Seville, November 2025
The feeling of being outnumbered by your children is never quite as acute as when you take them on holiday. So it is that on a balmy November night in Seville, my wife, our toddler, our twin babies and I join a queue of tourists waiting for a bus to take us into the city.
All three children have, mercifully, slept the majority of the flight, so we’re not feeling too flustered as we board the first airport bus we can fit on, heaving three suitcases, travel cots and a double pram.
For the first few minutes, the overriding feeling is of those gentle butterflies that accompany a holiday – one that goes from trawling booking websites and arguing about which accommodation to choose to something suddenly lived in the here and now.
The bus trundles through the night, into the Nervión district, and approaches the Old Town. Then it turns left.
It appears we’re heading in the opposite direction to Triana, on the other side of the Guadalquivir River. The butterflies become less friendly. The kids are OK, thankfully quiet, but we’re slightly anxious to see the bus right its course.
Parque de Maria
Juan Serrano
After another 20 minutes and some discussion in broken Spanish with the driver, we end up getting spat out onto a backstreet near a bus station ten minutes south of where we were meant to. A slightly-too-quiet side road turns into a busy main drag, and we snake suitcases and pram wheels around lively Saturday-night streets, dodging revellers as we go.
Dylan is quiet, but then Ruby starts crying, beginning with a few moans but quickly ramping up into a scream. The host at our apartment warns over text that they’ll have to charge us for the wait, despite my protestations about the diversion.
I’m trying to press on with the heavy luggage but Henry is flagging and pedestrians outside a church are getting in the way. Over text, a woman called Paola is trying unsuccessfully to find me. I’m sweating now, muttering under my breath, as the crying becomes the high-pitched rasp of a baby who doesn’t plan on relenting anytime soon.
When we’re finally let into the apartment building, our pram doesn’t fit inside the lift. Classic. Passing the babies to my wife, I fold it up and carry it up two flights of stairs to the second floor, and follow Paola through the apartment’s open door.
And it’s… nice. In decent condition, perfectly hospitable, boasting a lounge with French windows leading to the balcony. The opportunity to refresh ourselves with tapas and a glass of wine at one of the restaurants just below has passed, so I run out to the nearest supermarket to round up some dinner while my wife puts the twins to bed.
Pacing through the pretty Plaza de la Magdalena, I barrel into the entrance and plunder a bundle of tomatoes, bread, jamón ibérico and manchego along with some beer, Tío Pepe and ice for a bucket, and then hightail it home.
I crack a beer as I’m plating and pour the sherry. Out beyond the balcony, the church I’d been too miserable to notice before is festooned in lights, resplendent in the autumn night.
A shop front reads, simply, Churros y Patatas. Below, a restaurant is full of locals, the soundtrack a hubbub of chatting and laughter. There’s no salt for the tomatoes. It’s OK. My shoulders drop. We’re here. We made it. We’re on holiday.
Jerez, September 2024
We headed to Jerez in September 2024 with Henry just shy of two. He was the first grandchild on my side of the family, and we were travelling there with my parents, my two brothers and their partners for my brother’s 40th.
We’d taken Henry on a few trips before, and we were feeling good. Sherry and tapas were on the menu, a proper city break with proper lunches and dinners every day, thousands of yards of streets to pound and quintessential Spanish sights to see.
My side of the family has long travelled led by the nose and palate – Champagne earlier in the year, Padstow the year before that. Each trip had become a little easier, from the early wake-ups of Cornwall to the slower rhythms of northern France, and now the buzz of a city break under the autumn sun.
With grandparents, uncles and aunts all on hand, there were plenty of hands to help with our energetic toddler.
I’d always been adamant I wouldn’t have three kids, but there’s nothing like a private scan in a Walthamstow clinic to underline that one pregnancy doesn’t always equal one baby.
Plaza de España
By the time the nine of us congregated in a palatial former Cuban dignitary’s residence in the centre of Jerez a few weeks later, Em and I had had just enough time to get our heads around the news.
There was a slight concern we might be stealing my brother’s thunder by telling the family about our impending arrivals on the first night. But his birthday wasn’t for another five days. And hey, we were having actual twins.
