I love walking tours - especially the Sandeman's Walking Tours that feature in many of the main cities in Europe. Seville does not have a Sandeman's presence, so we tried Seville Free Tours - similar concept in that you tip at the end what you think the tour is worth. These tip-based walking tours often get guides who genuinely try their hardest to make every tour amazing.
Julio, our guide this morning in Seville, is an academic historian and so provided us with significant historic context for everything we saw. (While I lapped it up, it's fair to admit that tired Mindy found it to be an excessive avalanche of random facts.) My only complaint was that it was cold!
We started in Plaza Nueva, a giant central square in front of City Hall. This grand space was once all contained within a massive convent (until the convent burned down).
Now the square is headed by the City Hall, which is adorned with the slogan of Seville "NODO" (with an infinity sign in the middle).
Seville is home to the largest Roman Catholic Cathedral in the world. The thing is, it hasn't always been a cathedral. Parts of it were originally built as a Mosque, and the massive bell tower was one of the minarets. This accounts for the very plain walls (at the base of the tower, for instance) - though contrasted with the highly ornate Gothic decoration along other, newer, parts.
At a side gate to the cathedral complex, we looked into the orange courtyard. A carryover from early Chinese merchants doing business in Seville who believed that an orange tree in your yard was a symbol of good luck.
These oranges, as well as those from the trees lining the streets, are harvested and sold to make gin and other liquor. Our guide warned us that the oranges do not taste good fresh as they are bitter oranges.
The main palace in Seville - Real Alcazar - is a massive 14 hectare complex including courtyards and gardens, as well as the palace rooms proper. It is still where visiting kings and queens stay - not in a hotel. The enclosing wall is a carryover from earlier - less stable - times in Seville's history.
The Gold Tower, twinned with its counterpart across the river, used a chain running along the surface of the water to prevent boats from entering the harbour until they had paid an import tax.
The little room at the top was built later, as a bedroom for king and his consorts.
The Plaza de Espana was originally the Spanish pavilion for the World Expo in 1929, It has since featured in Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars Two: Attack of the Clones.
Which brought us to the end of our walking tour - leaving the most picturesque to the end, of course.
Mindy and I slowly made our way back to the bus station in order to head back to our hotel. The plan was for 90 minutes or so of downtime before the evening. We found the same bus that had brought us down and boarded. Then...things started to go downhill. I thought I heard the bus driver tell another passenger that we were headed to the airport. I went to ask him in my (very) broken Spanish, and he looked bewildered and told me this was the wrong bus. He called a helper who directed us off that bus (no refund on the fare) and identified the bus we wanted (where we paid a new fare). We checked with the bus driver that this bus would take us to our hotel, and pointed to the hotel on the map. Technically, we pointed to the name of the hotel with an arrow up, as our hotel was 5km away from the top-most landmark on the map - the train station. In retrospect, I think what happened was that the original bus driver thought I wanted to go to the airport, and the next bus driver thought we were pointing to the train station rather than the name of the hotel. Because...the bus we were on headed out, and proceeded to go NOWHERE near our hotel.
On the bright side, we got to see the best-preserved section of Sevilla's ancient walls in the Macarena neighbourhood. (We didn't see anyone dancing.) We crossed the river into the Triana neighbourhood, known for Flamenco bars. We saw the Plaza de Espana again as our bus brought us full circle back to our boarding point. Sigh. Mindy spoke to the bus driver again who seemed amused that we had taken the full loop, and once again assured us that our desired station was only a few stops away. At the next stop, I saw that we could transfer to another bus that I knew - actually knew - would go by our hotel, so we paid another fare (if they have transfers, we didn't know how to get them) and finally made it "home".
Cleaned up and refreshed (though with much less time than we had planned), we headed back downtown for our evening. We took the bus back down (the fast, direct route this time) and wandered through the Real Alcazar grounds on our way into the city centre.
With a little time on our hands before our Flamenco show, we wandered the narrow alleyways around the palace in the old city centre. There are a number of cities in the world where some streets are so narrow that I could stretch my arms across...
La Casa de Flamenco was in a traditional old house, and reflected four styles of traditional Flamenco over an hour-long show. An astounding mix of Stomp, tap dance, ballet and Dirty Dancing set to Spanish guitar and Jazz-like vocals. All of the musicians make exaggerated and extreme facial expressions. I can honestly say I have never been so excited and emotionally impacted by a dance show.
After the show, we took advantage of the dying light to enjoy Seville's most impressive sights one last time before a dinner of tapas. I washed down my food with the Seville sweet wine made of oranges.
