The Lovely Lido Revisited!

We enjoyed Clifton lido so much in feb 2012 that we went back there in November.  We had lunch downstairs in the tapas bar, rather than upstairs in the restaurant. My personal favourite was the tortilla, Spanish omelette, and my partner was pleased to enjoy the scallops cooked in the wood oven, just like we had last time upstairs. The fresh bread, just still warm was incredible.


We also managed to do a few lengths in the pool, and spent a while in the sauna, steam room, shower and freezingcoldbucket area.

All exceptional!

I even met S. in the sauna who I was about to spend 48 hours with at the Penny Brohn Centre in Ham Green.  True coincidence.

The food was as yummy as I remember and the overall feel of the lido is very relaxed and quite luxurious at the same time.  I really like the new toiletries in the shower areas that are made by the Cowshed people but branded as Lido products. Nice smellies!

Seville's Top Three Tapas Bars - How to Munch through the Credit Crunch

To celebrate my 40th birthday, I have just been treated to an amazing week of feasting on tapas and Rioja in Seville in the South of Spain.  We took the children despite our 14 year old preachy guidebook telling us that 'although Spaniards are very welcoming to children, you may want to consider whether Seville would be a more relaxing and romantic experience if you left the children behind.'  Made me laugh, and I was tempted for a while, but we brought the sprogs along regardless.

Eating in Seville is 90% tapas bars.  There are a couple of linen tablecloth-ed restaurants, but they look so starchy (and expensive) in comparison to the vibrancy of the bars.  Dining out in Seville proved to be surprisingly cheap.  Coffees were about 1.4 Euros and a glass of decent red wine about 2.5 Euros.  I was expecting the anchovies, tortilla, red peppers, patatas bravas, slices of ham and deep-fried croquettes of 14 years ago, and indeed there were plenty of these to be had in places like the wonderful Dos de Mayo.  

This is the 'racion' (medium sized) portion of the alternative Spanish Omelette , this one contained red, green peppers and ham.

Marinaded chargrilled peppers

Marinaded slices of tender calves liver with spring onion

After a few days we discovered the joys of 'modern tapas' at Eslava and Lumbreras e.g. a barely set egg yolk quivering on top of a 'mushroom cake' or a meltingly tender solomillo fillet steak atop a smear of fresh mushroom cream - these were exquisite high-end restaurant standard dishes - and no photos as they were snaffled so quickly.  The fillet steak was the most expensive dish we had at 6 Euros, oh yes, and a huge dish of garlic butter clams for 8 Euros, but for the most part, they came in at 2-3 Euros a plateful.  As a family of four, we lived like kings and ate and drank to our hearts' content, and the bill was often a remarkable 25 - 35 Euros.

Here's a picture of the wonderful Dos de Mayo tapas bar, just behind the main Il Corte Ingles department store on the Plaza de Duque de Victoria.  It was a frenetic den of activity - I have no idea how the barmen kept track of everyone's pint-size tapas orders.  They did call me 'Casey' which we found amusing.

This was the children's favourite, churros with hot chocolate at a corner breakfast cafe.  Cheap, calorific, filling and delicious.  NB, there is a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice in the top right hand corner in a vain attempt to make the meal have a nutritional value.

Our favourite tapas bars in Seville were:

Eslava (lots more photos of their food on this website)

Dos de Mayo

Lumbreras (they don't have their own website - so this is a link to Tripadvisor)