After a wonderful 5 day stay in Lisbon, Portugal with our great host Mariana we headed off to Seville, Spain by bus. As usual we were looking for ways to save money and we had been flying so much lately that we were looking forward to a bus ride to see the beautiful countryside of southern Portugal and Spain.
With help from Mariana, we purchased our bus tickets at the bus station in Lisbon from a company called EVA Transportes. We had to purchase 2 separate bus tickets since there is no direct bus to Seville, Spain from Lisbon, Portugal. They have 2 daily buses that leave from Lisbon to Faro to Seville. You can either take an 8:30 AM bus or a 10:30 AM bus. Total price for both tickets was about 33 euros/person. The first leg of the journey is from Lisbon to Faro. Since we opted for the 10:30 AM bus we arrived in Faro at 1:00 PM. Our next bus was to leave Faro at 3:30 PM but did not show up until 4:00 PM. It was scheduled to arrive in Seville at 8:10 PM, but we did not get into the bus station in Seville until after 9:00 PM, mainly because of traffic, not due to the bus being late. So if the bus was on time and there was no traffic, I think we would have arrived 1/2 hour early. You also need to take into consideration that the time changes one hour forward once you enter Spain.
There are two main bus stations in Seville. The buses (including ours) from Faro arrive at Estacion Plaza De Armas, which is in the heart of the city center. The other station is Estacion Prado De San Sebastian, also in the city center but a little further away. There are plenty of accommodations near these stations and if you choose wisely you can easily walk to your hotel from the stations, which will save you a bundle on taxi fares.
When we arrived it was still light out and very hot (about 35 Celsius) so even though we had never been in Seville before we were able to walk around in circles down little winding cobblestone streets dragging our luggage by people having their dinners at little cafes on the streets before finding our hotel (Zaida Hotel) with daylight to spare! I don’t think it became dark until after 10:00 PM.