04 October - still on the roof

16.00 and over 30C so taking another break on the roof.
I like Seville, it's not like any other city I have ever been to. This morning we took a boat trip on the river, with a recorded commentary pointing out all the landmarks, interesting and informative.  The walk to the ferry took us past many beautiful buildings, through parks, scrupulously clean, even the leaves which had fallen overnight had been swept into neat little piles ready for the cart to collect them, wide streets closed to all traffic except trams, bikes and horse drawn carriages. There is a sense of light and space here, of freedom of thought and movement.  We asked ourselves yet again, where are the austerity measures, happy confident people.  We must be missing something! Life here can't be this easy.
After the boat trip we made for the district of Barrio Santa Cruz, a film set piece, if ever I saw one.  Narrow, narrow streets winding between tall buildings, flowers spilling out of window boxes several stories up. So, so very clean and tidy, many tourists, shopping, eating, drinking. Maybe this is actually a more profitable time of the year for tourist income, most of the people were older, no families to cater for, more disposable income.  There aren't the numbers but these people might actually spend a bit more money.
We aren't finding it expensive here.  Last night we went to an eating place in El Centro area, we sat outside in a square, and for 17.50 Euros we had a bottle of very nice Rioja and a selection of 4 very tasty and filling tapas dishes with bread.  There were lots of people eating and the majority of them seemed to be Spanish.
At lunchtime today we had tapas again,  this time a selection of seven, with a half litre of beer each, in a very touristy part of Barrio Santa Cruz and the bill was 21 Euros.  It wasn't as nice as last night, there was tinned tuna in the tomato salad and not a lot of fish in the paella, but the other dishes were fresh and tasty.  Tapas are good, you get lots of mixed tastes, small testing samples.  Most eating places seem to offer the same dish at three different prices, tapas size, half portion (starter) size and full portion (main course), very good idea.
I hope this is as hot as we are going to be. Each day so far has got gradually hotter.  We pick the car up tomorrow morning and head off west, initially taking in some smaller villages and then dropping down to the coast on the border with Portugal, in search of good seafood and maybe some Atlantic Ocean swimming.