The Hospital of Blood


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Europe » Spain » Andalusia » Seville
August 4th 2016
Published: June 7th 2017
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Local relaxing in Plaza de Estana, SevilleLocal relaxing in Plaza de Estana, SevilleLocal relaxing in Plaza de Estana, Seville

Issy says this looks like me. It isn't.
Issy sleeps in. I tell her that this morning I'm not going to go to breakfast until she wakes up and comes with me. We have breakfast late, although we start to wonder whether maybe we're just getting in tune with Spanish breakfast time. Our hotel serves breakfast between 8am and 11am, which seems to confirm our previous suspicions that Spain really is about two hours out of sync with the rest of the world.

We read that Seville is by far the largest city in the south of Spain, and is the capital of Andalusia. It looked from the bus coming in to have very extensive suburbs, whereas there seemed to be hardly any suburbs at all in either Cordoba or Granada. Seville also looks to be virtually dead flat. As we've done in other places, we take a trip on the hop on hop off bus to try to get our bearings. Our hotel is in the middle of the old part of town and it seems that they won't let the hop on hop off bus anywhere near it in case it gets stuck in a narrow alley, so we have a long walk to the nearest stop. The bus takes us behind the large building that fronts the Plaza de Espana. The audio guide tells us that some scenes from one of the Star Wars movies were filmed here, as were scenes from Lawrence of Arabia. We pass through an area that seems to be wall to wall parks, the largest of which is called the Park of Maria Luisa. We're told that this was formerly the garden of one of the royal palaces and was donated to the city in the late 1800s by Maria Luisa Fernanda, who was the daughter of the King.

We cross the river into a more modern part of Seville. This doesn't look particularly interesting, and I think that maybe they only brought us here because they thought we might be getting a bit bored with looking at old buildings and monuments. The audio guide tells us that the name Guadalquivir River comes from an Arab word meaning "big river" and that the name Seville comes from the Phoenician word meaning "low land". These names wouldn't seem to have overly stretched the creative brain of the person who dreamt them up. We pass a hospital called the Hospital of the Five Wounds, which we're told is otherwise known as the Hospital of Blood. Whilst these names are a bit more imaginative I'm not sure that either of them would inspire a lot of confidence in the standard of healthcare on offer.

The bus passes the Park of Maria Luisa again and we got off and walk through the park. It's very peaceful, and full of fountains, pools and very large trees and garden areas. Most of the fountains, pools, park benches and surrounds are covered with stunning mosaic tiles.

We continue on into the massive and spectacular Plaza de Espana. One side of this is occupied by a very large old semi circular building with massive towers at each end, and there's a huge fountain in the middle, and a canal along its full length with bridges across it that look like pictures we've seen of bridges in Venice. People are rowing boats on the canal. We read that it was built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, which was a world's fair for Spain, Portugal and countries from the Americas, many of which had been Spanish colonies. It was apparently held to improve relations between these countries. Our source is strangely silent on the issue of why they needed improving.

I think I'm in trouble. The cleaners kept opening the door while we were getting dressed this morning, so I hung out the sign that was on the back of the door that said "no molestar". I hope that this means "do not disturb", and I'm not sure I want to know what it means if it doesn't mean this. It seems that I may have forgotten to take it off when we went out, so our room hasn't been made up. Luckily for me, Issy's too tired to care.

We have a long siesta and when we head out for dinner it's nearly 10 o'clock. It's still nearly broad daylight and the streets are packed. We find a restaurant in a small alley. The waiter is very entertaining, but the food is terrible, and I get a cramp in my jaw trying to chew the steak. We watch an argument between a busker and another one of the waiters. Most buskers we've seen in Spain have been very good, and perhaps unsurprisingly they generally stand still while they play. This one however seems to be working on the theory that if he walks really quickly while he plays, more people will hear him, and he will therefore make more money. He's very good at walking quickly, but not so good at singing or playing the guitar. I think he might do better if he stood still, if only because he probably couldn't do any worse. I think the waiter's trying to make him go away, but the busker seems to think that the alley is public space so he has every right to stay there.


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