Our only full day in Sevilla, and there are really only a handful of things that is on our to-do list: 1) buy pottery/spanish tiles, 2) go the Cathedral, 3) go to the Alcazar, 4) more shopping, 5) eat. Not too bad.
Start the morning off by walking through the nearby Murillo Gardens and notice two women eagerly cutting off sprigs of rosemary or something from a bush, and keep moving along, trying to not to get their attention. Walk around the area, grab a chocolate pastry from breakfast, and move our way back towards the Cathedral. Being a Sunday, the Cathedral does not open up to the public until 2 PM; no problem, plenty of time for walking the narrow streets of the neighborhood and wander through shops, which we do, very often. The day is magnificent- a far cry from the cold and rain of Madrid, instead, a sunny and warm Sunday, ideal for walking around.
After being initially intimidated by the streets on the map, I come to realize that it's not that bad, and the streets all end up crossing another alleyway that goes this way or that, and everything is alot closer than the map indicates as well. So, for the first several hours of the day, we just walk around the neighborhood, getting lost, finding our way back, stopping into stores, enjoying the little plazas (especially the Plaza de los Venerables- yes, Vansmack, there's a picture of me under the sign), before finally ending up across the square from the Cathedral and having lunch.
Lunch. It was a warm and sunny day, so we decide to sit outside, just a few steps from the Cathedral. There was really only one thing for me to have: paella. And what a wonderful paella it was. But first, a glass of sherry to start the meal. I order the paella, and it comes in the paella pan, but is then plated table-side. Several pieces of chorizo, a handful of shrimp, some scallops and two large langostines are the highlights of the dish. I make a complete mess. I have to peel the shrimp, and I have to take apart the langostines, but thoroughly enjoying all aspects of it. Meg ordered a pork dish, which was very good, but also got a side order of mushrooms, which were very tasty (black mushrooms we were told; I think they were black trumpet, but I will have to investigate further). Also, sangria to wash it all down with. The only trouble- when we got the bill, all the prices were 20% higher than on the menu. Apparently, there is a sur-charge for sitting outside, which was not noted on the lunch menu, but is apparently noted on the dinner menu, and the menu posted. Oh well, it was a tasty lunch, outside in the warm air, across the plaza from the Cathedral; we can pay for the ambiance.
We walk around the Cathedral, trying to find the entrance, which we eventually do. There is a line already formed, as the Cathedral is about to open. As the line moves, we find ourselves confronted by two gypsy women, aggressively touching us and talking to us very fast, and all of sudden I find a sprig of rosemary in shirt pocket. I immediately tell them no, no, no thank you (some in spanish, some not), and begin to make sure that nothing is being taken while I'm being harassed. The woman accosting me makes a few waves of her hand in front of me, then presses her thumb to my forehead (an oily thumb at that), and makes a gesture for money. I again say no, and she grabs the sprig of rosemary out of my shirt, says something that I don't understand and walks away. I'm hoping that it wasn't a curse, but who knows. Meg then comes up and says that those were the same women we saw earlier in the morning cutting things from the park. I should have made like a tour guide once told us in Granada- if you see a gypsy coming up to you, just kick them. Actually, I doubt that I could do that, but nevertheless......
With that behind us, perhaps it was providence that we then enter a church. According to the Vatican, the Cathedral of Sevilla is the third largest church in Christendom (on the floor at St. Peter's, you can see little gold plates noting where such and such church would fit inside St. Peter's); however, Sevilla is considered the largest cathedral (St. Peter's isn't a cathedral) and the largest medieval church in the world. Anyway you cut it, it's a big church. It replaced and was built over a mosque that originally was on the site, and the minaret that accompanies the cathedral was turned into a bell tower. The bell tower keeps the moorish architecture in place, so the bell tower maintains its originally moorish design. Additionally, to reach the top of the tower, instead of using stairs, it is ramped all the way to the top; ramps were used so that you could ride a horse to the top to make the call to prayers. I thought that the ramps made it easier to climb, but Meg didn't necessarily think so. The bell tower provided a wonderful 360 degree view of Sevilla.
