We've heard a lot over the years about the Seville Feria de Abril (Fair of April) which was held in May this year. Basically, to have much fun there you have to be invited into a tent, which are rented by families from Seville and even from other cities/towns in Andalusia.
There are some tents for tourists, but it's not quite the same. And, because of what happened to Carol, we ended up not going to tourist tents. Instead, I wandered around for a bit, Carol limped around for a bit, and then we left.
I didn't realize when planning the trip that the Feria de Abril (Fair of April) was going to be from May 6-11, but that explained why the VRBO apartment prices were higher than I expected.
The main reason they moved the April fair to May isn't just that they are Spanish so it doesn't have to make sense, but also because Easter was so late this year, they need a buffer between the week Seville parties leading up to Easter and the week they party during the Feria, which to Sevillians is a bigger deal than Semana Santa.
I'm pretty sure that at some point during the year Spaniards work, but I will let you know if I can figure out when that is.
The good news is, the Feria is held across the river and away from the main part of Seville. Carol and I talked about it, and we decide that, even if we couldn't do much related to Feria, we should at least check it out.
The previous two nights we had watched as women in flamenco-style dresses and men in suits hailed cabs and horse carriages on their way to Feria. But it seemed a world away from the historic core of Seville, so we didn't think it had much impact on us.
So, our last night in Seville we headed that way, walking the 1.5 miles to the Feria from our apartment. We weren't dressed up, and not everyone going was, but it's how you separate the locals from the tourists.
The crowds streaming toward the Feria got bigger and bigger, and then disaster struck. Someone clipped Carol on the back of the foot and she went down before we realized what was happening. We never saw the offending party, as they did not stop to apologize or lend a hand.
Carol bruised the meat of her hand by the thumb, had a bloody scrape on her knee, and bruised her knees and ribs from the fall. A number of kind people did stop to offer help (I'm pretty sure one was a doctor), but Carol eschewed it, got up, washed off the blood (wet wipes), and soldiered on, quite shaken, but not stirred.
I offered to just head back toward the apartment, catching a cab, but she said we are essentially at the Feria, we might as well check it out.
Although we were quite the outsiders, we thought it was interesting to view, as though we were cultural anthropologists back in the day studying native islander culture in the South Pacific.
The place is crowded. There are blocks and blocks of big tents, sponsored by different families, some from different cities. They offer food and drink, but only people invited are allowed in. That wasn't us. Some of the tents are doubly large, and those tended to have live bands.
We walked and gawked for about 20 minutes or so (if it wasn't so crowded, we could have covered the same ground in less than ten minutes) and then decided to split and look at the Torre d'Oro (Tower of Gold) and get dinner at Torie's favorite tapas bar in Seville (she did her semester abroad in Seville in spring 2018).
On the walk back, we stopped in a pharmacy where a nice young female pharmacist helped Carol pick out and try on a hand/thumb brace which helped quite a bit.
Here's some photos from the journey to the Feria and from the Feria itself:
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