Between the sun, the endlessly casual atmosphere in restaurants and bars, and drinking lots of sherry whenever the occasion allowed for it, Jerez is a beautiful part of the world and a salve to life’s travails.
Here, we might not just get used to our newfound situation, but maybe also make peace with it, too, and turn the apprehension into excitement. Post settling in, the trip began in earnest with dinner at Restaurant Albores in Jerez’s town centre, contemporary tapas alongside Rioja and fino sherry, and that set the tone.
Naturally inclined to mischief, Henry nonetheless followed his grown-up family dutifully around restaurants, wine bars and sights for a week. Jerez was probably the first holiday he felt like a proper toddler, rather than simply a baby who could walk, so he became more like one of the family, traipsing around the enormous townhouse’s massive hallways, playing with his uncles and aunties, and excited to be left in their care for a while here and there.
We spent carefree days among the tapas bars, beer bars and sights of this underrated Spanish city. The Alcázar de Jerez in the north of the town made for a great day out, Henry running across a vast courtyard of sandy stone and the winding corridors of the Moorish castle in pursuit of his uncles.
Jerez is the home of sherry – fino, manzanilla and richer, oxidative styles like oloroso and palo cortado. I knew the basics, but there’s nothing that beats learning in situ. We found both on tours at Lustau and González Byass, producer of Tío Pepe, and were quickly hooked.
Day trips, of course, were easy enough with just one eager toddler to care for. We drove from Jerez to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and we boarded a train from Jerez to Cádiz to check out the beach and eat more tapas. Henry was a mascot, a little sprite, well past the high-maintenance baby stages and very happy to be playing on the sand with his family.
Torre de Oro
At one point back in Jerez, we left Henry to spend some quality time with his grandparents and ended up at Tabankino, a brilliant little tapas restaurant that elevated its dishes with measured and flavourful influences from Asia.
But food-wise, the biggest treat was on the last night, as my brother wanted to take the night of his 40th to treat us to dinner at Mantúa by Israel Ramos, one of Jerez’s Michelin-starred restaurants. The table booking for the tasting menu was at 9pm – this was Spain, after all – and what followed was a procession of artful, creative dishes rooted in French technique but quintessentially southern Spanish in flavour.
These days, dinners out for Em and me were a collector’s item in themselves, let alone the upper echelons of fine dining. The restaurant was accommodating enough to let Henry join in his pram, where he slept for the entire meal and the journey home, and the holiday’s finale went off without a hitch.
There, with my family around the table, my wife at my side and our son dreaming peacefully a metre away, was the chance to sit back and take stock. We’d had a great week, capped off by a great night. We felt relaxed. Travelling with kids was pretty good.
Seville, November 2025
Relaxation, in relative terms at least, is definitely the name of the game on our trip to Seville. The job at the aforementioned drinks retailer had come to an abrupt end a couple of weeks before, and after a frustrating time navigating the housing market, a third move in a little over a year was on the agenda.
With me not working and Em on maternity leave, the realisation that we could book a last-minute trip with the kids away from the anxieties of uncertain work and complicated home lives – if not the stresses of parenthood – was an exciting one. With fond memories of Jerez, we decided the fine weather, laconic pace and child-friendliness of a southern Spanish getaway in November was just the tonic we needed.
The first morning, after a quick breakfast, we stop for lunch at Catalina la Barra. Generally speaking, you hop in and out of tapas bars here without remembering their names; I had looked up Bar Alfalfa before the trip, but its compact size isn’t going to allow for a pram. Not to worry; we go old-school and choose Catalina because it looks good – slightly polished, with a strong menu.
Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Ecuestre
Jo Hansford
We sit outside, wedge the pram beside us, and order a spread: gildas, sardines on toast, and a few plates of local meats and cheeses. Henry picks at whatever he can reach, and there’s Andalusian wine and, of course, sherry to amplify the salty savour of the snacks.
Later in the afternoon, it’s churros con chocolate at Bar El Comercial. Service is slow and the space overheated, so I order a cold caña and take a moment before the churros arrive, piping hot, which we share as we walk.
