With Sevilla high on our list during our 2021 family trip in Spain, many friends told us that the location of your stay was paramount. We spent weeks researching and elected to choose this apartment and the Gods were smiling. The location is the best of the best, across from the Cathedral, just a few hundred steps to the Alcazar, along Avenida de la Constitucion which is restricted to pedestrian traffic and no vehicles. We would roll out of bed and wander left or wander right and find yourself at a sought after attraction or charming local shop and feel like the town was much smaller than it really is. Here are some of our walking times from apartment to destination:
Sevilla Cathedral - 1 minute
Giralda Tower - 3 minutes
Alcazar - 5 minutes
Metropol Parasol (Setas de Sevilla) - 15 minutes
Royal Bullring (Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla) - 15 minutes
And while you are walking around, it’s not like Madrid, where you find yourself walking by nail salons or mechanics shops. Instead, you are walking by little cafes and boutiques offering their goods and services.
But it wasn’t JUST the location, the apartment is on the top floor with an elevator to handle you and your luggage’s verification rise and fall with 100% dependability. Maria Elena’s apartment is the only one that is perched on the 6th floor and her apartment is the only one in the block’s building facade that is the 6 stories tall. Effectively, you are provided with unobstructed, 270 degree views of the city. When walking into the apartment, the magnificent Cathedral is to your 10 o’clock and then there is no other building disrupting your views. The cherry on top is the roof top terrace which is easily 30’ x 25’ in dimension and has a private pool (hot tub) which is perfect if you plan your trip in the hotter months. It is not a shared terrace, this is YOUR terrace. The terrace alone should be worth the price of the rental rate.
The apartment itself was nice. Two bedrooms with two full baths, a small sitting room with elevated table for food and small kitchen. Myself, my wife and 13 & 10 year old were perfectly content with the size. Water pressure was good and the temperature of the water was nice and warm for my family. And when you go to sleep, you can press a button to lower the metal shutters on the outside of the building to give you 100% darkness. One might think, being adjacent to the Cathedral that the bells would wake you up but surprisingly, the bells only toll for a continuous timeframe at 9am…they act as the city’s alarm clock, but only at 9am, and they aren’t offensively loud should you wish to sleep in past 9am.
Finally, our host, Maria Elena…what more can I say. I arrival was delayed several hours and she stayed in communication with her. She was able to help us with access to the apartment even though our arrival was after 9pm. We missed our dinner reservations and she secured another from an impeccable restaurant 200 feet around the corner. She was a dream come true. Nothing went wrong, nothing was misrepresented in the advertising, she was accessible and followed up a couple of times to make sure all was good, even though we didn’t have a need to reach out to her.
Maria Elena and the location and quality of her apartment, made Sevilla our absolute favorite city in Spain and we would have no hesitation to recommend her with the highest confidence that your stay would be the experience of a lifetime.