Leaving a realestate strategy meeting,  I said to my business partner – also a Nick – “We should make videos about cool places to travel to FROM the Algarve.” He nodded and booked an Airbnb in central Seville.

I was keen to explore different transportation options, because in previous trips to Seville, I had always taken the easy option and jumped in the car. The highway is great all the way and super easy to navigate (it’s a straight stripe). However, Spanish gas stations and services really don’t keep up with the Algarve-Lisbon highway offerings. Often in Andalusia you have to go quite a way off the road to find the fuel station and usually there’s a sketchy old café lurking nearby. On the positive side, there are no tolls, which is a good thing!

So, my plan was to break things up and drive to Huelva (it’s about half way to Seville) and then catch the train. Strangely enough the train service does not extend all the way across from the Portuguese border, so if you wanted to catch the train from say, Lagos to Seville, you couldn’t. You’d need to take the train from Lagos to Vila Real do Santo Antonio, cross the Spanish border to Ayamonte (by ferry) and switch to a bus to Huelva. You could then carry on by train to Seville as we did.

I love trains and it was a great ride coasting along the Andalusian plains, rolling into Seville station at sunset. We disembarked and Uber’ed over to our B&B. Pulling our bags out of the taxi, I looked up and marvelled at the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world as the sun painted its ochre walls. Darkness descended and we set out in search of a rooftop bar.

There are tons to choose from, but the closest we found was eye-level with the Giralda Tower. It’s a massive minaret that is now topped with gothic architecture, masking its true Arabian origins. The weather was really warm for October, but not as unbearable as the scorching summer heat, and we sat and chatted about our business. Soft strains of music wafted up from below and people in T-shirts walked arm in arm in the dark streets below.

Our mission was to film as much as we could, and my main mission for the next morning was coffee and then bull ring. In that order. We strolled through one of Europe’s largest car-less city centres and found a café that was open at 8am in the morning. Normally, Spanish opening times are radically different from other countries. It appears that Seville, however, is always open and those crazy “restaurants only open at 9pm” rules only apply in the smaller towns. I slurped my coffee. It was delicious.

Whether you’re a fan of bull fights or not, the bull ring, entitled La Maestranza, is a phenomenal place. We entered the museum and drifted past full size stuffed bulls, matador outfits and classic posters and paintings showcasing bull fight mania! As we walked out through the portals that the bulls would charge through, we found ourselves in the middle of a Roman like coliseum and I could almost hear the chanting crowds. I could almost feel the pounding hooves of the bulls and see the terrible violence that people lusted after. It was an odd feeling.

I’ve never been keen to witness a bull fight… Now, however, I was curious. How would I feel? It was not going to happen that day as the bullfighting season was over, but I may well return for the Feria do Abril to capture the bloodlust of Seville in full cry. Oddly enough, May 5-11 is the week of Seville’s biggest festival and the bullfight that week is one of the most important events of the year.