Hello Amadeus!

We arrived at the picturesque, ancient Santa Cruz section of Seville and we were all very happy with our rooms at the Hotel Amadeus after dealing with city traffic,parking garage and suitcase schlepping. It is about a three hour drive from Marbella so it was going to be the hardest and longest day for our fragile crew since we had sights to see and a Flamenco show at night too. We are all quite picky about hotels, so it was nice that this place lived up to it’s reputation for beauty, comfortable rooms and great service on a budget.

It is in a wonderful location in the most charming section of Seville within close walking distance to all the major sights. We enjoyed the typical Sevillano decorations like the tiles and woodwork and the little touches like fresh flowers all around. It is easy to see why it is rated number one B&B in Trip Advisor and gets raves from people like Rick Steves and British Conde Nast Traveler. It books up fast so we were lucky to get our three rooms on fairly short notice (at first we thought we could do this as a day trip from Marbella since we were booked there for the week).

The musical theme based on Mozart also was an added attraction for us as well as the available practice piano. We can easily take the violin with us, but finding a piano in a B&B is quite the rarity. Our Mozart had lots of fun playing for her Abuelo and Auntie between outings. It is my understanding that the family who owns this B&B, raised a family full of musicians as children and that was their inspiration. We appreciate that and think it is a good environment for kids to be in as well as adults.

We were in their brand new (remodeled) section, but we did breakfast in the original building on the roof top terrace which was a delight. It probably would have been more delightful if we could have done it a little later, but we had an early train to catch and a horse show on our second morning. The sky is a little hazy and it was a little chillier than ideal that early at this time of year.

We had three rooms and the elders were glad theirs was on the ground floor even though there was an elevator. We had the first two floors and what a pleasant surprise it was, when we opened our first set of shudders and saw a lovely old statue of baby Jesus with Joseph, right across the narrow road looking straight at us. We could also observe people sitting out in a nearby cafe and the hustle and bustle of people walking to work in the morning as well as laughing and enjoying themselves at night.

Mozart just loved having her own little bed in our room and running across the hall way to visit her Auntie who also had an unused  bed, but by bedtime she ended up sleeping between us as there was enough room. We all like the three large shutters and small balconies (similar to our home in the village) that allowed us to open when we wanted to experience the outside action or fresh air  and closed helping with shutting out the noise and light for a siesta or night of sleep.

My only complaint is a minor one and one I find happens often in Europe. In fact, I had this same problem with both our large luxury bathroom with Jacuzzi tub at the Marbella Marriott and our small older bathroom at home. It seems nearly impossible in Europe to take a decent, real  shower and not get water all over the floor! They had lovely glass doors just like the Marriott ones (unlike our “naked” one at home), but still, so much water was on the floor, I almost slipped and killed myself on the marble floors. We used the hefty bathrobe as our soaker bath mat.

There was a little noise from the street below, as Seville is a late night town like most of Spain and we are early to bed, early to rise types generally. But it did not bother us in the least and we managed to all get good solid nights of sleep.