That evening, we finally make it to the tapas bar just below the apartment. The twins sit in their high chairs by the open window, drawing attention from passersby, who stop to coo and chat. Over simple plates of abanico ibérico and glasses of palo cortado, the mood softens.
The next day we visit the Alcázar de Sevilla. Its gardens, fountains and open space make it ideal with children. From there, we head into the Jewish quarter and settle at Casa Román for lunch – a straightforward spread of grilled vegetables and pork, with wine and sherry to finish.
Finding the rhythm
Most parents will identify, I’m sure, with the feeling of mindless repetition that being parents of young children can bring, as life becomes centred on the domestic. In lots of ways it’s welcome, in even more it’s gratifying, but there’s no doubt it can often feel like a case of simply getting through the week.
A holiday, though, has its way of creating a new rhythm. The drudgery of ‘what are we eating today?’ becomes, instead, ‘where are we eating today?’
One is a chore, the other is a pleasure; one’s a predictable, quotidian facet of home life, the other a thing of open-ended, tantalising possibility. It was true in Jerez and
it’s certainly true in Seville.
Days go by in a lush, sunny haze: we visit the Parque de María Luisa, which connects three or four of Seville’s neighbourhoods; we go across the bridge to Triana (planned this time) and browse the historic market and ceramics district; we do a Guadalquivir boat tour and fit in a quick lunch at Cervecería Mary Reyes, a bar that serves its outside patio space from a small counter, where we order more gildas and croquetas.
Feeling particularly brave (or possibly foolish) on our second-to-last full day, we plan a day trip to Córdoba, a small city about 45 minutes east on a high-speed train. The train ride is easy enough, exciting for Henry, and the day is, generally, glorious.
Córdoba is a charming city, where most of its old town wraps around another beautiful Moorish alcázar. We find a spot for lunch in a restaurant serving traditional tapas among its winding cobbled streets, and a bar to stop at for a refreshing G&T before the train back to Seville.
For some reason, we’d chosen to start potty-training Henry a week before the trip. Generally it’s been fine, but on the train he’s completely desperate, and his resistance finally breaks in the toilet – a milestone of sorts.
Predictably, I also need to change one of the twins immediately before we pull in, which I do in a square-metre cubicle while wearing the other one on a sling. It is not a particularly dignified five minutes.
At some point I’m desperate too, but for paella, so we make plans to go to Restaurante El Paseíllo for just that. We sit on the terrace in a smart street just north of the beautifully lit cathedral, twins asleep in the pram after the walk there, and it’s a slick operation, with good food.
Spain is a familial, sociable country
Our waiter, initially gruff, warms to Henry by the time starters arrive, and by the time a cast-iron paella pan arrives full of the fragrance of saffron and chicken stock, rice, chicken, asparagus and aioli, Henry is hungry enough to wolf down two plates of it. The twins stay asleep, and the night finishes with walking the pram home by way of a gelateria. Perfect.
By now, the rhythm I mentioned earlier has inverted. By the last few days of the holiday, sun-drenched afternoons and warm evenings in tapas bars drinking sherry now feel like routine; domestic life is a whole world away, and the real world is the thing that’ll feel unfamiliar in the day or two after we return home. Things run more smoothly than they should. The usual pressure lifts. You get on with it, and it works.
For me, the finding of that true holiday feeling – the beat you take to warm your face in the sun, to idly wonder what the afternoon might bring as you ask for the bill – is what a good trip is always working towards.
Whether the sensation in those beautiful few days is remarked upon or simply felt, it’s something that can make you feel truly relaxed for the first time in ages.
For some reason, places like Seville and Jerez have a knack for drawing the chaos into some sort of order; of forcing perspective, zooming out rather than in. Spain is a familial, sociable country.
Its cities don’t care if your babies are making noise in a restaurant or if you have to stop them from stealing other people’s cutlery. They’re just happy that you’re there.
I’m happy, too. In this moment, with the midday sun shining off the Guadalquivir, a coffee in your hand, your partner and children by your side and the sepia-toned possibility of another day in the sun, it all seems a lot less difficult.
If we’re outnumbered, it doesn’t feel like it.
