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Published: December 29th 2010
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I lay awake as the bells of the 400-year-old church down the street rang 4am. Then 5am. Now 6am. I have officially given up trying to sleep and figure I might as well accomplish something. Hoping this is the last of my jetlagged nights; while the 3 hours of sleep I DID get were lovely, it's probably not enough to see me gracefully through negotiating a rental car through the confusing streets of Sevilla without some sort of unhinging. Once again happy a reality TV crew won't be on my tail today.
Yesterday was fantastic - sunny and warm, a nicer day than we could possibly have hoped for in which to explore Sevilla. Armed with pastries from the bakery down the street and strong cafe con leches for courage we set off through the maze to find the
Alcazar . The streets of old town Sevilla are a lovely tapestry of character, each building unique, old and lovely, the heavy, studded street-level doors often looking like they were built to withstand invading armies. They need not have worried as the streets are so confusing that the army would never have found their particular door. We wandered through the picturesque plaza
San Francisco where, among other things, plenty of inquisition burnings took place. Ah, religion. Today it is a busy intersection of modern stores tucked into historic buildings, sleek electric trollies, and people everywhere, none of them, happily, on fire.
The Alcazar was a pretty sweet place to spend the morning - within it is the room where the first atlas of the world was created (mentions the map geek) and where Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Colombus did a bit of planning. Since the 1300s it has stood as the castle from which both Moorish and Christian rulers have done their thing. Eye candy, top to bottom.
Next stop, after refueling on a lunch of tapas and the world's most expensive 4oz Cokes we hit the
Cathedral as anyone visiting Sevilla must do. Giant thing, the world's largest Gothic Cathedral is the rumor. Anyone who has read Pillars of the Earth can't help but think of that book when near this church. It is an immense space with many intimate side chapels and anterooms and while it is an engineering spectacle it lacked entirely the mysticism of other cathedrals that I have visited, likely because religious ceremony is not
part of the tourist experience. Not to say that it wasn't a fantastic bit of engineering and artistry to be gobsmacked about. The best part of the visit is for sure the walk up the
Giralda , a former mosque minaret built in the late 12th century converted into a Renaissance bell tower after the Reconquista from which all of Sevilla can be seen. The way up is ramped so that horses could be ridden to the top where the church bells still ring on the quarter hour. Rather loudly.
Last historic stop of the day was the
Plaza de Espana , built about 10 minutes ago by European standards in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Another tastefully done bit of architecture made jolly by letting tourists rent row boats to play around in the moat-like waterway.
Here is a video from the plaza.
We started heading back towards the city center, running on fumes after processing a thousand years worth of culture and walking about 10 miles when we ran into a busy plaza hosting a high-end craft fair and where a brass and drum band was getting ready to entertain. And entertain they did. Once they started up
people started congregating like bees in a hive and when they started
moving (click for video) down the street there were a thousand people making up the happy procession. Great fun and a good energy boost to make it through the last third of the day. The acoustics in the narrow city streets were amazing. We paused at an outdoor bar for a beer and some local jamon and then made our way back to the hotel to jetison our crap and get ready for dinner. We ate in the Spanish tradition, at about 8:30pm at a little place called La Giganta where we had the best tapas yet: potatoes in a creamy basil sauce, pasta salad with ham and cheese and baked brie with chutney...washed it all down with goblets of red wine and left giggling. We weren't quite ready to head in so we stopped into Rinconilla for a beer (it's only about 20 steps from La Giganta) - the place was mobbed like a college bar except with 30-60 somethings, families, good friends. It's just what folks do here on Tuesday nights I guess. Pretty fun stuff.
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brr
42 degrees in Syracuse, 38 here in Burlington... -8 in Cortez! -14 is forecasted for tonight. Besides the worry of your pipes freezing, it looks as if you picked the right week to get away. Hope all is well.