See Ya in Seville

*This is a guest post written by my mom because I don't have time to write one. I added some comments throughout.*

We left the next morning for the train station. We had not checked out the schedule and hoped to get lucky. We were at the ticket window at 8:10 and on the train at 8:18! The scenery was wonderful with the mountains all around and made up for the fact that we didn’t have any breakfast (sort of).

After we arrived, Jeremy took a ton of pictures because every turn brought a street scene of southern Spain—narrow passageways, flowers, bright paint, and tiles (picture 1). It is a fairly big city. I didn’t realize that its former wealth came from having a monopoly on Spain’s trade with the New World post-Columbus. I couldn’t believe how much it reminded me of Mexico without so much dirt.

In Seville, our first tourist stop was the Cathedral (picture 2). It was built starting in the 1400’s on the site of a mosque. The quote that is in all the tour books states that the city elders said, “Let’s build a cathedral so big that everyone will think we were crazy.” It is the third largest cathedral in the world. Sorry to be a spoil-sport, but it just didn’t seem like the third biggest church in the world. The choir was in the center and it really took away from the feeling of being in a large place. I suppose the construction and scaffolding didn’t help either. The gold altar was amazing, not necessarily beautiful, but really something to see (picture 3). We climbed the Giralda, the bell tower. The tower is the one part of the mosque that survived. The top fell off and was replaced by the Christians, but the base is from the era of the Moors. It was really fun to see the city from on high. It was built with ramps, not steps, so that the person calling the faithful to prayers could ride a horse to the top rather than climb up! The tower is ornate and beautiful from the outside—it’s hard to take a bad picture of it. Every so often I had a rush of orange blossom enchantment (tower and orange blossoms picture 4). (Jeremy: The Cathedral definitely made me think they were a little crazy. The opulence of all the treasures they stored there (gold, silver, jewels, etc.) was insane. I agree with the fact that it didn't feel like the third largest cathedral in the world. But that's just the Spanish style. Lots of little chapels (over 50 in this one) makes the whole seem smaller. The Giralda was really cool. I always enjoy adding to my list of towers I have climbed.)

We finished with the cathedral and still had not had much to eat. We looked in vain for a sandwich shop, or anything that was not a sit-down restaurant. No luck. We were forced to have ice cream again! We really wanted to see the Alcazar, our second tourist stop, before it closed. I loved the dark red wall near the entrance (picture 5). The Alcazar is still maintained as a royal palace. It was built in the Moorish style for the kings and queens of Spain; as it is now, it was never used by the Arabs themselves. According to the guidebooks, instead of “Allah conquers all” or some such thing, the Arabic script decorating the walls says, “Pedro I is really cool.” There was much beautiful stucco and tile work (picture 6). (Jeremy: This was our first experience with Moorish tile work and carvings so I was amazed at how geometric and beautiful they were. The gardens of the Alcazar were what really blew me away though. They were huge and extremely beautiful. There were pools of water with fountains. Palm trees stuck up all over (picture 7). There was a hedge row maze as well. It was so nice to just sit in the eighty degrees and sun and relax. Probably my favorite part of Seville.)

As you have heard, this was probably the nutrition low point of the trip. I was tired! But we walked on to the Plaza d’Espana where there were so many Andalusian tiles. The bridge was made of tiles, and there was a plaza with tile niches in a giant semi-circle (picture 8). I needed to eat! We found a pizza place and shared a small pizza. It was not enough so we had, what else, more ice cream. You can tell that the price of ice cream was not too bad!

We stopped at a grocery store to buy some portable staples like crackers, nuts and fruit so that in the future, we would not find ourselves in the trouble we were in today. The grocery store offered great people watching. Some lady communicated to us that we had not pre-weighed our fruit. The younger woman in front of us bought about 200 Euros worth of food. So much for Europeans shopping every day for their food. I can still see her face and navy shirt and I imagine a painting of her bending over to place her groceries on the belt. Then we started to walk around again, taking some kind of circuitous route back to the hotel. We went through one square with only wedding goods. There were so many people out shopping or just walking around. It was as though we were in a stream of water rather than a crowd of people. Usually I can’t stand crowds, but this seemed to flow and bubble and eddy and that made it okay. After we got home, I read about the Paseo, or evening stroll. Maybe that was it, but this seemed too purposeful for a stroll. It was fun to experience it. The city seemed to buzz. Seville seems like a real city.

I was happily surprised to sleep well. I was worried at first because we could hear every sound and everything from the family living next door to our hotel room. I mean we could hear not only every word, but also the chink of the silverware, the tapping of the high heels, and, of course, the crying of the baby. The only thing missing was loud chewing. They were eating dinner about 11PM. I was thankful they retired to other areas of the house fairly soon after that because everyone knows that’s way past my bedtime!