The Andalusian Adventure - April 14th 2026

Day 1: Arrive in Seville

The bicycle tour company booked us into a very interesting hotel called Hotel Las Casas de la Juderia. Some rich guy has been restoring 134 houses in the oldJewish district of Seville and converting them into the hotel which is joined by 40  courtyards and Roman tunnels. We got lost just going to our room. 

We spent the day touring the city. Firstly we walked the alleyways and skinny streets to an optometrist, to fix Ray's glasses. The first shop said they couldn't repair them, but were happy to sell him some new ones. The second shop repaired them for free.

Not realising there was a rooftop pool at our digs, we decided to catch the hop-on hop-off bus to cover all the sites. We made our way to one of the stops about 10 mins ahead of schedule, only to be told that the bus no longer stopped there, and we had to walk a million miles to the next stop where we waited 3 days (well, it seemed like it) for the next bus. When we finally got on, it stopped at the next stop for almost 30 mins. We did manage to score seats at the very front up top. The highlight of the trip was sitting in traffic forever, but watching as a guy got out of his car, walked to the car behind, which had beeped him for not moving, where he removed the windscreen wipers from the car of said beeper, and threw them on the ground. He then picked them up and put them on the bonnet, went back to his car and drove off. Needless to say there are plenty of sites in Seville and we saw them, but the commentary was not in sync so we really didn't know what we were looking at.

The bus trip ended after an interminable 2 hours of hot sun and traffic. In need of an ice cream, we could only find one shop, which had a queue a mile long. So we trudged back to our room and had a glass of water. Dinner wasn't much better in the waiting stakes. We waited 45 mins just to get a menu, another 15 mins for the order to be taken, but fortunately only a few minutes for the drinks and food to arrive. All was forgiven as the food was delicious. We topped it off with an ice cream from another shop only metres away from our hotel.

After a spa bath in our weird luxury hotel, we were ready for the next day of riding.

Our Pics

We stayed at Hotel Las Casas de la Juderia, very near the center of Sevilla which roughly translates to Hotel of the houses of the jewish quarter. It's like a mini walled city and each house is a few hotel rooms. The houses come in all shapes and sizes but many of them are two or three stories and many of them have cellars. This is one of the many courtyards we went through on the way to our room. We would have made at least 8 turns in walking the 60 metres or so to our room.

The facade of one of the houses bordering this courtyard. This one is three stories high. It is one of the grander looking residences in the enclave, that we came across anyway.

Another courtyard and residence. This appears to be the one residence with its own courtyard and is pretty swish. This also has some basement rooms as we walked underneath this part of the complex when we were exploring one night. Underground is also a maze of tunnels and rooms, one of which was the breakfast room,

Another residence in another courtyard. They are truly everytwhere, all with their own flavour and vibe.

Lots of craftsmanship on display, although some of the "craftmanship" in our bathroom left a little to be desired. But hey, that's hotel bathrooms.

Not sure how old this is but someone thought it would be a good idea to create this archway out of what we used to call "gooly stones"or shingle. There is stuff like this everywhere. My Dad would have loved all this as he used to do things along these lines (maybe not as grand). Heaps of mosaics as well which was one of his specialties (now you know where I get the urge to create these works from - I was brought up on this stuff. Annoying Dad all the time with wanting to "help out")

This time outside the hotel. Buildings like this literally everywhere. It's not that it is special. It is completely mundane.

Maybe a little grander. Some castle we encountered on our hop on - hop off bus experience. Horse and carts everywhere, but I gotta admit to seeing very little horse poo. I may not have been looking closely enough, but the smell didn't hit us at any stage.