On to Sevilla

After many hours in the Lisbon Lounge we move on to find our gate for the next flight, joining our friends Carlota and Abel, as well as Frank, who has arrived from Salvador and Santa Maria respectively. We all board a tiny propellor plane - 9 rows with one seat on each side and two hip young pilots sharing the open cabin

 An hour - and another nap - later we land in Sevilla, where is is sunny and cool and soon gets dark and colder.

"The winter came early," says our host José Ferreirós Domingues, as he drives us to our hotel, Corral del Rey. The hotel is in the historical part in a warren of streets so narrow that we have to walk the last part. The ancient 3 story house is beautifully restored and our ample room is on the top floor, with coarse linen curtains draped in front of wooden shutters

 and a sizeable bathroom

We're now bone-tired, but our host has arranged to take us all out for tapas, so an hour later we're walking through the narrow and now quite cold alleys to a cheerily lit restaurant, doors thrown open to the street, from where the sounds of flamenco spill out: guitar, voices and stomping. Soon we're settled with thinly sliced jamón, small platters with cumin flavored spinach and garbanzo beans and glasses of robust red wine. We forget the cold and fatigue as we tear at rustic bread and eat and drink. I tell a long story about Iceland in my broken Spanish to a patient philosopher from Tenerife, and steal looks at a group of locals singing and dancing in the back of the restaurant. They are portly and older, but when they move, the women twirling their hands in the air and the men shuffling their feet just so, they could be Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz for all I know, they are so sensual and graceful. Then Oswaldo and I return to our warm room and promptly crash.