Thank you Chris and Melissa! Your video is funny, energizing and so helpful ;) We tried Castizio, Europa Bar and the Mercado last week end and it was AMAZING!!! I would never have tried those places had it not been for you 😊 Thumbs up!
I'm working on learning some Spanish but it's a whole different ball game once you're there and they're talking a mile a minute and not slow like my recordings 😆Did you have to order in Spanish? I've heard you have to be quite assertive at the bars/restaurants to get service because they're very busy. Was that the case for you guys?
We know how that feels -- we felt the same with the Portuguese language! In Seville, we definitely did a lot of ordering in Spanish. In Portugal, in most of the restaurants we went to, servers quickly flipped to English after listening to us struggle. Not so in Spain. To be fair regarding our experience, I bartended in a Mexican-Mexican restaurant, as in I was one of three non-Mexicans working there and the other two were part-time, weekend hostesses. During that year, I learned a lot of Spanish and a ton of it came back to me as we were in Seville. Chris took four years of high school Spanish and worked in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant during one of his college breaks. I also spent about two decades in the restaurant industry as a bartender/server. Now that I'm done bragging about us ;-) all of that is to say, if our backgrounds were different we may have felt like we had to be more assertive. I don’t feel like we had to be assertive to get attention, but thanks to my past in the service industry, getting attention and service comes pretty easy to me most places. It did feel like once a server was taking our order, they were no nonsense about it at the busiest spots and expected their customers to get to the point. A few things that might be helpful (I apologize if you already know this stuff): * In Europe, in general, if you’re looking at a menu a server might not approach your table to offer to get you drinks beyond the water you’ve likely been served, or to see if you want an appetizer. They don’t want to rush or disrupt you. At some places, the general expectation is that they’ll take it all down at once. It's even policy when it comes to food orders at certain places. * In case it’s not covered in the language classes you’re taking dime (dee-may) is tell me. There were a few restaurants we went to, where instead of saying “what would you like?” or “what can I get for you” a server came to us and said “dime (dee-may).” * As it is throughout much of Europe, you’ll probably have to flag servers down to get your bill. They didn’t forget about you and they aren’t being rude. They just don’t want to interrupt you from the relaxation you’re doing. To both Chris and I, this took some getting used to because we felt rude flagging someone down for our check. The rule of two minutes from the moment you pick up plates to the moment you drop off a check is drilled into my head from our American way of doing things. If someone waved their hand at me, while serving in the States, I would've been annoyed, or offended, or both depending on the night. In the more upscale restaurants, more English was spoken or, if not spoken, understood. We made three trips to Seville while living in the Algarve region of Portugal and loved it every time. Hopefully that all helps. No matter what, you'll have an amazing time in Seville. It's a lovely place. -- Melissa
Sometimes I think new environments combined with good food leads to a lot of best declarations... when in reality... there's a lot of good food all over the world. :)
What an amazing day and time well spent! Great job making it to as many places as you were able to in a compact amount of time. Which was your absolute favorite of the group, and did you guys end up going to the last spot or circling back to the first one or both?
