Seville

To mark 10 years of being in a wheelchair, I decided to celebrate with my sister and go on a long weekend to Seville in September.

Amazing city with relatively good wheelchair access and most importantly amazing Tapas!

After some research we decided to stay at NH Sevilla Plaza De Armas hotel. A link to the hotel can be found here. It was fairly central, and had the most amazing breakfast which kept us going all day. The downside to the hotel was that it had a rooftop terrace with a pool which was unfortunately completely inaccessible with a wheelchair. The staff were very friendly though and offered to lift me until they realised the chair itself weighed 140 kg

The location was great as it was just a short walk from the central bus station so we were able to get the airport bus into central Seville and walked the hotel. It was close to the river and it was close to the centre within walking distance to all the main attractions. The rooms were spacious and had a wet room with roll in shower.

We decided to do a city sightseeing bus tour so that we could get our bearings in the city. This did have wheelchair access and was worth doing however unsurprisingly, you have to sit down stairs and the windows were often shaded so you perhaps didn’t get the best views. Although many of the attractions offered a free carer ticket, I wasn’t able to negotiate it on the bus. It was however, a great way to get round the city.

Places visited:

1.The Bullring. Click here for the link. This is not the Birmingham version with lots of shopping, this is a real bullring with real fights that go on. Thankfully there was not a fight going on whilst we were visiting! Here, I went half price and my companion went free which is always a bonus. The tour lasted approximately an hour and as the wheelchair user you were allowed into the actual bullring which nobody else was. Somewhat daunting when they weren’t explaining what was going on and I was half expecting a bull to come out of the opposite door!

2.Real Alcazar. Click here for the link.This was a really nice place to spend an afternoon wandering around. It is a mediaeval Islamic palace but features all sorts of different architectural styles including Spanish Christian and Moorish. There was a huge queue to get in so I played the disabled card and wondered up to the front of the queue looking slightly lost. Needless to say it worked a treat and myself and my sister were let in for free. Not all of it was accessible but some of the rooms had ramps and I could get in easily. It was also nice just to wander round the garden. I did try the maze but it quickly became apparent that it was too narrow so I had to reverse back out.

 

3.Seville Cathedral. Click here for the link. Sadly, I never managed to find the disabled entrance! There were a lot of signs, however, there was building work going on and it was not obvious. We did walk round and it did look beautiful from the outside! It was also very hot and we were got distracted by the various restaurants surrounding it.

4. Museum Pabellon de la Navegacion . Click here for the link. We found this completely by accident as we’d been wandering around lost trying to find a garden and we were ridiculously hot! Thankfully it was air-conditioned! It was a slightly strange museum based on human and technical highlights of the world of navigation. It had free entry however with the city sightseeing bus tickets and had some of the best views of Seville from the top of its tower.

Inside the museum, apparently this represents me in the ocean!

5.Flamenco Museum. Click here for a link to their website. I booked this in advance and was offered a free carers ticket. It was  good job I booked as the show was completely sold out and they had reserved us seats at the front. The show was great but sitting at the front meant that we did get sprays of sweat on us at times. Unfortunately, we went to the 8pm show and the museum part was closed after the show. The dancing was amazing.

6. Tapas. Seville is the home of tapas and we were lucky to find some nice restaurants . the restaurants around the cathedral were the more expensive ones and to be honest were the poorer quality. I'd recommend coming away from the main square for the better tapas.

Seville was a great weekend break and nice to sit and people watch in a café or bar. It was a brilliant was to celebrate my 10 year anniversary and practise some Spanish.