Day 8 - A Visit to a Mosque, Rick & Jody do the Flamenco!


Advertisement
Spain's flag
Europe » Spain » Andalusia » Seville
July 2nd 2022
Published: July 3rd 2022
Edit Blog Post

Today was our second day in Sevilla, and I must say ut’s pretty great to be back where it’s warm! Some people are complaining about the heat, but we don’t mind it at all. The hotel is really nice, but somehow the Wi-Fi just sucks. It worked perfectly yesterday afternoon when we arrived, but nobody has been able to logon since yesterday. Looks like I’ll be uploading late on the bus again tomorrow. That worked out fine this morning, but it did take a while to upload the pictures. It was also very bumpy on the bus, but as soon as I finished, the road smoothed right out and was perfect for the rest of the day.

This morning we headed off to the ancient city of Cordoba. We met up with our guide, Gema who is a local, whose father was also a tour guide of Cordoba. She told us that Cordoba was at one time the capital of the Iberian Peninsula and in it’s heyday, it would have been the most exciting place to visit. Unfortunately, we were about 11 centuries too late, as the heyday of Cordoba was in the 11th century and it has been slowly losing relevance since then. This was also one of these cities that combined Muslims, Jews, and Christians in same city, just living in separate districts that tended to define the Iberian Peninsula until all the Jews and Muslims were kicked out in the 15th Century.

The first part we toured was a building called the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba. The building is about 300,000 square feet, and was begun in about the 8th century and completed in the 11th century as a Mosque. As a mosque, it is a very simple building, though quite large, it was expanded a couple of times as a mosque as the Muslim population of Moors grew. In the 12th century, it was taken over by the Christians and the conversion to a Catholic Cathedral began. Over the next few centuries, gothic, baroque, and renaissance construction converted the simple mosque architecture to an ornate mixture of several styles.

The result is a huge building whose open spaces still resemble the simple beauty of the original mosque with a huge cathedral style altar in the center. and all kinds of various mismatched chapels scattered in alcoves all around the building. Our local guide, Gema was different than others we have encountered. She was surely passionate about the building, and you could tell that she did not like that a bunch of rich Christians had “ruined” the building by building all these little monuments to their wealth and position throughout the church with little regard to the overall architecture. She preferred the simplicity of the original mosque. The cathedral has some long official name, something about the Blessed Virgin, but all the locals still just call it the Mosque even though it has been a Christian church for over 800 years! She’s right though, it is the simplicity of the original mosque and not the Christian adornment that makes this cathedral worth the visit.

After touring the Mosque, we were led into the older part of the city that remains of the 11th or 12th century. Of course we toured the Jewish Quarter, where there had uncovered a 13th century small private Synagogue. It had been discovered during a building renovation in the 18th or 19th century when someone noticed that the writing on the wall was in Hebrew and not in Arabic. It has been preserved, but not restored, as there have been no records found to document its existence.

After finishing the tour of the Jewish Quarter, we were given some free time for some lunch. Since we had just finished breakfast, we opted for our favorite lunch on this tour of gelato and Coke Zero, and spent the rest of the time visiting the shops. We bought a couple of t-shirts, a magnet, and Jody found an interesting top for only 18 Euro. While we were there, Jody was looking at the cork purses, as 50 percent of the worlds cork comes from Spain and Portugal, there are always lots of cork products in the souvenir shops. What we didn’t realize was how cheap they were. I medium sized cork purse is only about 26 Euro, so Jody will be looking closer for just the right one as we continue our journey.

By now it was time to head back to the bus to figure out what to do in anticipation of tonight’s activity – a Flamenco dance lesson followed by a Flamenco show. By the time we made it back to the hotel, it was 3:00 and we needed to meet up for the Flamenco at 5:30. Now the dilemma, to we try to eat lunch at 4:00 before the restaurants close for lunch at 5:00, or do we wait for the Flamenco show to end and eat like the locals when we return to the hotel at 9:00. Since Jody & I are just not night people, we decided it would be best to have a late lunch at 4:00. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of downtown Sevilla, and not in a particularly tourist area. So there are lots of restaurants around, but not the kind with pictures and menus on the outside. These are restaurants that cater to the locals.

So Jody and I went out exploring. We skipped the Burger King across the street, and were a little scared by the Chinese Restaurant down the street and settled for a typical local Spanish restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel. We went in, and they even had a menu in English, but like most of the local restaurants, this was a lunch menu. Jody had an Iberian Ham plate, and I had fried cod and fries. They were both delicious, but the portions were small, and not enough to hold us over for the night. So we finished our lunch, and decided to continue down the street, and see if we could finde somewhere else. Soon we came to a place called Hollywood Burgers, that had pictures of good old-fashioned American burgers and fries. We figured, it’s not Spanish food, but it will fill us up, so we headed in. As soon as we got inside, the waitress said no. It was too late at 4:30 to order as they would be closing at 5:00. So we left, disappointed.

As we kept heading down the road, it was getting later, and we still needed to eat and get back to the hotel by 5:30. And the Spanish are not known for quick meal preparation. Suddenly we saw a sign for Domino’s Pizza. Sure enough, they were open, has inside seating, and we could get a pizza in 10 minutes. That's how we ended up coming all the way to Spain to end up eating Dominos Pizza for dinner. And by the way, Domino’s Pizza in Spain is just as crappy as Domino’s Pizza in the USA. But it did fill us up!

After the pizza fiasco, we made it back to the hotel, just in time to catch the bus to the Flamenco Studio. It turns out the Teatro Flamenco Triana is a world renowned school that teaches traditional Spanish Flamenco. We mey with a lovely young woman, Carmen (of course), who is a principal dancer at the studio and had been studying and performing Flamenco for 8 years. But her job this afternoon was to teach 28 mostly over 60 Americans the basics of Flamenco dance. I had certainly brought my 2 left feet with me to the dance lesson, and of course it was in a mirrored room, so we could all see exactly how ridiculous we looked! But it was all great fun, everybody did poorly, but Carmen was patient and charming and got us all through the lesson without injury.

Dance lessons are a thirsty pastime, so afterwards, we were led to a room with drinks and snacks to await the performance. The show was performed it a tiny theater that probably held 100 people, but of course it had great acoustics. A few minutes after beig seated in the theater, the show began with 3 seats on stage: The Flamenco Guitar Player, The Flamenco Singer, and a seat for the non-performing dancer to clap and tap their feet as an accompaniment to the dancer. And who steps out in full makeup and costume as the dancer, but Carmen, who had just finished giving us our lesson about 20 minutes before.

Carmen was magnificent as was the singer, guitar player and the male dancer. The one thing our lesson had succeeded in doing was giving us all an appreciation for what are really simple moves, but combining them into the art form of Flamenco is so very difficult. The performances of all the players was awesome! And we thoroughly enjoyed the show.

We made it back to the hotel by 9:00, so we finally get to go to bed early, and we don’t leave until 8:00AM so we can both get a good nights sleep. Tomorrow we head for Gibraltar and Costa Del Sol. It should be great!


Additional photos below
Photos: 105, Displayed: 28


Advertisement



Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0748s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb