January 30, 2026
Pete and I had a smooth 7 am flight from Portland to Chicago, until we landed in a blizzard that had arrived about 9 hours early. As you can see in the photo, planes were stacked up waiting to take off. With the snow, ice and planes parked randomly everywhere, it took us 40 minutes to navigate to our gate to deplane. We rushed through the airport to the international terminal for our flight to Frankfurt. The plane was late of course and then there was a mishap with the de-icing. We were all loaded up and ready to go when the power went off in the cabins, evidently they de-iced something they shouldn’t have. We had to wait for repair and all hope of making our connection from Frankfurt to Seville was out the window. We consoled ourselves with the thought that we have usually been very lucky with flights in the past. United messaged us that we weren’t to worry because by the time we arrived in Germany they would have rerouted us to our destination, how scary is that!
January 31, 2026
Neither of us are good sleepers on the plane. I find it impossible to get comfortable and usually end up watching movies, listening to audio books and playing games. When we arrived in Frankfurt, customs awaited us, we were so lucky to have arrived at off hours, so got through with no line or wait. Then came the bad news, there were no more direct flights to Seville that day and we had been routed to Lisbon and then to Seville. That meant total travel time of 32 hours (counting the 8 hour time change) with maybe 2 hours sleep. Ugh…
We made it to Seville around midnight, grabbed a cab (Duolingo really paid off there) and got to our hotel across the street from the train station. The hotel, Only You, is very nice with the kindest staff and very reasonable prices. Never has bed looked so good…
February 1, 2026
No untoward incidents with catching our 10:20 am train to Cádiz the next morning. Our Airbnb host let us check in early, which was great because we were exhausted. We are in the perfect location on our favorite street, right across from a great bakery and little grocery store.
We have been having on and off and on showers. Huge wind storm yesterday with 48 mph winds and 60 mph gusts. Thought the patio furniture was going to end up down in the street.
We have been out and about grocery shopping and picking up incidentals for our stay. The town has several variety stores, with various levels of organization. The items they sell are inexpensive and you can find just about anything.
February 2 & 3, 2026
Major storms, so only out when weather allows. Many little restaurants are closed as most seating is outdoors and there are very few people out.
Here are a few photos of our little abode.
We are on the upper level of a modern building in the historic district. Very minimalist with literally no decor other than the tiles.
We are very happy to be here despite the travel delays.
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