Broken down in Seville

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  Seville, Andalusia, Spain and Canary Islands
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

True to form, we are stranded in Seville with vehicular problems. 

We are in an internet cafe on a square outside the Cathedral downtown Seville.

The motorhome is at the Fiat dealership, leaving us homeless and without transportation.  Ah well it could be worse.  We are in Seville, and it is a fantastic place.

Yesterday we were in Toledo.  I went for a run from the campground, 2km up to the old city.  It was fantastic, running up through the impossibly steep and impossibly narrow old cobble streets.  The centre of Toledo is largely a car-free pedestrian zone.  I got hopelessly lost in the crazy non-grid street plan.  I ran around the 700 year-old cathedral and out into a small square in front of it.  Its fascade and towers are huge an intimidating.  Flights of small birds swirled around the towers and down into deserted early-morning square as I stood there panting and gawking. 

Then we drove most of the day here to Seville.  I have always thought of Europe as being civilized and developed, with lots of people living everywhere.  Spain is not like that.  Central Spain looks and feels like New Mexico.  Flat, dusty, deserted and above all hot.  Bloody hot and dusty.  We just sat there on the freeway trying to remain hydrated.

We found our campground just fine, thanks to our GPS.  Its a lovely place with a pool and lots of palm trees.  Thankfully, the temperature moderated from the blistering heat of the day, and we had a nice cool evening.

An aside about GPS in Europe:  We could not live without it.  The roads here rarely lead reliably in a particular direction.  If you are travelling from one centre to another, you will change roads and run around roundabouts every 10 km or so.  That would require a lot of map reading in foriegn languages, it not equipped with proper technology.   We on the other hand, just program the GPS with where we want to go - which takes a couple of seconds - and then it just leads us there by verbal commands and handy maps with highlighting.  We rarely have to do much map reading.  Without the GPS (whom the kids have nicknamed Steve) we would spend half our time lost, arguing, or looking for road maps.  Steve makes the whole thing headache free.

Igor the Fiat camper on the other hand has not been headache free.  Yesterday as we pulled into our campground, the power assist on the brakes suddenly stopped, making speed reductions pretty hairy.  So we puttered over to the local equivalent of Canadian Tire and tried to explain the problem.  We had a total language barrier, but managed to explain that there was some sort of problemo with the frenos.  Lots of miming and screetching sounds.  Ramon told us to come back in the morning.  We did, confident that they would do a quick remove-and-replace, and we would be on our way.   But no - the problemo was more serious than Ramon had thought.  We needed a Fiat dealer. 

In the mean time, Igor seemed to have developed a starter problem.  Sometimes the ignition just clicked, with no cranking.  Sometimes the cranking ended with a horrid gear-grinding sound.  We decided not to shut Igor off any more.

The Fiat dealer sent us to another, larger Fiat dealer who would be able to get Igor into their service bay.  That brought us to this huge establishment, Fiat Sevilla.  It was a giant all-inclusive operation.  Fiat owns pretty much all non-german car brands you can think of - so if you wanted to buy a Fiat, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Ferrari, or a couple of other brands, you would come to Fiat Sevilla.  I guess you can add General Motors to that list now.  They had a massive glitzy 3-storey indoor showroom, all done in shiny marble tile.  Acres of tempered glass and lots of very tasteful and very modern furniture.

Anyway it was a huge an very professional operation.  Absolutely no one spoke a word of English.  Nada.  Fortuitously, the starter chose exactly that moment to die completely.  This effectively dumped us on the doorstep of Fiat Sevilla, so they had to deal with us, because Igor was in the way.  No brakes, no starter.

Everyone was very helpful and very efficient.  The service manager eventually got a buddy on the line to speak to us in English and to do some translation.  They agreed to fix Igor - maybe today, maybe munyana.  We packed up a few things, jumped on the no.27 bus, and headed downtown to see the sights.

On the way, we found a cheap downtown hotel recommended by Rick Steves.  All hail Rick Steves.  We follow his every command.  Basically, we just program the commands of Rick Steves into the GPS, and Steve commands us where to go.  Anyway, when we got to the hotel it turned out to be very conveniently located near the Cathedral (the third largest in the world according to Rick Steves) clean, and cheap.  The rooms are roomy and bathroom is just down the hall.  The ony catch is that we had to rent 2 rooms, as they had nothing that slept 5.  Thatīs what we expected. 

The prices are less than you would expect right downtown.  The rooms were 35 and 45 Euros respectively.  That averages about 65 bucks a room.  Thatīs only a little more than the Commercial Hotel on Whyte Ave. in Edmonton.

We toured the Alcazar, which is a 10th century Moorish palace.  The Muslims ruled big chunks of  Spain for something like 800 years, from 720 AD until 1492.  This palace was mostly built in the Moorish style, by Moorish workmen after the Catholics took it from the Moors.  We all agreed that it was the most civilized and habitable royal palace that we have seen.  Versailles is huge and grand and covered with gilded this and painted that - but it is not homey in the way that this Moorish palace is.

So its another adventure - staying in a cheap Spanish hotel.

Tomorrow weīll have a look at the Cathedral, and then go and see if Igor can be brought back to working order.

Then if Igor can be repaired, it will be onward to Gibraltar.  If not, we may learn Spanish and get to know Sevilla really well.

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