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Today is Spain's National Labor Day, so the city was packed! We started our day trying to go to the Royal Alcazar Palace, to only find a line that was ridiculously long and not moving (in 20 minutes, they allowed in less than 50 people). We stood in it for a while, and decided to book a tour later in the day. In the meantime, we went to the Museo de Flamenco (The Flamenco Museum). This museum was an interactive museum with a lot of videos, costumes, artwork, etc. Cody and I learn best by having written information in front of us with the option to listen to audio/video, but with only having videos of different dancers showing the variations of flamenco, this museum was not for us. We liked walking around and watching some stuff, but in terms of learning about flamenco, we didn't come out with much more information than what we started with. I did try to mimic some of the dancing moves I was seeing...I thought I did great, Cody told me I had a lot of room for improvement. The Fado Museum in Lisbon definitely was our preferred musical performance museum out of the two.
Our next stop was the Royal Alcazar Palace. Our tourguide was a little more disorganized than Juan at the Alhambra, but she was still enjoyable! We learned all about Philip the Handsome, Joanna the Mad, the Hapsburg/Austrian reign in Spain, and the Moorish/Jewish/Christian influence in the building. The Moorish architecture is definitely worth seeing! The grounds contained numerous palace rooms as well as two large gardens to roam through. This is the oldest palace built that still remains in use to a royal family in all of Europe - anytime the royal family comes to Seville they still stay in the Alcazar. Unfortunately, no royals spotted today, so just another reason to come back to Seville to the future!
We walked to San Jorges Castille (Saint George's Castle) afterwards, only to learn that it was closed for the holiday. This area is the ceramic district of Seville, so we were able to wander in some really cool shops! We will be going to this area again tomorrow to get into the Castle, which houses the inquisition museum. We also bought our tickets for the Cathedral tomorrow as well, as the lines today were a little too long to get
done after the Alcazar before closing.
We stumbled upon the bullfighting stadium (Plaza de Toro), and decided to take a tour of the facility. Within the stadium, there's a museum, the area where the matadors wait before going into the ring, the ring itself, and a chapel. This was a great thing to visit! While the killing of the bulls via my research seems a little too harsh for me to want to see in person, going through the stadium and museum was a great alternative. We only had to view some bull heads mounted on walls, but no videos/encounters of watching the bulls get killed live. Cody's favorite part was in the art exhibit, which contained a nine pieces of bulls. He stated this was the best art we've seen the entire trip and if he could, he'd put this in his house. The bulls compilation is within the photos section, so please enjoy and let us know what you think.
Maria Lucia's gardens and the Plaza de Espana were near the bullfighting ring, so we headed there afterwards. The gardens were beautiful to walk through. The Plaza has ceramic tiles representing each of the major cities
of Spain throughout the entire Plaza. While it is just a large building and tiles, it was neat to walk through and see different murals representing each of the major cities of Spain. They also have displayed where each of the major cities are in the country of Spain on the map.
Dinner tonight was near our Airbnb - Cody was in his glory. We had four tapas sandwiches (similar to sliders) as well as a few stews. Cody's favorite food is a sandwich, so this was right in his wheelhouse.
Tomorrow as mentioned above we'll be headed to the Cathedral, Saint George's Castle, as well as any other things that look interesting that we pass. 😊
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Char Fricke
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Bull artwork
I think Cody’s comment that this was the best artwork on the trip is a bunch of “bull”. I would not want this in my family room. Having made both those statements, oddly enough I CAN see those pictures in his house!