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Published: April 5th 2011
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Did I mention
that the weather was beautiful? It was. We all managed to get up early and fix ourselves a breakfast and pack a lunch – we had some serious sightseeing in mind. Sevilla is about an hour and a half from Las Pinedas and it is all freeway driving. On the way to Sevilla we took note of an interesting town by the name of Carmona built on an escarpment and that can be seen from the freeway. One of the students had a guidebook and read that there were quite a bit of interesting things to see there. So we decided to plan for that on a later day.
I had anticipated that there would be problems with parking so the previous night I had researched an alternate strategy. The Sevilla airport lies just outside of the city and it too is just off the freeway. I recommend this strategy. You can make use of the airport parking and take the shuttle into the historic center. The shuttle makes about 4 stops and then goes to the main bus station which is not far from the main sights in the center. It is 2.40 euro roundtrip. The shuttle bus stop is located just outside the first departures door
Great place
for a picnic! at the airport. It is also a yellow bus so you can’t miss it.
The only problem we encountered was that we missed the first parking lot and then couldn’t get into the next one because the entryway was…too low! I was really starting to hate our oversized van. We had to take a ridiculous route to get back to the first parking lot and finally got the van parked. The Sevilla airport must be quite busy because the line for the shuttle was so long we had to wait for another one. Fortunately we only had to wait for about 30 minutes.
It was an amusing ride as one of the passengers was an extremely loud Irish woman that had held up the line by trying to get some information from the driver. He didn’t speak English, she didn’t speak Spanish. Hilarity almost ensued if it weren’t for the impatient. She plunked herself down with her equally loud kids and (what I assumed) an embarrassed mother-in-law. Listening to her speak in a voice loud enough for everyone on the bus to hear made me almost break into a little Irish ditty that I like:
“…when I get home I’ll
I'm all shook up
El-vez is in the building...really. tell me ma the boys won’t leave the girls alone, they pull me hair they stole me comb but thats all right till I get home…she is handsome she is pretty she’s the girl from Belfast City” I refrained and merely hummed the tune the rest of the day. Furthermore in continuing proof that God has a sense of humor she rode all the way into the city with us.
We disembarked and on the way to the cathedral we stopped at the pretty little park Jardines del Prado de San Sebastian for a snack. Have I told you that the weather was beautiful? It was. We decided that our first place to visit would be the cathedral, then the palace, and then the bullfight museum.
We strolled down the Calle San Fernando and then the Avenida de la Constitución. There is a trolley that runs the length of those two boulevards. I had a hankering to ride the trolley but had to pass on the idea. La Catedral de Santa Maria de la Sede de Sevilla (that’s a mouthful) is an impressive edifice and sits next to the palace (Real Alcazar de Sevilla).
As we were snapping photos, I
Just us chicas
taking in some sun. noticed a woman playing an accordion across the boulevard. I went over and asked if she would play me a sentimental Sevillan tune and might I take a photo of her. She was happy to do so.
I went back to where Beth was waiting and we walked to the entrance of the cathedral. I had just finished taking a photo of Beth in front of the cathedral when a young woman suddenly walked up to me and took my hand. She placed a sprig of greenery into my palm and said that it was rosemary – it looked suspiciously like some of the shrubbery around the cathedral. She said that it was good for my health and that she would say a prayer for me. She asked me my name and asked to see my other palm. I was so surprised that I turned around to look for Beth but she had dashed off. I had been gypsied!!!!
She read my palm and told me that I was “of noble heart (true), kind (also true), true to my word (quite true), generous (very true), lighthearted (also amazingly true), etc. etc. Meanwhile the rest of the group had abandoned me
Cool trolley
I wanted to ride the trolley just for fun. and were standing in a group warding off the other gypsy women. When I rejoined them Beth pointed out that the young and pretty gypsy woman nabbed me while it was the old crones that harried them.
Readers…is it my fault that I am of noble heart, kind, generous, lighthearted, etc. etc.? I think not! She WAS pretty and it must be like a bee to honey situation. :-) I’m just sayin’ – after all I’m just an innocent bystander.
We went into the cathedral and wandered about taking in all of the splendor. By the way, did you know that Christopher Columbus is buried in the cathedral? I understood him to be buried elsewhere and so I was surprised by this. I did do some research and there is some controversy as to the actual location of his body. Beth and I also climbed up to the top of the bell tower. This is the famous La Giralda. The name is in reference to the weather vane atop the tower. It is in fact one of three remaining minarets in the world in this particular architectural style. There are no stairs. Instead there are 35 ramps. Once at the
Untitled
The title is already provided. top you get a great view of the city and the courtyard below. Note: the bells do ring up there and so it is wise to leave before the hour strikes. Also, if you are not fit, the climb can be a bit stiff.
We had stayed so long in the cathedral that by the time we left the palace was closed and we had run out of gas and decided to bypass the bullring museum as well. We strolled back toward the bus station and stopped along the way to have some tapas. It was late enough in the day that the locals were out enjoying tapas and the sidewalk eateries were packed. We managed to find a place with a couple of free tables and sat down to have a snack.
I really like the tapas culture. The little plates of snacks are perfect for taking off the edge as one starts to get hungry without really killing off the appetite. There have been a couple of places that tried the tapas idea in Boise but it has never really caught on because it isn’t really understood by Americans.
We made it home rather late and had some
Walking up to the cathedral
cuz suddenly its just there! dinner and made a plan to sleep in late and head to a neighboring town to buy some more groceries. We also planned to head into Córdoba later in the day because we planned to do a tapas crawl that evening. It was Jill’s 26th birthday and we planned to celebrate her special day.
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