Nightmare in Seville

Beautiful warm Sevilla
It’s not that Sevilla is horrid, I am sure on another occasion we could have appreciated more, how great Sevilla is with the orange tree lined streets, beautiful architecture, long history and romantic stories. I also could not get over the fact we were experiencing such nice weather in the month of December. However, we just had bad luck and then some more.

AVE - Madrid to Sevilla
It started out well with the train journey – we took the AVE– from Madrid to Seville which took 2hours 30minutes normally a 5hour car drive. They had given us one of the few sets of seats with a table and the four of us sat facing each other.

December 8 2011 7:30am on the AVE, Madrid to Sevilla

William still waking up ready to go to Sevilla

December -8- 2011 10am arrived in Sevilla

Why take a bus when you can walk?:)
It was when we arrived that the bad luck started. The hotel told us that we could get the C1 bus to the hotel. However, when it arrived the bus driver said no we should get the C2. We crossed the road and I phoned the hotel to re-asked the question. They said C1 and C2 both go past the hotel but C1 is quicker. As we had missed the C1 now and we were on the correct side for C2 we just got on that one and asked the bus driver to tell us when to get off. Although he said he would, the problem, that we now know, was he had no clue and he told us to get off much after the hotel stop and set us off walking in the same direction as the bus i.e. walking away from the hotel. The stop had a park with a beautiful University building on one side and when we arrived at the building he had pointed to, it looked like we were more in an industrial estate. After that we asked the only but kind man who gave us clear instructions as to how to get there. But instead of the next building the directions were horrendously long. An hour and half later we arrived at the hotel on foot. Since we were in an industrial estate we did not see other buses or taxis we could get on.

That is the hotel, but we are still going the wrong way because there was a fence all around it and we did not know where the entrance was.

Wot not superstitious!
At the hotel they gave us room 213 and it did cross my mind to change it (what with it having the number 13 in) but then I thought I was not going to be superstitious and anyways we had already had the bad luck.

Hospital Trip:
Billy had just got over a week of being ill and off school, however, today it looked like he had pink eye so I wanted to go to Urgent Care to get treatment before it spread. At first I didn’t think the other boys had it and then later I did, so I checked them all in to be seen by the nurse. Billy was the only one with a mild case and we were given eye drops for treatment. Billy was also prescribed antibiotics because his throat was red raw from all the coughing he had been doing in the past week, so no he had not gotten over his illness. The surprising piece of good news was we were not in urgent care for very long. We had barely been sitting in the waiting room for 5minutes when they called us in. Then when picking up the antibiotics they gave them to us immediately – no wait and it was even a bank holiday. We found a restaurant which our taxi driver had recommended and ate supper there.

December-8-2011 Hospital La Macarena

December - 8 - 2011 Supper at Simons with a view of the orange trees.

Tour of Sevilla

On Saturday I had caught Billy’s virus but it was our best day (not night). We had breakfast at the hotel and we then used our prepurchased hop on hop off tour bus tickets to see Sevilla.

December -9-2011 Breakfast. Our Hotel was attached to the Olympic Stadium

December -9-2011 Setting out on our tour. Hotel Lobby

 

There's the entrance!

Hotel photo taken approximately from where the bus stop would have been for us to disembark so no we did not see it when we passed.

Bus stop for the Hop on Hop off City Tour

Basilica de la Macarena

Hospital de las Cinco Llagas - Old Hospital building, now Andulsian Parliment Building

The Hospital Macarena where we visited urgent care

Guadalquivir River and Puente de Triana

The only oval Bull Fighting ring.

Torre del Oro an old military watch tower (now a naval museum)

Presidency of Andulusia HQ - Palacio de San Telmo

Old tobacco factory, now a University of Seville building

Plaza de España

Plaza de España

 At the Ibero-American Exposition (1929) ten of the attending countries had built pavilions (over 19 years) in the Maria Luisa Park along the Guadalquivir river to display their exhibits and some to be used as their country consulates afterwards. Riding on the bus, I managed to take pictures of only a few:

The Colombian Pavilion

The Brazilian Pavilion

The Guatamala Pavilion now used as a dance center. A smaller pavilion because they signed up late.

Costurero de La Reina (the Queen's sewing box) along the same street as the Pavilions (Calle: Paseo de las Delicias)

USA Pavilion

 The boys wanted McDonalds for lunch and since I was not feeling too well with a head cold, I didn't fight it. I ordered a pizza melt and a tea while they ate their burgers and fries. The funniest story (for those who know I like drinking hot water), or at least I thought it was funny was about my tea. I told the boys that it was the best tea I had ever had. It was really soothing. Then to get the last drop I opened the lid and thought- that's funny – there's no colouring. I looked down and found an unopened teabag on the tray and realized that the best tea ever had been a cup of hot water. Well I was sick and I could not taste anything, I just needed to feel better which is what hot water does for me.

Lunch time

We then walked around the center to see the Cathedral and gardens only to get back on the tour bus so we could get off at the nearest stop to the hotel.

Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

View of the Palacio de San Telmo from the Puente de San Telmo

View of the Torre del Oros from the Puente de San Telmo

Stomach Flu or Food Poisoning?
Everyone was feeling fine walking from the bus stop to the hotel. It was when we arrived in our room that Charley was suddenly bent over double with stomach pain. My first reaction was to take a bath to relieve it but that did nothing. My second reaction was appendicitis. So I am relieved it was not that. He had the worst pain and was throwing up first. Everyone else followed without the pain but still the vomiting and diarrhoea. I had brought some plastic cups and bowls with us and those were now being used as sick buckets as they struggled to the bath room. We were all trying to sleep but I jumped up every time I heard someone move running to help them use the sick bucket before we reached the bathroom. At 1am it was my turn to go through all this myself and I realized how badly they had all been feeling.

Sábanas y fundas de almohada por favor!

It was a long night and at one stage we did not get to the sick bucket quick enough, while sorting one boy out another was throwing up. So I asked the hotel if I could possibly have clean sheets. They brought me what looked like two sheets, so having stripped the bed I opened up the clean linen and found they had brought me 5 clean pillow cases. It was then a matter of phoning the reception again to explain that I needed sheets. They could not understand what I needed because they believed that they had already brought me some. The receptionist had to come up and see what the man had brought me as she believed him who in turn believed had brought me two clean sheets. She came with a blanket thinking that was what I wanted. But that night I learnt the Spanish words for sheet and pillow case. I also asked for four glasses of water and one glass of seven up. However, no one wanted to drink the latter because it made us all feel sick again.

Breakfast was being served until 11am and I think I had missed room service by the time I thought of it, because no one was answering the phone. So we managed to all make it down to breakfast. The boys had cereal and fruit and I managed a quarter of a piece of toast before giving up. We then went back to bed to sleep for the whole day. About 11:30 I phoned to tell them that we would not be able to vacate the room at noon (checkout time) and they said that was fine. So they kindly let us sleep until 4:30 when our taxi arrived to take us to the train station to the AVE to take us back to Madrid. It was very hard to get up and out but we made it even though we were still very fragile.

Before gettin on the AVE, some of us had our appetite back although still very fragile

On the positive side:
In hindsight it was possibly easier for me to look after three sick boys in the hotel because we were all able to sleep in one room, I did not have to do laundry (although I did wash the sick out of their sheets – did not want their beautiful white sheets to be stained) and we could be waited on with water etc. The other good thing is that I don’t feel I have to disinfect our apartment as we were not sick here. Not that I would recommend being sick. Still don’t know what it was – food poisoning or stomach flu – no clue, just glad to be back home. Moreover, Sevilla is a beautiful city with lots to learn if you have the health and energy.