June 24 - Seville

We got up, cleaned up, ate and caught a cab to Estacion Atoche. We took an AVE train to Seville - in two and a half hours we arrived, around 1:30P. I finished the book A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain on the ride south. A short cab trip to our hotel, Best Western Hotel Cervantes, and we were off. It was not quite as hot as it has been in Madrid, and it was partly cloudy which helped as well; unfortunately it was more humid.

On the way to the Cathedral, we stopped at San Andres.

The sign for Capilla de San Andres	A tile virgin
The facade	A tile Christ

Horse carriages are very popular in Seville - they are everywhere, and it gives a good part of the city flies and the overall smell of horse dung, along with the rhythm of coconuts.

We started with the Cathedral of Seville, the third largest in Europe. It is immense. More interesting perhaps is that Moorish influence - it appears that some of the original building, a mosque of course, was kept along with the the lower two-thirds of the minaret, which is called the Giralda.

Approaching the Cathedral	The Giralda is two-thirds of the minaret from the original mosque
An arial view of the Cathedral - its huge!
Another view of the facade
A ceramic head of John the Baptist
A detail from one of the entryways
A view of the south transcept
Another detail from a doorway	A view from the exit back to the Cathedral (the exit is from the old mosque)

We next stopped for a snack - we had a snack on the train but that just didn't hold us for long.

An image of Christ on the cross across from the Real Alcazar	Image of the Virgin of Reyes from a plaza next to the Cathedral and the Real Alcazar
The sign for the plaza

Our next stop was the Real Alcazar of Seville. Half was built by a Moorish king, the rest by a Christian king. The interiors are magnificent, with intricate geographic designs, carved in stone or cast in metal, often painted, in the older part, and fabulous tile designs in the newer wing. The gardens are beautiful. We saw four couples just married getting their pictures taken in various parts of the Real Alcazar.

The tile lion over the entrance to Real Alcazar
A glass ceiling in the moorish part
The Ambassadors' Hall
A reflecting pool
A couple getting wedding pictures taken
Wonder who these two are?
The ticket

By now it was 7P and we were tired. We walked back towards the hotel and ate at San Marco Restaurante & Pizzaria at Calle Cuna 6. The food was quite good - I had a Peasant's Banquet appetizer and Lasagna Bollonese.

We got back to the hotel and the air conditioning didn't work - it didn't work in the whole wing we were staying in. The hotel staff kindly relocated us to a section that was working - we're nice and cool and going to sleep.