The Romans were all over the Iberian peninsula leaving the remnants of their feats of engineering along with other cultural tidbits. So perhaps the siesta is one of those? Spain actually gets the credit for inventing the “siesta”, but it is a practice that one finds throughout southern Europe. I must admit that by midday throughout my travels in blazingly sunny Spain, I felt like a crumpled wet dishrag and wanted nothing more than to get my soggy body as prone as possible around 4 p.m or so each afternoon–preferably under an air-conditioner.
Our pension in Seville was quite charming–an old Spanish townhouse on the second level of the building with a grand central courtyard into which all the guest rooms open up. The family who owns this floor–and perhaps the whole building–live somewhere further down the corridors.
When something is needed guests are asked to ring a bell. After which a frail old man hobbles down the hallway with his cane and tries his utmost to accommodate whatever the need is. After the first encounter, we were too wracked with guilt to ring the bell–knowing full well that we would be wrenching the poor man from some comfortable sofa.
Our room had an "old world" feel and was full of vintage furniture–a huge carved wood wardrobe, a lovely little vanity with a mirror, an old iron bed, and little carved wood nightstands. However, it had one very serious drawback–it was stiflingly hot and there was no air-conditioning (actually, not even a fan). It had windows which opened into another little sitting room that was between our room the one next to ours, but nowhere–it seemed–did the windows open up to the outside.
Consequently, in the heat of summer the rooms are intensely warm.
Every afternoon Seville almost shuts down between three and six o’clock. But the large stores remain open and these stores are probably the best place to be at that time of day–shopping in some air-conditioned wonderland. I did just that inadvertently one afternoon. My camera died in Portugal and after a few days of hoping that it might heal itself, I decided that in the first large city I came across I would just break down and purchase one–which I did on my second day in Seville. Exhausted by the whole affair, I had to lie on the big iron bed for some time and decompress. To fill the time until dinner I tested little camera buttons and dripped with sweat as though I was in a sauna.
Honestly, siestas have the same sort of therapeutic benefit as saunas. You become so drained of energy that you relax entirely and almost lose consciousness, then as you pull yourself back from the edge of oblivion you feel surprisingly relaxed and refreshed. But in any case, there is nothing else to do until dinner-time but melt, so you might as well do it lying down because “dinner-time” in Spain begins after 8 p.m. and goes late into the night. Until the sun stops baking the city and the evening breeze starts up, the inhabitants live in a suspended animation–only to come back to life around 9 p.m. with a vengeance.
By the time we left Spain we were well on the way to perfecting the fine art of taking a siesta and staying up until 1 a.m. The next time I visit Spain (and I have every intention of exploring more of this lovely land) I will gladly stay once again in this charming old pension. But it won’t be in July.
