Best Tapas of Sevilla: Bodeguita Casablanca

Seville us choca-bloc with places to eat: resturants, cafés, tapas bars etcetc. I love food and I'm involved with the tapas, and in the winding streets of Old Town Seville there is always a tapas bar around the corner, hiding in some dank alleyway. You know how in the UK they say you're never more than 5m from a rat? Well, that's probably true in Spain, both for rats and tapas bars.

You can see the point I'm making. But the thing is, there are so many places to eat that you might end up suffering from Eaters' Anxiety (EA) which is when you become very anxious that of all the tapas bars, you're not going to pick the best. You live in fear that wherever you end up going, you could have gone somewhere better. Even though I know can always try somewhere else tomorrow...I still end up fretting. But as we are here for nine weeks we are getting the chance to try a lot of places so I thought I'd share some wisdom.

Bodeguita Casablanca, Adolgo Rodrigues Jurado 12, Seville

Mostly when we go out to eat, my main focus is the food. In fact, its for this reason that I literally have no photos of any of the food I've eaten: when I see it, my fork is usually already in my hand and next thing I know I've eaten the whole plate and I'm asking for another look at the menu. But last night we went to Bodeguita Casablanca where what really stood out was the service. 

We were worried about finding somewhere that was good and not too touristy as we were at Puerta Jerez, near the Cathedral. But this place had good prices (most tapas 2.50 a portion), was busy, and in the end we chose it because of the range of non-meat options. We ordered a selection of mainly fish-based dishes to share (actually I panicked when the waiter was there and ordered more than we ever imagined we would need). The food was quick, nicely presented and tasty, but the waiter was an absolute babe. More than once I've asked for suggestions in bars and the waiter has glared at me and said "everything is good." which is code for "I hate everything". But he was very helpful and recommended the fried Cod gratine which was really fresh and delicious. Then he brought us an 'aperitif' (which was FREE omg) of this bizarre cold green potato salad, that tasted like Austrian potato salad, and was therefore fantastic. Then to top it all off, my friend really wanted chips with her burger but there were none on the menu and he said it wasn't possible. Then, without warning, he brought out a batch of fresh chips, also on the house. It was so sweet.

What to eat: Pork cheeks, which were incredibly tender came in a rich tomato sauce and sliced potatoes.

Bull's tail on puff pastry, which looked fantastic (though my friend did say it tasted like how she imagined dog food would...)

Not so good: we tried the "house croquettes", because I am totally obsessed with croquettes, but without being too crude, they tasted like fishy cheesy feet.

Bodeguita Casablanca is a good choice if you're in that area of town and want to eat like the locals. It is only the 304th best in the city, according to Trip Advisor, but I would definitely go again!

Adventures everywhere!

This weekend I went on an AdVenTuRe!!!! Me and a couple of my new mates (yeah boy, I made friends, just sayin) went to CORDOBA! We went to CORDOBA to see the old mosque there that has been converted into a Cathedral. Its a very difficult sort of building to describe, but its interesting and weird, so obviously I liked it. Its a massive room filled with pillars in white and red, and there are Arabic mosaics and other features that used to be part of the mosque preserved around the outside. And then in the centre is the most outlandish church you've ever seen (with the exception of Melk). It was trippy. On the one hand it was like a major clash of two opposing cultures, and then on the other they kind of blended together seamlessly and it was beautiful. But weird.

Before we arrived at the Mezquita we visited the ancient Roman bridge and took some touristic snaps. A small man came up to me and asked me to take a picture of him. I said yes because I'm a generous person who likes to give back to society. He asked me my name and told me his, but I immediately forgot it because I find it hard to remember names and I thought, "What's the point of making the effort of learning this guy's name? In a couple of seconds I'll have taken his picture and got on with my life!". HOW WRONG WAS I!? While my real mates, B and F, carried on admiring the view, my new little friend beckoned me down the path away from the bridge. I thought this was weird but followed him anyway as he had a massively expensive camera and I didn't think someone who was about to trust me with their fancy camera would be shady. As we carried on walking away from the bridge though I did start to feel a bit confused and became increasingly aware of my valuables. Luckily B and F decided to follow me so I knew I had back up. The little guy then started explaining to me what photo he wanted. It sounded pretty simple to me, and yet every time I tried to take the camera off him he was like, no, you're doing it wrong! I don't know how long this went on for but it was TOO LONG. Finally he let me take the picture and seemed pleased with it, and he offered to take ours. But by this time I'd decided he was crazy so politely declined and we said our goodbyes and left. Just as we'd got back to the bridge I heard a little voice shouting "Sarah! Sarah!" and he came running up behind us, waving the camera, and said "Will you take another one?" but F flatly refused. In her wise words, we were only in Cordoba for six hours...

