Seville, Espana

Seville. I like Seville. It’s a lot better than lots of other places, for example, Barcelona, or the labyrinthine nightmare that is Valencia, or the knife capital of the universe, Albacete. In contrast to these places, Seville is the place that people who live in Utopias aspire to. Old and new, combined so happily. Beer is cheap, tapas is plentiful, and dispite the sub 20 degree evening the streets are teeming with happy, pleasing people. Barcelona in comparison is a town where to tarry on its desperate streets but for a moment will result in you being unintentionally at the pointy end of a drug deal, thugs with one hand stuffing mounds of powder into pockets and lifting bills from your wallet with the other. This dystopia may in fact be better than the reality facing Albacete, where the number of outlets vending knives, knife-like items and accessories to knifing imply a staggering influx of said items into public circulation. Our very hotel sold ‘stabbers’ on the cheap, Matt marvelling at the range and reasonable price of the butterfly knives, an item with no decent purpose. The near vacant streets suggested ‘the knife’ reigned supreme.
I am routinely impressed with the human mind’s ability to adjust. Only days ago I mistakenly believed that driving at 130kph plus was a reckless danger. Now I treat speed as a plaything, often pretending that I’m racing at the arcade, making zooming noises in my helmet. Needless to say, the riding is starting to become a lot of fun. I’m pretty much over the fear, there’s the occasional moment where your stomach drops, say when you feel you’re not quite going to make a corner, or a truck does something unexpected. Mostly though it’s fine.
We have seen some awesome roads. Coming out of Barcelona the tollway south has an amazing array of bridges, tunnels and vistas over the Mediterranean. The road connecting Albacete to Valencia and Cordoba is the smallest one we’ve yet traversed (excluding a stretch in France) and cut through some of the beautiful fields, gorges and valleys of rural Spain. It also gave us a little practice moving the bikes around corners. We slightly mistimed our arrival in Albacete and ended our ride that day about an hour and a half after dusk. The temperature dropped quickly after dark, and the darkness coincided with our first effort at serious mountain turns. Matt’s nerves were shot, and I dropped my bike, while stationary, sadly not for the first time. My excuse is he stopped suddenly. My leg was pinioned under my bike, and if I was by myself I’d be vulture food, but an unnamed stranger, sitting in an idling car meters from where we stopped on the lonely mountain road, leaped to help the bike from my remarkably unshattered leg. He asked if I was ok, I said ‘si’, and he went back to his darkened car.
Seville is the first town we’ve arrived at that was part of the original plan, so effectively we’re back on track. Our mad dash across western Europe to make up for the inactive ferries is at an end, and our days can now be less punishing. We’re going to try for Morocco tomorrow, the ferry port being an easy hour and a half ride south.