The second Jornada de Naranja de Sevilla (Sevilla Orange Days) is on now until March 10th. This year 31 bars and restaurants are creating special tapas at 2.75€ made from Sevilla’s emblematic bitter oranges with a contest for best tapa, which will also be open to the public.
For those who participate in the voting there will be a draw for 10 fabulous food hampers containing artesanal products from these local suppliers:
Inés Rosales: orange flavoured cakes
Basilippo: orange olive oil
Mermelada la Vieja Fábrica: orange marmalade
Bodegas Góngora: orange wine
Burnaj: orange sparkling wine
Obrador Valle de la Osa: orange chocolate
I’ll be trying as many as I can, as well as heading out with Fiona Watson (aka Seville Writer) on Tuesday for a lunchtime orange tapa tapeo, and will be back to give you a report of my findings.
Meanwhile, you can have a look at the list of participants below to see what tapas they are offering and decide which ones you’d like to try… Continue reading “Sevilla Orange Days”→
Last year around this time I started thinking about taking a trip along the northern coast of Spain to celebrate my 20th anniversary of living here, but various ‘life things’ came up and I had to put this dream on hold. This year I have decided to start planning this trip again in earnest and, if all goes well, I should be able to travel anytime during July or August.
I’ll fly from Sevilla to Santiago de Compostela and (so far) the plan is to go from there to A Coruña, Olviedo, Santander, Bilbao and San Sebastián. Then I’ll have to backtrack to Bilbao to fly home. I’ll most likely be travelling on my own by public transport and I hope to meet up with friends along the way.
So if you have any advice or suggestions about places to go, things to do, where to stay, etc. please let me know. Am happy to add places to my itinerary. And if you are going to be around any of these places this summer let’s meet up!
It’s been just over a year since I wrote here about the Sevilla Tapas Policy Change and yesterday I had my first experience of someone trying to gag me. I received a Threatening Email from the lawyers of a tapas bar I reviewed last December on Sevilla Tapas. They cited various laws and articles before coming out with their DEMAND that I remove all photographs and text, saying that some of the photos included images of their customers and also “marketed products” (the tapas?) that were taken without permission. They then went on to say that some other law protected their client from any “value judgement” that may adversely affect their reputation and professional image and insisted that I remove any references to this bar from all my blogs, websites and social media accounts.
I mean, WTF??
It wasn’t even a scathing review. I basically just said that I’d gone there twice and was disappointed both times. And well, they can’t really blame me if their tapas look like crap.
Anyhow, I’ve been threatened with legal action if I don’t comply. But while I can see their flimsy excuse for wanting photos of customers removed to be somehow “justifiable”, it seems way over the top to insist that I remove any mention of this place from everywhere on the Internet. Protesting far too much, don’t you think?
Oh, and for the record, I did ask permission to take photos and, after the first disastrous visit, spoke to the manager who apologised for the bad service and food and said she hoped we would come back again. She also knew about my Sevilla Tapas blog and that we had a friend in common who had recommended the bar (which is why I went there twice – I thought my friend couldn’t be that wrong!). Well, they won’t be able to remove the Trip Advisor review that’ll be going up shortly…
You don’t have to spend much time wandering around Seville to appreciate how much the city owes to its long past, and to wonder what it actually looked like hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. The other day my friend Peter (aka Seville Concierge) and I had the opportunity to take a glimpse back through the curtain of time, thanks to a new type of guided tour that uses a “virtual reality” headset to show how the city looked in the past.
Past View Sevilla has only been up and running for a couple of months, operating from its base next to the antiquarium in the Metropol Parasol where we were kitted out with goggles, earpieces and iPhone, and as far as I know it’s the only tour of its kind in the world, which makes you wonder why nobody thought of it before.
There are two tours available at the moment (morning and afternoon); a short tour which takes advantage of the walkways on top of the parasols for panoramas of the city back to Roman times, and a long tour (the one we did), which lasts about two hours, and takes you to some of Sevilla’s best known landmarks, like the Plaza San Francisco, the Torre del Oro, and the world heritage site of the Cathedral and Alcázar (without going inside), and although I know a fair bit about Sevilla I still learned some new things about the city’s history.
Past View price list and times
As well as being able to overlay the present day views with computer generated images of the past, we were also treated to three short videos featuring CGI backgrounds and real actors in period dress (like the rest of the presentation in either Spanish, English or French). So, in Plaza San Francisco we were accosted by friends of Miguel de Cervantes, recently arrested on charges of financial irregularities in the conduct of his work as a tax collector, and imprisoned behind the grim walls of the Royal Prison on the corner of the square. In the Plaza Triunfo it was the turn of the architect of the alminar (the minaret, now the Giralda Tower), and the changes that have happened in this area are fascinating, from the Caliph’s hidden passageway to the lost wall around the Grand Mosque. Finally, down on the docks, we met up with the servant of the great painter Murillo, searching among the ships for a consignment of lapis lazuli for his master, and a few of the shadier characters on the wharves, and given a warning about the looming walls of the Castle of San Jorgé, the headquarters of the Inquisition, at the end of the bridge of boats on the other bank of the river. The tour ended at the Torre del Oro.
Not surprisingly, given its novelty, there are still one or two rough edges to be smoothed out – the equipment felt a little clumsy to use at first, though it got easier as the tour went on, and Sevilla’s bright sunshine sometimes interfered with seeing the images clearly – but our English speaking guide Lide was patient and helpful throughout, as well as giving us plenty of information between stops.
Peter wearing his time travel kit
It was well worth doing, and I’ll be back for the second tour sometime soon. For more information, including a preview video, you can go to Past View’s website
I have long been looking for a Spanish cooking class in Sevilla that is offered in English because so many of my Sevilla Tapas Tour clients and visiting friends ask me about this. With friends I can oblige with a quick and casual “class” at home, but I really wanted to find a reputable place that could also show people a good time while learning about Spanish cuisine.
A couple of weeks ago I happened to mention this to my friend, tour guide Sam Lister @AndaluciaSam, and he told me about a local company called Travel & Cuisine @TravelCuisine1, run by Amelia Gómez and her husband, chef Jorge Rideo, along with their colleague Meli Rubio. And as my journo friend Fiona Watson @Seville_Writer also has clients who would be interested in cooking classes we arranged to do a class with T & C to see if we would be comfortable recommending them personally.
Well, we not only had a great time – and a great lunch – but we were also very happy with the quality of the class and Travel & Cuisine’s fabulous kitchen classroom. It was exactly what I had been looking for…
The second Jornada de Naranja de Sevilla (Sevilla Orange Days) is on now until March 10th. This year 31 bars and restaurants are creating special tapas at 2.75€ made from Sevilla’s emblematic bitter oranges with a contest for best tapa, which will also be open to the public.
It’s been just over a year since I wrote here about the 
