Seville

Seville's whitewashed houses bright with bougainvillea, its ocher-colored palaces, and its baroque facades have long enchanted both sevillanos and travelers. Lord Byron's well-known line, "Seville is a pleasant city famous for oranges and women," may be true, but is far too tame. Yes, the orange trees are pretty enough, but the fruit is too bitter to eat except as Scottish-made marmalade. As for the women, stroll down the swankier pedestrian shopping streets and you can't fail to notice just how good-looking everyone is. Aside from being blessed with even features and flashing dark eyes, sevillanos exude a cool sophistication of style about them that seems more Catalan than Andalusian.

This bustling city of over 700,000 has its downsides: traffic-choked streets, high unemployment, a notorious petty-crime rate, and at times the kind of impersonal treatment you won't find in the smaller cities of Granada and Córdoba.