Sevilla, Spain - July 30

cathedral tower/minaret

33 degrees, blazing sun

The weather today is a carbon copy of yesterday. The difference today is that we decided to make the 3k pilgrimage to the soccer stadium/mall in the heat. There was some shade and a bit of a breeze, but by the time we got there we were just a bit warm. And…the soccer shop and mall were a bust. We wanted some soccer gear souvenirs and hoped the mall would have Fitbit stuff – I broke my bracelet, so hoped to get a new one – nope on both counts.

Today we decided to visit Seville’s cathedral. That’s basically what everyone calls it and it actually wasn’t until the guide told us the name did I know that it was called The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Sea. Apparently, this is the third largest church in the world. The tour we were on was nice because there were only 7 people on it. That’s how tours here seem to go when they are pay tours - the free ones are packed – obvious. I think the free tours are

tomb of Christopher Columbus

intended to motivate you to pay for other ones if you like the tour company.

This church is interesting because it used to be a mosque. After the Seville was conquered by the Christians they turned it into a church. Because of this, there are many things here that you wouldn’t see in a church, like an inner court yard with water for

tomb of Christopher Columbus

the pre-mosque cleansing. There were also ornamentations unique to mosques. In this courtyard (as there are all over Sevilla) there were orange trees.

There were many huge paintings by famous Spanish artists, but the claim to fame of this place was the tomb of Christopher Columbus.

At the end of the tour we climbed the tower which is the former minaret of the mosque. There was a ramp and not stairs as it was once used

huge bells at the top of the tower

for donkeys! The views there were pretty awesome.

Found some interesting chips today – ‘huevo frito’ or fried egg. I thought they were just plain, Chris thought definitely the white of a fried egg.

Lunch was tapas, then back for a nap. We’ve been trying our best to use some (extremely little) Spanish when we can, but figured at lunch today that we need to just pretend that we don’t know any at all. When we even say hola, they assume we can speak Spanish (reasonable) and spend 5 minutes talking to us in Spanish, then we have to sheepishly say

view of the city, including the bull fighting ring

we didn’t understand.

Last night in the evening after I posted the blog, we decided to go to an area we hadn’t visited yet, across the river - Triana. We had higher hopes for this area being a bit hopping and lively at night. We had a pizza and a bottle of wine, and there was a really good busker (one guy who played the guitar, pan flute and singer) so this was good,

cathedral door

but as far as liveliness went, it was a bit deadsville. The deadness could have been on account of it being a Sunday, but who knows – it seems like we blamed a lot on the fact that it was Sunday. One thing so blame on Sunday was that most shops were closed. Some smaller tourist shops were open, but the vast majority of bigger shops were closed. This was the case in Munich too we noticed.

One of the things we bought at the sweets/booze shop was hibiscus gin…it was just a small bottle, but

lunch

I couldn’t resist! It was quite tasty. One the way back to the hotel

hibiscus gin

at a small corner shop, when looking for a room-beer, we found lemons, which was delicious with the gin. I mixed the gin with water and half of the lemon – I’m sure this is also good for my water intake!