázar and went straight to our rooms. The plan couldn't have been simpler - we and our friends would dump our two sets of luggage, wash and brush up, then make an immediate exit in search of the beers and lunch that we correctly assumed to be no distance away.

Start of article

And that's what we did: open the door, dump the bags, open the blinds - and there directly opposite us through the hotel window were the palm trees and the Columbus memorial of the Murillo gardens. Almost at that very moment the rain stopped, the sun emerged, and in the background its rays glanced off the Giralda and the cathedral. I now knew where I was! Or I thought I did...

Between us and the cathedral, of course, was the Alcázar - not that it was conspicuous. How completely I had forgotten about the palaces of the Real Alcázar would be revealed later. The biggest gap in my memory, however, would prove to be the space immediately behind the palms of the Murillo - which, from our window, was quite indiscernible.

Car Hire in Spain    Holiday homes in Spain    Advertising property for sale in Spain
Advertising holiday homes in Spain    Cheap flights to Spain    Cheap Removals to Spain

Of more immediate concern were our beers and lunch, and the unfairness with which the hotel had allocated us our rooms. We had a view of palms and the Giralda: our friends had bare walls to look at. The positions would be reversed later in Granada, however: in Granada, in the Hotel Carmen, we would look out over the street, Acera del Darro, while they would gaze out across the cityscape towards a spectacular expanse of the Sierra Nevada.

We didn't wander far from the hotel at any time during our stay in Sevilla, there being really no need. We made a sortie into Triana, however, and a boat trip along the Guadalquivir. A river trip is an excellent and relaxing way to see a large town, as we had discovered on another occasion in Berlin, on the Speer, after an appallingly early morning flight that had left us all quite shattered.

Most of our eating and drinking was done either on Calle de Menéndes Pelayo, where we discovered near the hotel a bar run by a polyglot Kurd with a highly developed sense of humour, or in the narrow lanes and squares around the Alcázar. Inevitably, we found our way into the cathedral, not far from which we made the exotic discovery of what appeared to be a Glaswegian expat gay bar. We went also to the top of the Giralda - and eventually into the Real Alcázar of Pedro I and his successors. It was here that I experienced my revelations of memory's frailty....