5-Day Trip to Seville & Coimbra - Part 1

This is the story of two Irish U2 fans (Joe & me) on a 5 day trip to Seville and Coimbra. For me it was my 19th and 20th time seeing the band live, and the 6th and 7th time I saw U2 360. Last year I went to five of the European U2 360 gigs, I blogged about that journey here.

Warning - the story is about not just the U2 gigs, but the places we saw, the people we met and what we did along the way.

Tuesday Sep. 28 Cork To Seville
Departure day for the trip. We (Joe and myself) left Cork just before 7:00 and got into Malaga at around 11:00. It was an easy hop on the 20-minute bus to the main bus station in Malaga. I always prefer trains, and was looking forward to getting the train all the way to Seville, but alas, we would have had to wait until the 14:00 train, and the bus left at 12:00, so it was not an option unfortunately.

The bus timetable said that we would finish up in Seville’s main bus station, but instead, it dropped us at a secondary station, probably something to do with us being held up for around an hour when we hit major roadworks en route to Seville. Our map from the main bus station to our new home for the next three nights were useless, and it was more than a little walk to our temporary home, so we got in a taxi and were brought to the door.

My first trip to Seville was a magical one around 10 years ago. It’s like that sometimes when you go to really great places for the first time, but it’s not always something that can be repeated for a second visit. I was wrong, this city is everything I remember and more. As an ex capital of Spain, it is literally steeped in history. It has been a city for over 2,000 years. It’s impossible to imagine what this is like without going there, but for me, the history and character just oozes out of almost every street corner. The magnificent buildings around the city include the world famous Seville Cathedral which houses the tomb of Christopher Columbus, it took over a hundred years to build, and is among the largest churches in the world.

Another major attraction to the city are the new buildings and structures. I have never seen such a blend of old and new in one city. There is one particularly impressively designed bridge called the El Alamillo Bridge, which was built for the famous 1992 Expo Fair. I have never seen anything quite like it.

Our lodgings were picked very deliberately by DM Travel. A hundred yards from one of Seville’s most famous buildings “The Cathedral”, and 25 metres from one of the best Tapas bar in this area - Las Columnas to the locals, or Bodega Santa Cruz to the tourists. This was to be the meeting point or base camp from the various people we were meeting, and we made several visits over the three days we were there. The guys did not believe me when they saw how close we were staying to this gem of a place. To be honest I didn’t think it was this close either, I was expecting at least a 50 metre hike to get there!

Steve, Paul and Dave, all from London, were joining us later on at Las Columnas. In the meantime we had a general walk around, and as we did, memories of my last visit here came back.

We met the lads around 19:00, it was great to see them all again. This would be my third U2 gig with Steve and brother Dave. I met them for the first time at Vertigo Dublin #1 2005, and we kept in touch, meeting last year again at Dublin # 1. We tucked into some tapas and chilled beer. They have this beer in Seville chilled at minus 2 degrees Centigrade and served in rather small 200ml (about a third of a pint) servings. In Ireland, a customer would laugh if they got such a small serving of beer, but here, due to high temperatures, it makes perfect sense. This could easily of turned into a one bar stop for the night. I was determined this was not going to happen, so I suggested to the guys we go walk about and see what we could see. We did three or four more tapas bars, at least this way we were getting to see some alternatives to the one spot. We walked down towards the bull ring by the river and back around again.


At least the evening was a mix of seeing different places. The one Tapas Bar that stood out was E.Morales, a really old bar, full of character, with wooden casks of port and wine, and cured hams hanging up. We headed back home, and agreed to meet at 9:00 the following morning. It was a lovely evening in Seville, an incredible city.

Some photos of this day are on Flickr here.

Part 2 is here.

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One Response to “5-Day Trip to Seville & Coimbra - Part 1”

  1. Column: off the record…, vol. 9-432 | The Big Squeeze

    [...] went to two of the last five gigs on the tour; the finer details of that journey are in the @U2 Blog. That is a total of seven U2 360 gigs I have attended, five in 2009, two in [...]