Arriving in Seville.

Seville is a sprawling city full of beautiful architecture and bustling streets. It essentially sums up the classic city life.

As the bus left the beautiful fields and lakes of the Ronda landscape behind, and entered the industrial district of Seville, it came as quite a shock.

Ronda's Bus Station is situated on the far side of town and is surprisingly busy for such a quiet town!

For the past few days, although areas had been busy, they had also been quaint. Small towns, everything within a short walking distance, and clear defined ends, where the buildings stopped, and the fields started.

Seville had that patchy feel that all cities do on the outskirts. That strange, yet familiar mix of factories, small houses, and shabby little shops, the streets becoming cleaner and more ornate the closer you get to the centre.

We jumped off at the central bus station in the early afternoon and decided to snake our way through the streets towards our hotel.

Seville, we had decided a week before arriving, was our treat to ourselves. We had originally been booked into a small hostel on the North side of the city, but ever since I had booked it, I had that feeling in my tummy where it just wasn’t the right choice. I’m not sure what it was, but something kept telling me to keep looking for alternatives.

Then just before our trip, on our final look through and plan, we found a great deal for the Hotel Don Paco, complete with roof top swimming pool, and at only €25 more than the hostel, it was something we couldn’t miss.

Walking through the streets, Seville felt huge. And rightly so, because it is. But with the looming buildings, wide roads, and hundreds of buses racing past, we felt as though we were in the largest city in the world, especially after the quiet cobbled streets, and lazy ways of Algeciras and Ronda before.

However, as we got closer to our hotel, we entered a small, seemingly more local district, full of pretty churches, mooring towers, and open street tapas bars full of smoking men glugging down cold beers before heading home for their siestas.

And I knew then it was the right choice to cancel the hostel and head down that way, even if we were staying in a rather fancy, corporate hotel.

Before heading inside the hotel, we threw our bags down outside a quiet tapas bar and tucked into a gorgeous selection of local specialities, and a couple of ice cold beers.

The hotel was literally across the street. A large grey, glass building, it wasn’t pretty or quaint. But inside was rather luxurious. With marbled floors, a 24 hour reception desk, and rooms with key-cards, this was a bit of a change from our pensions and hostels, and a particular difference for me, as I have never stayed in such a big hotel/ no proper hotel at all.

Our room was on the second floor, and contained the biggest bed in the world. (If we led on each side, we struggled to even reach each other, kind of big.) The view was of a wall, and the air con didn’t work (but we did save £200 on the true price of the room, so we couldn’t ask for too much…) but the bathroom was clean and had everything you could need, and the roof top pool… Well that’s where we ended up spending the whole rest of the afternoon and evening, soaking up the sun and the view, with the occasional dip in the cooling waters.