Lovely Seville and surprisingly lovely Cadiz

Leaving Portugal and heading into Spain was easy enough. Finding the hotel in Seville was pretty simple too. We liked the cheaper fuel and food as well but the best bit was beautiful Seville. The buses were great for getting around, after trying to use the local train initially to discover that it had a three hour gap in services around lunchtime. Not a great start. Then one of the ticket machines liked taking our money but not printing a ticket. We finally made it to the main station (very grand) and opted for a bus ticket instead. We felt almost like locals with our two day passes going "boop" as we entered. We looked less local using Google maps to track the bus and figure out which stop to use.

As there had been some wind and rain beforehand, the streets were a little bit orange strewn when we arrived:

but as you can see the sun was out nicely for us:

and buildings like the cathedral above looked suitably radiant. Yes there are a few "tourist trap" things in the most popular areas but even those were pretty tastefully done:

The Plaza de Espana is simply stunning. A little bit busy of course with annoying tourists like us but stunning all the same:

The attention to detail on every part of it was mind blowing as you can see from a simple balustrade:

Back in the town you just wander around with views like this at each turn:

Having revelled in the glory that is Seville, we headed to a much less exalted place - an apartment in Cadiz.  The owner was lovely - she explained by WhatsApp that we would not be able to get our car close to the apartment as the square it is situated on was being used for some filming. So, we parked in the port car park (a space comes with the apartment, very important in the city) and walked back to the pretty square:

We had to duck under tape barriers and get escorted to the front door by some of the many folks they seem to need to shoot some film footage. The number of people just milling around and the number of trucks in the area was unreal. We happily settled in and then explored the square a little more once filming had stopped for the night. Here was the main film set, less than 100 metres from our door:

As you can see, a part of Cadiz had been turned into France:

together with gunshot noises, smoke etc - all for a Young Sherlock episode that will air on Amazon Prime it seems. Most amusing / interesting to watch. Cadiz really surprised us. The waterfront was good and we enjoyed the long promenade:. 

The civic buildings were, as you would expect, grand:

and the funeral procession and the practice run we witnessed were "different" to anything we'd seen before:

Cadiz had a great covered market, more lovely buildings and a rather good cafe that we had to check out a few times. It also had something that we recognise from other port towns - more folks sleeping on the streets than anywhere else we'd visited on this trip. Not a huge number but the contrast with the other cities was marked.

We had a very happy three days pottering around the place. Underrated location we reckon.