You'll be excited to hear I've also made a Spanish friend! (She hasn't actually confirmed that we're friends yet, and we're not Facebook official, but I'm feeling optimistic). On Monday I went with her to her salsa class, which she PROMISED was beginner's standard. But when I got there, there was this stern lady on reception and she eyed me up and down and asked my friend (in a very cynical voice) "but can she actually DANCE?". I was mortified that my friend replied "oh yes!" with great enthusiasm, despite having no proof of this. We climbed the three flights of stairs to the lesson (which incidentally is held in the same place where Seville's Erasmus party happens and is the bar where they played Anaconda twice in one night....aka my favourite venue in Seville). I asked my friend how well exactly I was expected to dance, but she was having none of it and just grinned and said it would be fine. On the top floor a muscular, short man in a polo shirt welcomed me with the same question "But can you dance?". Seeing as I'd walked all the way up the stairs I thought, I may as well back myself, so nonchalantly said "yeah, a bit..." and he replied "a BIT? or a LOT? How long have you been dancing for exactly?" I felt a tinge of dread enter my heart. I told him that I had done a couple of salsa lessons in Cuba, and he scowled and said "that's Cuban salsa, this is LINEAR." I've never thought of myself as a particularly linear person, but I thought it was best to keep that to myself and went to stand at the BACK of the class.

We began the warm up, and within 90 seconds covered my complete knowledge of salsa dancing. Then we did a lot of wiggling and I wanted to giggle while I wiggled but tried to keep professional. When we started learning that week's new salsa step, my mouth hung open in shock. It was most certainly not for beginners. I was so busy watching the teacher with furious concentration that I didn't clock how good any of the other girls were. But we danced in partners and we had to swap partners very frequently, and the look of dread in each boy's eye as they saw me approach made me begin to think that I probably wasn't the best. In the end I think I actually did get the step and I only nearly fell over and had to be caught by my partner TWICE, so it was resounding success. I've signed up for a month!

I'm now sitting in the kitchen waiting for my chilli to cook, as I'm hosting the English group tonight (and we're eating chilli). I would like to end this post with a shout out to my dearly beloved sister who is hired by an actual school to teach children music. She sure educated me about music, here's a snippet from her music collection that really came in handy on Friday night when we were all watching amateur grime videos on youtube.

Peace xxxxxxx

Week three in Seville

Hello dear readers,

I have now spent three weeks in Seville and after bragging and lolling about how sunny it was here the temperatures have PLUMMETED and no clothes that I've brought here are warm enough!!

I didn't write a blog post last week. The truth is, I was suffering terribly and I didn't want to worry you. I wanted to be brave, and pretend that I was okay and write a happy blog post, but I wasn't strong enough. At times we didn't know if I'd be able to last until the end of the work programme, and there were at least three days when I woke up in  the morning and I thought to myself, "Oh dear I do NOT feel well!". It begun with a sore throat and rumbled along into a runny nose and some real GROGGINESS, you know what I mean? But you'll be relieved to hear that somehow I have managed to struggle through. I still have a lot of phlegm in my nostrils though, and so I've spent the last few days really surprising people at how loudly I blow my nose. Nobody in the office has mentioned it which is very awkward as sometimes I blow my nose so loudly that the pen pot rattles, so I'm sure they've noticed it.

This weekend I went on an exciting adventure to Madrid to visit a Dear Friend. Madrid is in Spain, and so is Seville, but let me tell you Spain is much bigger than you think it is! I've just looked it up and as a point of comparison Edinburgh is closer to Birmingham than Madrid is to Seville - its over 500km. They have one of those super fast space age trains that only takes 2.5 hours but it costs more than I could sell my kidney for. The next quickest option is car! So I decided to take a Blablacar, which in the words of my Oldest Sister is "like hitch hiking, but worse." Its a website where people who are driving places offer up any spare seats in their car for a fee - you pay them to get in their car. Its sounds super creepy to me because I'm English and I'm scared of strangers, confined spaces with strangers and strangers on the internet. But in Spain its really normal. They seem to really like confined spaces with strangers. In the tiny lift in my office building, for example, everybody says hello when they get in AND "see you later" when they get out. Which is surprising when you think the normal thing to do in a lift is stare at the ground so you avoid eye contact and really sneakily check yourself out in the mirror. (BTW Spain is arguably less weird than Austria where in train cabins they used to say "greetings to God!" and "you're welcome").

So anyway Blablacar is normal here and it was also really fun. It was also great to practice Spanish and it was fun to meet some, like, real life Spanish people who are just going about their business and are surprised to see a little English girl waddling along being all confused and cute (that's me btw. Nobody's described me as cute yet but its how I'm trying to project myself).

Last time I went to Madrid with another Dear Friend we were basically hijaked by the Dear Pope who had decided to pop over from the Vatican along with millions of Young Catholics. (I really do mean millions). We both agreed that it was literally the worst thing ever. But this time it was so fun, and Madrid was very pretty and fancy.

There are so many other things I can write about!! But we're all getting tired so I will leave you with an interesting question. 'Blah blah' in English obviously refers to chatting, which is where I assumed the name BlaBlaCar came from. But in Spanish, to talk is 'hablar', and 'he talks' is 'habla', which sounds a bit like 'bla bla' and looks a bit like 'blah', and I'm like, is that related? Is that why we say Blah Blah? Please send your answers on a blank postcard with a self addressed envelope to PO Box CUTE.GIRL.IN.SEVILLE., best answer wins a Kinder Egg and a gold Blue Peter Badge.

xxxxxxxxxx