Anima

Let the backblipping commence!

To Seville today. Blouseybrown wrote about AirBnB the other day. As I've been professionally involved in this area (that is. most of our web development clients are or were in the vacation apartment business) I have some knowledge of this. And I must admit that there are places where holiday rentals are becoming a real problem. For example in the Marais area of Paris there are buildings where almost all the apartments are holiday lets with absentee landlords. Not only does this price locals out of central Paris, but those who do live there don't have neighbours any more, just a succession of strangers dragging wheeled suitcases up and down the stairs. And there is an increasingly vocal anti-tourist movement in parts of Barcelona.

So that said, we do use AirBnB for short stays when travelling, but now we aim to use it in the original spirit: a spare room in a local resident's home. It means you're not adding to the problem, and you get to meet a local. So we are staying with Aldara and her mother in a very nice apartment close to the Alameda de Hercules -- the same area we stayed in last time. Not only that, but Aldara is a tour guide, so a good source of useful information.

This evening: after watching the sun set on the roof terrace, tapas in the buzzing Dos de Mayo (recommended by Aldara) and a repeat visit to the Anima Taberna (just 300 metres from the flat). The place is as delightful as we remembered, and I can highly recommend the cheese, ham and pineapple toasted sandwiches. The music, North African in style,  wasn't quite as good, partly because they hadn't set up the sound system correctly, so if you weren't sitting within a couple of feet of the musicians you could barely hear them. We had a couple of drinks and sloped off home at a fairly modest midnight hour.

This poor-quality blip is just for diary purposes ... more to follow!