A Travel Blog
The highlight of our surprisingly spacious apartment in Russafa is the view into the adjoining intersection, which is always lively and full of pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, scooter riders, cars, delivery trucks, and people just enjoying beers or tapas on one of the patios.
Read the full post »We’re staying at an Airbnb just off the Leith Walk, roughly halfway between central Edinburgh and the Leith Shore.
Leith has traditionally been an area of industry and shipbuilding. After WWII the area fell on hard times, and later became famous as the setting for the Trainspotting novel and movie. Leith has now heavily gentrified but still maintains some character.
Our Airbnb is in the top floor of a former tenement building, with view looking south to Calton Hill… and directly down onto a Lumber Yard, which starts operating forklifts at 8am.
Our Airbnb apartment is in an area of Seville known as La Macarena.
The neighbourhood is most famed for its Basílica de la Macarena and a long stretch of the original murallas, or protective city walls that date to Roman times.
Our flight from Dublin landed in Seville yesterday. Amidst the whirlwind of checking into our Airbnb, stocking up on basics at the local supermarket, and catching up on sleep and real life, we’ve also managed to head out to explore a few times.
Our wanders have lead to us becoming pleasantly disoriented on the city’s narrow, winding streets, but thankfully Google Maps on Josie’s phone has always brought us back home. Eventually.
One of the nicest features of the little house we rented in Lisbon is the patio balcony, which opens directly from the bedroom. I went out of my way to find a place with a bit of outdoor space since we don’t have that at home.
So even it though it was a few degrees cooler this morning than I would have liked, I still made sure to drink my coffee on the balcony. But my coffee ended up forgotten as I became distracted and began taking photos of all the interesting details I noticed.
One last blast of freezing rain and flurries blew through Toronto just before our plane was scheduled to take off. We felt lucky to be delayed by only one hour, which we spent watching the robotic arms of the de-icing machines spray down our plane with a fluorescent green liquid.
After a stop in Montreal and six more neck-wrenching hours trying to doze on the plane, we arrived in Lisbon around 7 in the morning. Even from high above, the famous “light of Lisbon” was already evident, glowing on the orange rooftops of the buildings we flew over.
