Left our van at the campsite and took the bus into Sevilla. Spent the day in the sweltering Sevilla heat where temps got up to around 115 F. Most notable thing was getting turned away from a restaurant after sitting down. Bart and Anj don't eat meat. When they asked for a salad without the meat on top, the waiter said, "Here we don't have that." I asked again if they would just not add the meat on top of the lettuce for a salad and he responded by saying in Spanish, "Do you want a plate of carrots?" drawing laughter from surrounding tables. We ended up leaving and as we were leaving he continued to mock our veggies, asking why we would ever want just vegetables when there was so much good meat to be had. The other patrons laughed with him, but we got the last laugh because he had just cost the restaurant around 60 Euro.
We continued walking around Sevilla during the afternoon. Sevilla was like a ghost town during siesta time, which allowed us to see a lot of the city and its beautiful architecture without having to deal with any crowds. Rachel and I had come down with colds (hers more severe) which made the heat even less pleasant, but she was a tough cookie and made it through the rest of the day.
July 19: The Car Debacle
The whole car debacle was quite ridiculous and made me thankful for the organization back in the States. The car company sent us through some third party that worked with car glass and so again we were left communicating with a "voice" who couldn't answer questions like, is there an estimated time we may receive a call? How long can it take? Which car glass will it be? So, all day we sat around unable to move our van anywhere in Sevilla and kicked out of our campsite. We made good use of a strip mall and ate at a Chinese buffet where we could watch the van from the window. Anj's blackberry had gotten at the campsite earlier that day and we were just ready to get out of Sevilla with the rest of our stuff.
Finally, around 4 pm, we got a call from an unknown number. I answered speaking Spanish and the lady was speaking French. WTF? So I handed the phone to Bart in a sequence that had us connected to Spanish, Dutch, and French speaking people, most of whom we didn't really know who they were. To make the debacle short, we took the car to car glass and when we got there, they had no idea about our situation. The guy was very helpful and took the car in right away. Essentially we had wasted a day waiting for the voice to call us when we could have just gone right there... I should have known.
They didn't have the right window, but were able to put a plexiglass cutout that looked like a window. It came with some stipulations... no driving over 120 km/hr and we couldn't open any windows in the car when moving because it would ruin the pressure and pop the window out. It wasn't the best scenario, but we had a "window" and could get back on the road. Best of all, the really helpful guy at Car Glass, after finding out insurance wouldn't cover the plexiglass gave it to us for free. Feeling good again, we took to the road headed for Granada.
As we were driving to Granada, we received a call from the first (Spanish) car glass voice letting us know that our car could be seen at car glass... again, there is the organization in Spain for you. We arrived in Granada as darkness was starting to fall.
Finally, around 4 pm, we got a call from an unknown number. I answered speaking Spanish and the lady was speaking French. WTF? So I handed the phone to Bart in a sequence that had us connected to Spanish, Dutch, and French speaking people, most of whom we didn't really know who they were. To make the debacle short, we took the car to car glass and when we got there, they had no idea about our situation. The guy was very helpful and took the car in right away. Essentially we had wasted a day waiting for the voice to call us when we could have just gone right there... I should have known.
They didn't have the right window, but were able to put a plexiglass cutout that looked like a window. It came with some stipulations... no driving over 120 km/hr and we couldn't open any windows in the car when moving because it would ruin the pressure and pop the window out. It wasn't the best scenario, but we had a "window" and could get back on the road. Best of all, the really helpful guy at Car Glass, after finding out insurance wouldn't cover the plexiglass gave it to us for free. Feeling good again, we took to the road headed for Granada.
As we were driving to Granada, we received a call from the first (Spanish) car glass voice letting us know that our car could be seen at car glass... again, there is the organization in Spain for you. We arrived in Granada as darkness was starting to fall.
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