One of the cute little squares in the historic quarter of Sevilla.
Our tour guide Amanda with the Alcazar palace in the background. You can also see the palm trees and bright blue sky that helped to create a lovely ambiance.
Part of the cathedral. For those of you who are not familiar with all the old architectural styles, this is a fine example of Gothic.
This is the huge golden alter inside the cathedral. This is apparently the largest alterpiece ever made. The picture is good, but it doesn't do it justice!
The paella that we had for our group dinner. You can see the regular sized dinner plates in the background to give you an idea of how big this pan is!
From Arcos de la Frontera, we got back on our bus to Sevilla. Sevilla is another big city, but after Granada, it seemed very clean and safe. One of the big attractions here are the orange trees all over the city. In the spring when they bloom, the air smells is fragrant with orange blossoms. Unfortunately these oranges are no good for eating. They are very bitter. There is only one use for them – in British orange marmalade. The people of Sevilla shake their heads that anyone would bother with such bitter oranges even as they sell them all to the crazy British people!
Sevilla has a very small historic center, about 1 km square. The streets are impossibly narrow and curvy making maps difficult. As in some of the other cities, the cute little open squares were actually not original. In Sevilla, they were built in 1929 for the Exposition. This ended up being a really bad year for an Exposition with the stock market crash and all. But they tried again in 1992 and the city ended up with some nice infrastructure and a lot of pedestrian-only streets. It all makes for a really pretty and charming city.
The two main sites in Sevilla are the cathedral and the Alcazar palace. The cathedral is the 3rd largest in Europe and it’s impressive. We had a fantastic, local tour guide who told us all the cool details about it. There is a tomb for Christopher Columbus here, but the city of Santo Domingo also claims to have his body. She explained that they ran several DNA tests before they were finally able to conclude that the remains in Sevilla are really Christopher Columbus. But Santo Domingo still claims that they have at least part of his body! The main alter of this cathedral was huge and all gold. I put the picture in, but you have to imagine it 10 times cooler. After we toured the inside of the cathedral, we climbed the bell tower. From the top, we were able to see lots of details on the church itself as well as the whole city. The bells were huge and when one of them rang, we nearly jumped out of our skin it was so loud!
Later that evening, we walked to dinner with the group. This was our paella dinner and they brought us one huge paella for the whole group. Again, I included a picture of the dish as they started to serve it. It was pretty good, but the stuff we ate in Madrid was better. After the meal, our tour guide had a surprise for us. She had arranged horse and carriage rides for the whole group. This was totally cool! We rode around the Cathedral and the palace and stopped for some pictures (sorry, none of mine were very good) before heading back to our hotel.
The next day, Dennis and I went to the Alcazar palace, which was very similar to the Alhambra but not quite as cool. Still it was nice to stroll around the gardens and enjoy the beautiful day. We walked around town quite a bit also and managed to find lunch in a little tapas restaurant. Later, we tried to find dinner, but as usual we struggled to find food before 8:30 pm. Thank goodness for tapas. We would have waited until later, but we had a Flamenco performance to go to at 8:30. The Flamenco was done in a really small theater, about 60 chairs around the center stage. There were only two dancers and the costumes were quite understated – not the huge ruffled dresses that we normally think of. After the performance, one woman asked if the Catholic Church had ever censored Flamenco because it’s so sexy. We were surprised to find out that they had not.
Sevilla has a very small historic center, about 1 km square. The streets are impossibly narrow and curvy making maps difficult. As in some of the other cities, the cute little open squares were actually not original. In Sevilla, they were built in 1929 for the Exposition. This ended up being a really bad year for an Exposition with the stock market crash and all. But they tried again in 1992 and the city ended up with some nice infrastructure and a lot of pedestrian-only streets. It all makes for a really pretty and charming city.
The two main sites in Sevilla are the cathedral and the Alcazar palace. The cathedral is the 3rd largest in Europe and it’s impressive. We had a fantastic, local tour guide who told us all the cool details about it. There is a tomb for Christopher Columbus here, but the city of Santo Domingo also claims to have his body. She explained that they ran several DNA tests before they were finally able to conclude that the remains in Sevilla are really Christopher Columbus. But Santo Domingo still claims that they have at least part of his body! The main alter of this cathedral was huge and all gold. I put the picture in, but you have to imagine it 10 times cooler. After we toured the inside of the cathedral, we climbed the bell tower. From the top, we were able to see lots of details on the church itself as well as the whole city. The bells were huge and when one of them rang, we nearly jumped out of our skin it was so loud!
Later that evening, we walked to dinner with the group. This was our paella dinner and they brought us one huge paella for the whole group. Again, I included a picture of the dish as they started to serve it. It was pretty good, but the stuff we ate in Madrid was better. After the meal, our tour guide had a surprise for us. She had arranged horse and carriage rides for the whole group. This was totally cool! We rode around the Cathedral and the palace and stopped for some pictures (sorry, none of mine were very good) before heading back to our hotel.
The next day, Dennis and I went to the Alcazar palace, which was very similar to the Alhambra but not quite as cool. Still it was nice to stroll around the gardens and enjoy the beautiful day. We walked around town quite a bit also and managed to find lunch in a little tapas restaurant. Later, we tried to find dinner, but as usual we struggled to find food before 8:30 pm. Thank goodness for tapas. We would have waited until later, but we had a Flamenco performance to go to at 8:30. The Flamenco was done in a really small theater, about 60 chairs around the center stage. There were only two dancers and the costumes were quite understated – not the huge ruffled dresses that we normally think of. After the performance, one woman asked if the Catholic Church had ever censored Flamenco because it’s so sexy. We were surprised to find out that they had not.
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