From Adventures in Spain, Part IV
The Seville Epic

Friday 3/25/05

During her stay in Seville, Niña Katie learned the ins and outs of survival,
particularly during Santa Semana, the Easter holidays when interminable, gaudy processions criss-cross the city, and gawking tourists crowd into the narrow streets to watch. And since Mamacita Beth, Hermana Kathy, and Papacita were coming to visit her there this was of high importance (to us, anyway). Katie’s landlady told her that it would be impossible for us to find a hotel inside Seville during Semana Santa, so, using local buses and taxis, Katie searched for a good place a few miles outside of town. After finding us a place, the Hostal Lepanto, she e-mailed us a picture of it, and we were satisfied that there’d be no problems.

We spent our first day in Seville gawking like tourists, and sampling the
local cuisine. After mucho gawking, it was starting to get dark, and we had to find the hostal where Niña had reserved our rooms. The hostal was located out in the suburbs in the town of Mereina. Since Niña Katie had gone out there by bus and taxi, she only knew the approximate direction. So blindly we drove out that way from Seville Centro, but rapidly found that there were no signs for Mereina, and it wasn’t on our maps. So we drove back to the main bus station in Seville, and Katie asked the agents there how to get to Mereina. The agents were pretty oblivious about the locations of the towns they serviced. We got a slightly better fix on the direction, but nothing specific about road names or landmarks. They gave us a small palm-sized area map showing all of the Seville area. Mareina was on it, but there was no way we could learn how to get there from Seville.

And so adventure #4 began. We called the Hostal Lepanto. The landlady
couldn’t tell Katie how to get there from Seville, but if we could somehow get to the village of San Juan, she could direct us from there. We stopped for directions to San Juan at a gasolino, and “Si”, as Niña questioned him, indeed he knew where San Juan and Mereina were, and he described the route, which was something like:

“Valaproximarondodirechavarondoizquerdorondadirechodirecharondorondokilo
metrosrondodirechoizquerdorondovadirechocruzcampodirechoizquerdadirech
odirecha”

On we went, still blindly, into the suburbs until the directions petered out.
We asked at another gasolino and got another permutation of the directions.

After another few rondos, the territory no longer matched the description so we stopped at a police station, and got some pretty explicit directions, but must have missed something crucial, like the “Cruz Campo” sign they told us to turn at. (Cruz Campo is a popular beer, and its billboards are everywhere.) We asked taxi drivers, more police, got more directions.

“Izquerdorondadirechokilometrosrondodirechoizquerdorondovadirechocruz
campodirechoi zquerdaproximarondodirechavarondo”

The directions seemed to be getting shorter, so maybe we were making progress, maybe not. We considered putting Niña Katie in a taxi and following her to the hostal. But, mirablile dicto, we suddenly found the Hostal Lepanto, only about 3 hours after we had started.

Inside, the Hostal had some nice features, like many blue and white porcelain tiles, but there were a few problems–tricky door latches and weird room geometries, but the plumbing worked, hurray, hurray.

The plan now was to take Niña back to her apartment in Seville, and return to Lepanto. This is where adventure #5 began. We left our bags in the rooms, and headed back towards Seville. This was remarkably easy, since all the signs pointed there. Carefully, we watched all the landmarks and signs so we would be able to re-trace our route back to Lepanto, but that was impossible with all the one-way streets. Amazingly, getting back to Seville, only about 20 minutes away, turned out to be a piece of cake. We wrote notes all the way into town describing the buildings and roads. But we saw not a single landmark that was familiar from the 3-hour trip in the outward direction to Hostal Lepanto. It was as if we were in the Spanish Twilight Zone.

Papacita soon expressed what was going on in Mamacita’s and Hermana’s minds, “Would we be able to get back to the Hostal without Niña and her español?” By the time we reached Seville centro, we were agreed, there was no way we’d be able to find the Hostal again without asking directions and, more important,
understanding the answers.

So we turned around on the fringes of Seville, adopting Plan B, that
Niña would stay with us that night, and we tried to find Mariena
again. We repeated the comedy of asking at gasolinos, taxi stops and
police stations, and getting long-winded answers:

“Direcha va rondo Vala
Proxima rondo izquerdo
Ronda direcho kilometros rondo
Direcho izquerdo direcha
Rondo!
Rondo!
Rondo!
Va direcho cruz campo direcho Izquerda”

Rossini could have scored our roundabout route using his music in The Barber of Seville. One of the policemen kindly gave us a suburban street map, but it was only of his little district, and didn’t extend to San Juan and Mariena. Nevertheless, stalwart Katie was getting better at asking questions, having the answers repeated, and taking notes.

“Direcho izquerdo direcha
Direcha va rondo
Vala proxima rondo izquerdo
Ronda direcho kilometros rondo
Direcho!
Direcho!
Va direcho cruz campo direcho Izquerda”

This time it took only 2 hours. We saw nothing of our earlier route
through the Seville Zona del Twilito until the last few blocks.

Our plan to stay two nights at Lepanto changed then and there.
Tomorrow we would find a place in the well-mapped Seville Centro or
sleep in the car. That resolve stiffened when we found that our
accommodations had no hot water, lights that went out by themselves,
and a doorway that required the skills of a locksmith and the agility
of a circus performer to enter. To open our door, we had to go down
to the lobby and ask for help on the magic twist of the wrist required
to open the lock. Even a maid was helpless at unlocking their door. And
to get into the room with luggage, you had to push the door against
the bed, sit down on it, lift your bag onto the bed, swing your feet
around the door, then push the door shut, so the next person coming in
could repeat the procedure. Going out, one performed the feat in reverse.

3/26/05 Saturday

So much for old Hostal Lepanto. It had beautiful tile hallways, and
it seemed to be very popular–all the rooms were taken–but it wasn’t
one of those multi-star places. Not worth even half a star. Maybe
a negative star. During breakfast the next morning, making calls on
Niña KT’s cell phone, contrary to the expectations of her Senora, we found
a “Hotel Madrid” in Seville Centro. Twenty minutes later, following
all the signs pointing to Seville, we were in the Centro.

Hotel Madrid was clean, quiet and comfortable. The doors unlocked,
the water was hot and the lights went on and off at the switches.
Niña took a taxi back to her apartment, and we had a great sleep.

We highly recommend Hotel Madrid. But if you elect to go to Hostal Lepanto or to any zero-star hotel in a suburb of Seville, bring a GPS!

–rakkity