Spain 2018 (Pt. 1) - Arriving in Seville

3 hours snooze fest on the flight later, we left gloomy land and landed in sunny Seville! I mean just look at that and do the comparison yourself..  

Once we cleared immigration and got our luggage (which was actually overweight by a kg - we do not travel light...), we made our way to the hotel. 

In the cab, 

Driver: Is this your first time in Spain?

Us: Nahh, we've been to other cities in Spain 

Driver: Really which? 

Zoe: Barcelona, Madrid.. 

Driver: That's not Spain! You've got to come to Andalusia to experience the real Spain

Me: I've been to Granada & Cordoba

Driver: Ahh yes, but those are small cities 

#nakjugakmenang.. 

20 minutes later we were at the hotel. Unfortunately the hotel had one of the latest check-in time (4pm!) so we had about 3 hours to kill before we could get to our rooms.. Meh. 

While waiting, we decided to walk around the city and find a place to eat as we both haven't had a meal since 7am. Unfortunately as it was New Year's Day, most of the shops were closed. So we just walked around the city, taking random turns here and there wherever we felt like it #adventurous! 

It was really nice to be able to walk in a non-crowded, narrow streets. 

Eventually hunger really caught up with us, so we decided to settle with one of the little restaurants that had quite a number of people (so many that we couldn't sit outside and enjoy the glorious sun in the middle of winter #jakun). 

Zoe had a sangria and I had the cutest little bottle of coke. It's so cute (it's like half the size of a standard glass-bottled coke) that I thought that I'd wanna take it home with me, but that'll be a logistical nightmare.. 

We also had a paella to share (cause we didn't want to commit to two plates of paella in case it was humongous - which it turned out to be...) and that was sadly, the only proper paella we had throughout the entire trip! -__- 

It was actually quite a good seafood paella, and we thought of coming back another day but since we were randomly walking, we didn't actually know the exact location of the place nor did we thought of noting it down..

Post launch we did a little more exploration before we decided that it was time to check-in and made our way back to the hotel. As we were just about to enter our room, my phone rang as it was close to midnight in KL and well, I have clingy friends.. 

Stayed on the line with them for awhile as we waited for it to be midnight in Malaysia to welcome Anis' #quarterlifecrisis. #takcukupquorum #Harizbuatlaundry

After the call, we decided to chill in and watch a movie and while flipping channels we found The Holiday playing on TV #meanttobe! 

After the movie, safe to say we were so ready to meet our Spanish Jude Law on this trip, lol. 

We also physically mapped our plan for the next day because Zoe enjoys referring to a physical map than a digital one. It is quite a cool memorabilia to have from each of your travels, especially if you have space where you can either frame them nicely or store them in like a scrapbook or something - but trying to find directions sometimes with it could take awhile (it does not exactly come with a "You Are Here" marker now does it, and some maps have really tiny writings which makes it 5x harder to find the street name!), so sometimes I'd just Google Map us while I wait for Zoe to find our location on the map.. #contingencyplanning #bcp

I found an Italian restaurant advertised on the map, and since our second option if it wasn't Spain for this trip was supposed to be Italy (I like their food! Italian food > Spanish food), Zoe had to concur with having Italian food in Italy. 

On the way to dinner, we decided to go to the Metropol Parasol as it was the closest landmark to our hotel and we'd be passing by it. The Metropol is apparently the largest wooden structure in the world. 

The miniature replica of it reminds me of those building game you used to play with your ice cream sticks. 

Some of the pretty and cute findings on the way to dinner. The kid is literally my #kidgoals

If it weren't for the advertisement, I swear we wouldn't have found the restaurant because it was so hidden in a tiny & crooked alleyway but I'm so glad we found it! Not only the food was tasty, but the service was amazing and it does help that the waiter was cute and chatty :P #closestwegottoaSpanishJudeLaw

We had bruschetta (completely forgot that the usual one is topped with tomato cause I normally have the mushroom one back home at Antonio's -.-), croquette, and mozzarella not-so-stickish-stick as appetizers
  

My plain penne arrabiata (can rival Antonio's one) and Zoe had some octopus pasta with red wine.

Zoe: This is how our entire trip is going to be like isn't it? I'll be drinking alone...
Me: Well, you can pretend my lemon tea is a neat whiskey?

Kinda looks like it doesn't it?

We had a nice proper sit down catch up session over dinner and the temperature was just nice (i.e. not too cold). Plus the ambiance was really great too!

Felt like I was in a different country for awhile there..

On our way back to the room, we decided to stop at the sundry shop next to the hotel to get a big tub of bottled water and some snacks #lifeisallaboutbalance

In the store, Zoe also found this cute little hat and decided to get it as a self-souvenir from Seville

Comel gila kan?

That night as we knew that we were going to have a super early morning the next day, we decided to turn in early and tbh it was rather easy to do as we were both so tired from the constant travelling/ being on the move..

- to be continued in the next post as I decided this is already too long for one post. Initially there's 140 photos in this post guys x.x -