Why Spain?
In 2012, we embarked on our first trip to Europe – travelling to Spain and Italy. We were novice travelers back then and we always knew we needed to come back to both those countries to do them justice. We repeated Italy in 2016 (definitely more enjoyable than the trip in 2012) and since we were already in Portugal on this trip it made sense for Spain to be the next stop. We also decided that the primary focus of the Spanish leg of our trip would be food!
One of our most endearing memories of the 2012 trip was visiting to various Tapas bars in Spain, asking for ‘Tapas’ and being very surprised when we were offered croquets or patata bravas or gambas instead. In our minds, ‘tapas’ was a specific dish (like paella) and we kept getting disappointed with our inability to find these legendary tapas. We also remembered really liking churros (and their less heralded but possibly tastier twin, parros) in Madrid and we’ve searched the world, unsuccessfully, for worthy substitutes.
Getting to Seville
Our entry point into Spain was Seville, in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia. We were already in the Southern Portuguese region of Algarve so we figured crossing over couldn’t possibly be a big deal between the 2 Iberian neighbors. Unfortunately, that could not be further from the truth. There are no train services at all between Algarve and Andalusia (there is a river that separates the 2 regions and no rail bridge across the river). Our only realistic option was to take a 2.5 hour bus from Algarve’s capital Faro to Seville. We had yet to get on a bus with Nadiya on this trip and a bus journey was likely to mean a space even more cramped than an economy class flight, but we did not really ha ve any other choice at this point so we booked an ALSA bus for the journey to Seville. The bus was packed and space was at a premium, but since it was a 2.5 hour journey we timed it such that we had to only put Nadiya to sleep once (that’s when most, if any, of the crying happens). The bus journey passed without too much incident (yay!) and we found ourselves in Seville.
Day 1 in Seville
We checked into the Posada Del Lucero Hotel for our 2 night stay in the city. While it did tick our box of being right in the center of the city, it was sadly the most disappointing room of our stay. The room was small, the bathroom smaller still and the only window in the room looked out into the corridor. We were almost glad that we were there for only 2 nights as it would have made for quite a difficult stay otherwise. Seville was where, after 44 lucky days, we were finally besieged with rain! The downpour lasted pretty much the entire first day and while we did venture out to grab lunch and some churros (we really couldn’t wait!) it did limit how much time we spent outside our room. The churros we had at Bar Comercio was probably the best we had in Seville although the hot chocolate to go could have been better.
Day 2 in Seville
On the second day in Seville, the bright sunshine meant that we spent most of the day exploring the city by foot. Seville has a nice old town with a maze of narrow pedestrian alleys that take you through cream and yellow buildings. At every second fork you are presented with a view of a lovely church dome peeking out from in between the buildings. Having made a mess of sampling Spanish food on our 2012 trip, we were determined to make amends this time around. So we contacted our culinary guru, Alejandro and his lovely wife Monica. His recommendations have been spot-on on previous occasions and he came through again. For lunch, we went to the 1st of Alejandro’s recommendations – Ovejas Negras. We got there a few minutes before it opened and we were lucky that we did, because the place was packed at opening time. The food was excellent – great mix of taps and mains; would definitely recommend a visit. From a baby care point of view, this restaurant was special because it was the first time on this trip that Nadiya went to sleep in the stroller. So after 45 days, we could finally enjoy a lunch without Nadiya being either strapped onto us in her carrier or in one of our laps. Our final evening saw us accidentally bump into a massive crowd of people that had lined up the streets to celebrate All Saints Day, which seemed to be a festival to commemorate the dead. What stood out most was the sheer number of strollers all over the place – definitely comforting!
Getting to Madrid
Our next stop in Spain was the capital, Madrid. To get there, we took advantage of Spain’s high-speed rail network and booked ourselves first class seats on Renfe’s AVE service to Madrid. The 2.5 hour journey was ridiculously easy (really wish we could do more train travel everywhere!) and we checked ourselves into the Barcelo Torre de Madrid hotel for our 2 night stay in the city. It was a colorful and spacious room and was definitely a class apart from the hotel in Seville. The concierge particularly were very friendly and helpful and had some good restaurants to recommend.
Exploring Madrid
With Alejandro’s and the hotels recommendations in hand, we set off for a food tour of the city. We ate at Lateral (nice Tapas), Restaurant Amazonico (fusion restaurant and home to an excellent goan style fish curry!), Cascabel (where we had chilaquiles for the first time since Mexico 2016) and Gourmet Experience Gran Via (amazing views of Madrid). The highlight though was Chocolateria San Gines, home to the best Churros, Parros and hot chocolate on our trip. It was so good that we went there twice – definitely worth a visit when in Madrid. Walking through the streets of Madrid, we also chanced upon Hostel Rober where we had stayed during out 2012 trip – we had fond memories of that place so we made sure we took a photo there for old times’ sake. What struck us about Madrid was the sheer volume of people that were up and about crowding the main plazas/squares of the city. Most of them seemed like locals that just wanted to have a good time during the weekend.
Overall Impressions
Overall, it was great to go back to Madrid and re-live some of the experiences from the previous trip. We realized when we were there that Madrid is one of very few cities that we have gone back to – not counting those in Asia that are a short weekend getaway from Singapore – and we certainly hope to visit again.
Next Stop
Our final stop in Spain was in San Sebastian, a place we loved so much that it deserves a blog post of its own.
To be continued
Logistics : ‘Visa Run’
At around this time of the trip, we were conscious of the visa restrictions on Nadiya. She had a 30 day multiple entry visa into the Schengen region. Our initial thinking was to do a visa run to extend the overall amount of time that we could spend in the Schengen region. With Gibraltar only a couple of hours away from Seville (Gibraltar is not part of the Schengen region), this seemed like the perfect place to do the visa run. However, further research revealed 2 things – a. Crossing in and out of Gibraltar does not mean stamping of the passport and/or resetting of the time spent in the Schengen; and b. the 30 days was cumulative; even if we did exit the Schengen region the total amount of time Nadiya could spend in the Schengen region on her current visa was 30 days.
Logistics : ‘Star Alliance Redemption Tickets’
Now that it was clear that we needed to exit the Schengen region soon, the question we needed to solve for was where do we go to and how do we get there? Options included flying back to Singapore (long 13-14 hour flight); flying to India (our tentative arrival would be during the Diwali period, always a great time to be in India); doing multiple stops (Eastern European countries not part of Schengen; Middle East; India, Singapore) as we made our journey back East. On balance, flying back to India seemed to make the most sense. We had sufficient miles to redeem business class tickets on Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Bangalore. But the challenge was getting a ticket for Nadiya. The ticket was a redemption ticket booked on Singapore Airlines. But Nadiya’s ticket needed to be a commercial booking done by Lufthansa. For 24 hours we kept being bounced between the call centers of the 2 airlines until we finally had a breakthrough when an enterprising agent from Singapore Airlines (Keyen) decided to take the lead and call Lufthansa and figure the pricing so that Nadiya’s ticket could be booked. The whole process was much harder than it should have been and it was a bit surprising how little 2 of the biggest partners of the Star Alliance network talk to each other.
Around the world with a baby 