Passing through Seville

After leaving Granada, Marlene and I drove to Seville. We had no problem finding the hotel, The Virgin of the Kings. Of course, being born Jewish and now an atheist, in my typical vulgar self, I had to make a joke about the name in the form of a riddle. Let me proceed and I hope I do not offend anyone who may read this. If one king had his way the virgin, then she could only be the virgin of one king and not more than one king. How can she be the Virgin of the Kings?

Let me return to our trip. While we had no problem finding the hotel, we had a horrible time finding the hotel’s parking, which was attached in the rear. Marlene got instructions on how to find the parking structure. While receptionist was telling her in Spanish how to get there, Marlene was telling me in English. However, I did not realize she expected me to remember the instructions. She tried to find the structure three or four times, driving around in circles. Each time, when it was obvious she made a wrong turn, I would put the GPS on to get us back to the front of the hotel. Finally she gave up and made me drive. Because I was following the GPS, I knew two of the three streets we needed to turn on and we knew the third was immediately behind the hotel. After following the instructions from the GPS carefully and then driving slowly, we found the parking structure. One problem still remained, the incline down the structure was narrow and dark and steep, so steep I could not see the bottom, but I made it through O.K. Not knowing the city, hungry, and needing to find fresh fruit for our morning breakfast, we starting walking to the English Court, which we saw in our travels to the parking structure. We ate there. I did not find the food good. I considered it overpriced. We then went shopping in the grocery store, which is usually, if not always at the bottom of the store. There we bought our fruit and bread. I then bought some cured tuna, which I ate in the hotel room and was horribly expensive but absolutely delicious. Unfortunately, we left the next morning without seeing any of Seville. Driving out of the parking structure was horrible. While driving up the incline, the car stalled. We rolled back and I think it is where we scratched the car. The path was so narrow that Marlene could not get out of the car to reopen the door to the structure. Backing up to straighten out the car and to give Marlene room to get out caused me to scratch the car a second time. Finally Marlene was able to get out and open the door. This time I gunned the engine and made it to the top. While driving up the ramp, I could feel the car vibrate up the incline. I was visibly shaken by the experience. I was exhausted without even driving far. While leaving the city, I saw a horse-drawn carriage, which is all I can remember. We then drove back to Portugal and spent the night in Loule, a tiny, ancient city, which once the Moors dominated.