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Southern Spain: Seville, Granada, Valencia and more gluten free!

  • Writer: Ilene
    Ilene
  • Dec 16, 2024
  • 7 min read

Updated: Aug 18

After a few weeks in Portugal we returned to Spain, this time to the southern areas around Seville and Valencia. This is the end of the European part of the trip for us as we quite literally have maxed out our 90 Schengen visa days. For US citizens we can only be in Schengen countries (most of the EU except the UK) for 90 of 180 days. So with our 90 days spent, we’ll have to wait 90 days until we can enter the Schengen countries again. Fortunately that won’t be a problem as we head from Spain onwards to Morocco, Egypt, Dubai, Maldives, Singapore and into Southeast Asia!


We hadn’t spent much time in Spain (and none in Portugal) ahead of this trip. And with that, neither of us had a solid understanding of the history of the Iberian peninsula, both truly ancient history as well as the more current 20th Century modern history. I think because of that, both Seville and Valencia were ‘sleeper hits’ for us.


As we planned this part of our time in southern Spain, we kept hearing from everyone that we had to go to Granada. Unfortunately I didn’t quite realize how far Granada was from Seville, nor did I appreciate just what a popular tourist destination it was. So while sitting in Lisbon, days before we were due to arrive in Seville, we started working on our plans. I quickly came to learn that we were late to the party in getting tickets to the Granada Alcázar (most commonly referred to as the Alhambra), the main attraction of the city - AND - we still needed to buy train tickets and hopefully find a tour to get the most out of our quick day.


David and I frantically scoured the official site and started looking at Viator and Get your Guide for unofficial tickets as well. We had two different days we could make the trip and David, astute as he is, realized we could buy from the official site, and pay just a little more with a ticket that gave us access to more sites than we really needed - PHEW! At this point I was happy to pay a few extra Euro to get official tickets on the day and time we needed.


Then train tickets were purchased - it’s about 2.5 hrs by train from Seville, so it was a very early morning in an Uber to the train station. And finally we arrived in Granada, took a taxi to the Alcázar and met our guide - phew!


Let’s talk alcazars…. As we were staying in Seville we of course had already done a tour of the Real Alcázar de Sevilla and we were blown away. We were fortunate to find a small group and they handled the ticket purchase. The history, the moorish architecture, the gardens - we started to wonder why we jumped through hoops to go to Granada.



So how did Granada compare?

For David the Alhambra wins due to its pure size, both in the structure of being a castle / fort on a hill above the city it ruled as well as the number of rooms inside.



For Ilene, the Seville Alcázar edges out Alhambra, but not by much. For me it came down to the preserved and stunningly detailed decor. There were some rooms I walked into and my jaw just dropped. It was also super cool to know I was walking the rooms where Christopher Columbus and others of his era spent time planning their trip to America. I do agree with David too, the Alhambra is much larger with so much “more”.


We finished our day in Granada with lunch at this amazing plant-based place where almost everything was gluten free, Wild Food Granada, wandered the town, had a drink on a cute plaza and made our way back to the train station.


While in Seville we also took a day trip to Jerez de la Frontera, the home of Sherry and one of three cities that make the “triangle” of the Sherry region. We took a quick train ride there then an easy 15 minute walk into town and found our way to a 100% gluten free cafe called: 0% Gluten. After a coffee and a couple of pancakes we headed to Tio Peppe for our Sherry tour and tasting. I’ll keep this short, cuz I know David will write more in his guest column… we didn’t love Sherry.  It was interesting to learn the history, similar to Port, and understand the differences, but the taste just didn’t do it. After our tour we made our way to a bar to try a couple of other brands and styles. We still felt the same, but in this cute little bar we only paid 4.50 Euro for two glasses Sherry, so I guess I enjoyed them a little more! Jerez is also known for its horse shows, unfortunately the timing didn’t work out for us (late planning).



Back to our thoughts on Seville and moving onto Valencia… in Seville we loved the size of the city, smaller than a Madrid for sure, walkable, bike-able (we had a great bike tour while there) and some great squares, meeting spots, gardens/parks and beautiful historic sights.  Valencia has a similar feel, but doesn’t have as many touristic sights which was really nice. Stay with me for a second…we’ve been traveling for over four months to big and smaller cities but mostly as tourists. When we arrived in Valencia we found ourselves just enjoying the city. There are some sites and certainly a lot of history, but it doesn’t feel like a touristy city and we’ve really enjoyed that.


In both cities we’ve stayed in HomeExchanges, and in both cases they were primary homes, not second or vacation homes; this is where real people live. In Valencia the home/apartment was in a fantastic neighborhood, Razafa - lots of cafes, shops, markets (both traditional and fresh food markets). I think that contributed to our feelings about the city as well.


My impression of Valencia is very positive and progressive environmentally.  It is the only city where we saw water bottle refill stations on street corners and frequent water fountains.  Interestingly, in the 1980s they re-routed the river to avoid flooding in the main city and instead of creating a highway, they created a 10km urban park that runs around/through the city. The park was pretty amazing and felt like an extension of the city with bike, walk and running paths, futbol fields, skateboard parks, kids playgrounds and even baseball fields (yes plural!) And at one end there was a beautifully designed art and science complex with multiple museums and beautiful landscape.


We also learned that Valencia is the “bread basket” of Spain with agriculture being central to their livelihood and you can taste that in the food, the markets (numerous!), freshness of the produce and of course the rice dishes (more on that in a second). This is the first city we visited that I could imagine living in (I said IMAGINE, don’t get too excited). Our free walking tour was fantastic in Valencia with Juan Carlos.



Before I sign-off, a couple of notes on food and drink.  Rice dishes: we learned that not all rice dishes are created equal. Paella is a very specific type of rice dish and in Valencia it is Valencian Paella made with chicken and rabbit. Everything else is a rice dish, not paella. We also learned rice dishes should only be eaten at lunch, never in the evening as they leave too full to sleep; who knew? One guide told us he would never eat at a place that served rice dishes in the evening!


Drinks… two new ones for your radar, David will cover more I’m sure: Vermouth & Agua de Valencia. This is not your grandfather’s vermouth, it was delicious (ha!) and Agua de Valencia is absolutely NOT water.


And finally restaurants we found that we're plant-based and sin gluten (gluten-free) friendly:


Seville

  • Chök - AMAZING gluten free bakery with so many options for delicious pastries; also have other locations in Spain like Barcelona

  • El rincón de Beirut - not ideal but I made due. They were clear about cross contamination of falafel in the shared fryer and provided vegetables for dipping instead of pita, but then served the platter on a piece of lavache. with very clear directions can probably get by depending on your needs

  • Balino Yoga Café - fantastic breakfast / brunch spot

  • Arte y Sabor Tapas - had dinner here and staff was very knowledgeable and helpful and checked in with the Chef on everything

  • Shopping - El Corte Inglés supermercado

  • Mito Gelateria - lots of vegan options and gluten free, and the dark chocolate was AH-MAZING

  • Gusto - stopped for a drink here, but we weren’t quite ready for dinner, though good reviews for GF and Vegan Paella

  • Veganitessen - nothing that special but did have plant-based and gluten free options


Seville Didn’t go, but researched


Already mentioned these for Granada and Jerez de la Frontana


Valencia

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