Two other points about the Cathedral.
1) It is the burial site of Christopher Columbus; after all, Sevilla is where Columbus launched his expedition to the new world. There is a large monument showing his casket, as held up by four figures representing the four kingdoms of Spain united by Ferdinand and Isabella. It is quite a draw as there were numerous tour groups that stopped and photographed it- even though most of the groups were either Japanese or German. Anyway. . . .
2) There is a courtyard that is full of orange trees, and on the particular day we were there, the air smelled of oranges. Even near our hotel, there were a number of orange trees, and their smell very pleasantly permeated the air.
We then walked back to our hotel, stopping again at various markets to purchase tiles and one very large purchase of pottery, and finally arrived at our hotel to rest before finishing the afternoon at the Alcazar. However, a quick review of the travel guide revealed that the hours it is opened was very different than what we had been thinking. The Alcazar closed at 5, and we realized this at 4:40. We quickly decide to rush over there, and when we arrive at the gates, we're told we can go in, but we have 30 minutes. No problem, so we go in and just walk around the building. There is something very freeing about arriving at the end of the day and having very few people around, couple it with a gorgeous day. As we walked around, the main building done in moorish style, with the walls done in tiles, it was simply comforting. The building stayed cool despite the heat of the day; and the general solitude the end of the day provided us made the entire time we were in the Alcazar seem much longer, in a good way, than the 30 minutes we were told we had. The gardens that are part of the grounds were wonderful, and that was probably what I most would have liked to explored further. Again, the smell of oranges filled the air as we reluctantly exited and headed back to our hotel.
Dinner. We chose a restaurant near our hotel that looked very good. What turned out to be funny is that their menu was nearly exactly the same as the place we went to for lunch. Uncanny, eh? I have an ox tail stew, which is very tasty, and Meg has what's billed as a fillet in sevilla style. It turns out that the "fillet" is basically a pork cutlet covered in a sauce. Now, the sauce was terrific, but Meg was very let down by having a pork cutlet instead of a beef fillet, and an apparently not completely cooked one at that. With that disappointment, we decided to have dessert, which was really good and helped make up for the fillet issue. And with that, we headed back to our hotel, but not before we stopped at a cafe across the alley from our hotel, and had a glass of sangria, then headed back to our room (but not before I bought a can of beer out of vending machine). I have already documented the cafe and what happened later here; in case you couldn't tell from the syntax, I had had a bit to drink that evening.
So, with that, we left Sevilla the next day for Porto. Sevilla by far was the most enjoyable part of our trip to that point. I hadn't been to Sevilla since the 92 Worlds Fair as part of a high school trip (as I noted in my last posting about flamenco). I remember going to the Fair, staying until closing, and being unable to get back to our hotel because the buses had stopped running, and no cab would take a group of 6 high schoolers. We eventually made it back to our hotel, and got about an hour of sleep before we had to catch a bus for our next destination. I don't think Sevilla really had made that much of an impression on me, but for some reason, I knew we had to go there for this trip. Could we have gone to other places, sure, we could have gone to Granada, or to the coast and Malaga or Valencia. Or we could have gone to Barcelona- however, that 92 trip did leave an impression on me of Barcelona, and it was not a good one. Maybe it was because we were there a month or so before the Olympics, or, maybe it was because I was 16 years old and didn't find Barcelona very interesting. For whatever reason, we chose Sevilla, and glad that we did. We had a great time; other than the random restaurant issues (btw, the waiters really are pushy), it is a beautiful city. However, we missed all festivities related to the April Fair; in fact, there were only two events that we saw that seemed to show that the Fair was going on at all. 1) The firework night and 2) ladies walking around in flamenco dresses. Now, that may be how a lot of women in Sevilla dress when going out, but for some reason I doubt it.
Added bonus: it's a sister city with Kansas City, and any city that wants to align itself with Kansas City has to be good.
As for the curse, I can only hope that it has already happened.
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