Some of the best trips are unplanned.

If you look at Sevilla quickly, it appears to be on Río Guadalquivir, and it is.. sort of. The water that cuts through the city is actually a human-expanded old path of the river now named Canal de Alfonso XII. The actual river is a minimum of 0.5mi (~.8km) farther to the west. Us being geographers we had to check it out. Today after breakfast we walked over the popular Puente de Isabel II bridge next to our hotel and basically just kept going.

We stopped at the Mercado de Triana on the west end of the bridge. It’s an indoor marketplace that houses a couple dozen vendors, mostly cheeses, meats, and seafood. There is also a coffee shop and some cooking class kitchens (more on that later).

On down the street.. There were quite a few big beautiful trees along the route, providing shade and that critical green element.

At the west edge of the almost-island formed between the canal and the river are sports fields and parking lots. We were amused by the creative interpretations of painted line delineating parking vs driving through. On the far side it drops down to the river, with ditches to guide water and a bike path. There were essentially no other people in this entire area.

This freaky baby doll made us look twice.. or thrice!

We walked back the same way, exploring shops and confiterias. Lidia was so-so (great cream-filled pastries but stale flavorless chocolate covered pastries). Savitri and I then visited a nearby gelataria (Gioelia) that was mmMM soo good!

At 6pm Savitri and Jen returned to the mercado and took a Paella cooking class, Taller Andaluz de Cocina! It was 3 hours long and they LOVED it! The instructor, Carlos, was very friendly.

While the girls were cooking, Steve and I walked east to pizza! Raphael’s Pizzeria is a small, simple place that serves delicious crispy-on-the-outside, short-on-the-inside pizzas at reasonable prices. College students seem to frequent it and we could see why.

As we emerged from the pizzeria and continued east, we were amazed at how many people there were. The streets were packed.

We soon arrived at Setas de Sevilla, a huge, dynamically illuminated, mostly-wood structure with throngs of people milling around.

We turned around and looped back toward the canal a couple blocks north of how we’d come. The streets were less packed and we saw new nighttime cityscapes. The blend of traditional European styles and Arabic styles is striking.

Back across the canal on the next bridge north, Puente Cristo de la Expiración.

We dropped down to the edge of the canal and walked south back toward the mercado. The path along the canal is well lit and there were very few people. We could see the active east side of the canal as well as the bridges very clearly.

There were numerous small sets of steps down to the canal’s edge, most blocked by a modern metal fence. A few sections were down though and most of these steps had 2-3 people huddled on them. We found one that was empty and could see south to Puente de Isabel II.

We picked up Savitri and Jen from their cooking class, and were of course hungry again. We walked across the street and grabbed empanadas at Empanadas Argentinas. They were tasty, fast, inexpensive, and provided a large array of different local flavors.

Then.. back across Puente de Isabel II to the hotel! I FaceTimed with Riki & Laurie, who had a great trip to Sevilla and environs a few years ago and have been giving us all sorts of tips. There’s still something amazing about being able to be so connected from so far away!!