Seville travel info

Carriage wheels rattle over the cobbles outside the cathedral, and the hoofbeats bounce off the walls so you hear each one twice. Look up and there's the Giralda, a minaret with a Renaissance belfry stacked on top; look down and there's a bitter orange that's fallen from the street trees. Nearly every street tree here is an orange tree, and when they flower in late March the whole old town smells sweet.

Days start late and finish later. A morning wandering the tiled fountains of the Alcázar gardens, lunch after two at a stand-up tapas bar with a bowl of cold salmorejo, then the hottest hours, when the shutters come down and the streets go quiet. Around nine at night, clapping and guitar start drifting over the river from Triana.

Most long-haul visitors fly into Madrid and take the high-speed train down (about two and a half hours), or connect through another European city straight into Seville airport. The old town is small enough to walk everywhere. The one thing to get right is the season: July and August afternoons push towards 40°C, so spring or autumn is far kinder.

Seville San Pablo Airport (SVQ)