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Published: June 12th 2013
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We waved goodbye to Portugal and packed up the van ready to travel back in to Spain, our next stop was to be Seville. We could only find one campsite, amongst all our searches, that was conveniently located for trips to Seville by public transport and when we eventually arrived (their GPS co-ordinates were wrong!) it was packed! I haven’t seen a site so busy since we’ve been on the road! Petit Van Blanc was squeezed in to a tiny space eventually and we planned what to see in the city.
There are a wealth of decorative buildings and gardens on the approach to the centre of Seville, the bus brought us in past several posh looking pavilions that had been constructed as part of Seville’s 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, to symbolise 10 of the nations in attendance of the exposition and to display their exhibits: Peru, Columbia, Mexico, Brazil and Guatemala to name a few. The ‘Plaza de Espana’ was also built as part of this expo, on the edge of the ‘Parque de Maria Luisa’. The Plaza is an enormous red brick, semi-circular building with colourful tile work… the semi-circle shape was said to represent the ‘international hug’ that
Seville gives the other nations.
Our main cultural fix of the day was a visit to the Alcazar, this began its life in 913, originally as a fort but it has been rebuilt and added to over and over again by various rulers from the Muslims in 11
th century to some gardens that were added as recently as the 20
th century. The result is an elaborate mixture of rooms, patios and halls, showing walls of decorative plasterwork and tiling and a huge area of gardens with pools, fountains and trees, a high wall surrounds all. It also seemed to be a favourite spot for wedding photo’s as we spotted at least four couples posing for their photographers and when we left we saw the wedding cars (and horse drawn carriages) all lined up outside. We spent most of our day here, just taking in the sights and wandering around the gardens, including trying to get lost in the hedge maze, so once we’d finished we took a walk around the streets that surround the Cathedral. There are some lively restaurants and bars all offering sangria and paellas at a range of different prices, we sat and ‘people watched’ for
a while with a jug of sangria: there were a number of stag and hen parties, obvious by their matching t-shirts or ‘fancy dress shop’ flamenco dresses (the girls, not the fellas…) and the noise they were making as they weaved around the streets.
There were two main items on our Day 2 intinery: the Metropol Parasol and the Cathedral. The Metropol Parasol is a new building and controversial as it has a huge wooden roof that looks like honeycomb or an enormous waffle and it’s held up by pillars that resemble giant mushrooms?! When digging began in preparation for the foundations, some roman ruins were discovered and were uncovered to make a fantastic exhibition that has been enclosed in the inside the finished building. Aside from whether the big wooden waffle is attractive or not, it’s definitely unusual and if you take the lift to the second level, you can stroll around the walkway that’s built in to the waffle, admiring views of more traditional rooftops across the city.
By contrast, the Cathedral was built in the 1400’s by a church authority that apparently said ‘let’s construct a church so large, future generations will think we were
mad’! I think they must have succeeded! The Cathedral houses Christopher Columbus’s tomb which is also enormous and richly decorated. There are valuable paintings, a huge alter piece and other items made of silver, rooms displaying royal crowns… no end of wealth! There’s a square tower at one corner of the Cathedral: the Giralda, which is 104 metres tall and was originally the minaret of the mosque which stood on the site before it was pulled down to make way for the ‘largest church ever’. The Giralda has a stone ramp which spirals right to the bells at the top, a ramp rather than steps so that guards could ride their horses up it (why?) and at the very top is a 16
th century bronze weathervane that represents ‘faith’. There’s also a courtyard full of orange trees, well, what else?
Seville has a really laid back feel, the people were friendly and there seemed to be no ‘hard sell’ from any of the street vendors, tour guides or restaurant wait staff. A very enjoyable couple of days!
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paul & Jackie
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Cathedrals of Europe
We note you are doing the Australian ABC tour of Europe... Another Bloody Cathedral!!