Walking through a new part of the city on the way back to the hotel, we were commenting how the old architecture makes every building, every alleyway look so good!
We found the right bus and quickly made our way back to the hotel.
Julio, our guide this morning in Seville, is an academic historian and so provided us with significant historic context for everything we saw. (While I lapped it up, it's fair to admit that tired Mindy found it to be an excessive avalanche of random facts.) My only complaint was that it was cold!
We started in Plaza Nueva, a giant central square in front of City Hall. This grand space was once all contained within a massive convent (until the convent burned down).
In rare cases throughout the city, the lamp-posts are covered in rats - not real ones. This is an artistic memorial to the black plague, though I didn't quite catch why...
Seville is home to the largest Roman Catholic Cathedral in the world. The thing is, it hasn't always been a cathedral. Parts of it were originally built as a Mosque, and the massive bell tower was one of the minarets. This accounts for the very plain walls (at the base of the tower, for instance) - though contrasted with the highly ornate Gothic decoration along other, newer, parts.
At a side gate to the cathedral complex, we looked into the orange courtyard. A carryover from early Chinese merchants doing business in Seville who believed that an orange tree in your yard was a symbol of good luck.
These oranges, as well as those from the trees lining the streets, are harvested and sold to make gin and other liquor. Our guide warned us that the oranges do not taste good fresh as they are bitter oranges.
The main palace in Seville - Real Alcazar - is a massive 14 hectare complex including courtyards and gardens, as well as the palace rooms proper. It is still where visiting kings and queens stay - not in a hotel. The enclosing wall is a carryover from earlier - less stable - times in Seville's history.
Although Seville sits in a valley, the palace is on the highest point and there is a gradual slope down to the river. This square was once the edge of the city, with only marsh and river beyond. (There was a massive public works project in the last hundred or so years to fill in the marsh and control the river.)
The little room at the top was built later, as a bedroom for king and his consorts.
The Plaza de Espana was originally the Spanish pavilion for the World Expo in 1929, It has since featured in Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars Two: Attack of the Clones.
Which brought us to the end of our walking tour - leaving the most picturesque to the end, of course.
Mindy and I slowly made our way back to the bus station in order to head back to our hotel. The plan was for 90 minutes or so of downtime before the evening. We found the same bus that had brought us down and boarded. Then...things started to go downhill. I thought I heard the bus driver tell another passenger that we were headed to the airport. I went to ask him in my (very) broken Spanish, and he looked bewildered and told me this was the wrong bus. He called a helper who directed us off that bus (no refund on the fare) and identified the bus we wanted (where we paid a new fare). We checked with the bus driver that this bus would take us to our hotel, and pointed to the hotel on the map. Technically, we pointed to the name of the hotel with an arrow up, as our hotel was 5km away from the top-most landmark on the map - the train station. In retrospect, I think what happened was that the original bus driver thought I wanted to go to the airport, and the next bus driver thought we were pointing to the train station rather than the name of the hotel. Because...the bus we were on headed out, and proceeded to go NOWHERE near our hotel.
On the bright side, we got to see the best-preserved section of Sevilla's ancient walls in the Macarena neighbourhood. (We didn't see anyone dancing.) We crossed the river into the Triana neighbourhood, known for Flamenco bars. We saw the Plaza de Espana again as our bus brought us full circle back to our boarding point. Sigh. Mindy spoke to the bus driver again who seemed amused that we had taken the full loop, and once again assured us that our desired station was only a few stops away. At the next stop, I saw that we could transfer to another bus that I knew - actually knew - would go by our hotel, so we paid another fare (if they have transfers, we didn't know how to get them) and finally made it "home".
Cleaned up and refreshed (though with much less time than we had planned), we headed back downtown for our evening. We took the bus back down (the fast, direct route this time) and wandered through the Real Alcazar grounds on our way into the city centre.
With a little time on our hands before our Flamenco show, we wandered the narrow alleyways around the palace in the old city centre. There are a number of cities in the world where some streets are so narrow that I could stretch my arms across...
...even Mindy could touch both sides here!
La Casa de Flamenco was in a traditional old house, and reflected four styles of traditional Flamenco over an hour-long show. An astounding mix of Stomp, tap dance, ballet and Dirty Dancing set to Spanish guitar and Jazz-like vocals. All of the musicians make exaggerated and extreme facial expressions. I can honestly say I have never been so excited and emotionally impacted by a dance show.
After the show, we took advantage of the dying light to enjoy Seville's most impressive sights one last time before a dinner of tapas. I washed down my food with the Seville sweet wine made of oranges.
We found the right bus and quickly made our way back to the hotel.
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