Return to Seville

For every five years of service, my employer—the social impact consulting firm The Bridgespan Group—offers a one-month paid sabbatical. It’s a rare and generous gift of time: time to step away from deadlines and deliverables, to reset routines, and to remember what unstructured days feel like.

I chose to spend mine in Seville, Spain.

This is my fourth visit to the city, which may seem counterintuitive given the many other places still on my travel wish list. But Seville offers a rare mix of novelty and familiarity—culture and comfort—that felt exactly right for a solo, month-long stay. The idea of spending several weeks somewhere entirely new, on my own, wasn’t especially appealing.

Since my first visit more than a decade ago, and especially after getting married in Seville in 2019, I’ve quietly fantasized about living here—or at least owning a small vacation apartment. A month feels like the right amount of time to see what it might actually feel like to live here, rather than pass through it. (I also desperately need to practice my Spanish.)

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging about my time in and around Seville—revisiting favorite spots from past trips, wandering into neighborhoods I haven’t spent much time in, and hopefully discovering a few new exciting facets of the city along the way. Some posts will be about food, others about history or day trips.

Thanks for following along!