I lost my heart to Seville....

Ah Seville. I'm going to start this blog by saying that I'm going back for the month of August (heat be damned) to learn Spanish and enjoy the culture to the fullest extent. Whohoo!

What a beautiful city! Seville was a surprise, as, once again, we didn't know anything about it. We drove into the city with me as navigator (never a good idea) and Jim somehow miraculously found our hotel by using his sense of direction. Not having a sense of direction, I am constantly astounded by this ability to know the general direction in which to point the car in an effort to reach our destination.

I loved Madrid, but I felt that Seville had more of a laid back and happy vibe. The buildings really reminded us of New Orleans and the streets were lined with trees full of oranges. Our hotel was in the historic area, where people were out and about, eating and laughing until at least 12:30 or 1:00 in the morning, no matter what the day. Our room looked out over a fried fish restaurant, where people sat out on the street and ate:


The view down the street:


Jim in the park near our hotel:


On the street where I'll be taking Spanish lessons (also conveniently filled with many excellent tapas bars and restaurants):


Jim perched on a wall:


Looking sultry by the river:


Looking normal by the river:


Guys playing some really hard looking game in boats in the river:


And the river itself, along which we walked and across which we went:


On our second day in Seville, we walked through the Park (which wasn't as trimmed and perfect looking as the park in Madrid). Throughout our walk, there were many opportunities for pictures series. The Jim reading a paper series:


Jim sticks his head in things:

He really didn't wan to stick his head in the tree, but I insisted. There were spiderwebs.

And the Jim Climbs Trees series:


It was sunny and warm in Seville and there were incredible musicians playing everywhere:


Some other pictures from out and about:




These two guys were carrying an ornate gold decoration from a church to some other space. Unfortunately, it took us so long to get the camera out, that we only got the back part of it.


I tried a Seville orange. Not so edible (which probably explains why they are lying all over the place:


We spent some time in a really cool tapas bar in Plaza de Alfalfa, where there were two parakeets hanging out on top of the wine rack (our theory is that they escaped from the bird shop across the street and were hunkering down in the bar before they found something better to do)



We wandered across the river in search of a music club (closed) and stumbled on this great outdoor fish place, where they wrote our order in chalk on the counter. The weather was great and the atmosphere was fun!



When we headed back to our hotel, we walked past the gothic cathedral, where there were many, many bats flying around.


Jim had the right idea:


And then the best bat of all showed up!


Seville was WONDERFUL. We were sad to leave, but at least next we were headed to the beach!

Some more pictures of Granada

Jim's pictures!

The hill at Alhambra (on the other side from where we were staying):


Me.


A plaza in the Muslim District:


Alhambra from afar:


Some guys in the Muslim quarter:


Granada from above:


Listening to Jim whisper across the room:


I'm a little disappointed because I thought we had more garden pictures, but I guess they got edited out by the discerning photographer. So here are a few of us in the fabulous garden:






Spices behind a church:


Graffiti:


Decorations (for sale) hanging in the street bazaar:

Through the olive trees to Granada

We started our day off in the usual way with some cafe con leche and bought some bread and fruit for the drive to Granada. When we left Madrid, the terrain became more mountainous and up the hills were planted miles and miles of olive trees. We learned, through our guidebook, that that particular part of Spain produces 10% of the world's olive groves. (And I must take this opportunity to plug Lonely Planet books. Although we enjoyed Italy with Rick Steves, we felt that Lonely Planet was more adventurous and geared to our age group.)

Olive trees up the mountains and the great photographer:



We had no expectations about Granada, except that there are some people who live in caves there, so we were surprised at how lush it was. We also accidentally booked ourselves in a hotel that was within the grounds of the Alhambra (the last great Muslim palace before the Spaniards took over), which was pretty cool. Here's to rushing through and not really reading descriptions!

Jim in our fun VW Golf rental and the view from our room into some ruins on the grounds of the Alhambra:



On our first evening in Granada, we decided that we weren't going to try to visit the Alhambra, so we just wandered down to the center of town, where there were lots of hippies and a huge Morrocan influence.

Pictures of our wanderings around the grounds before we went down the huge hill, which we eventually had to climb back up again:




Dogs are definitely dominant in Spain, but we still managed to find some cats to pet:


We saw seven weddings our first night in Granada! It's a beautiful place for a wedding.

We took this picture of ourselves as a huge group of very loud Spanish teens was quickly approaching. It's a miracle that we got the picture taken without them in it.


And then we headed down the hill. Granada is one of the few places in Spain that still gives you free tapas with every drink (the places in Madrid gave you maybe one free tapa, but then you had to buy them if you wanted more). So we took advantage of that. The tavernas also sometimes have a bull's head hanging up above the bar:

In awe of tapas:

Our bartender.

Due to our lack of Spanish, a lot of times we knew what we wanted to order (because we saw other people eating it) but we didn't know what it was called or how to describe it. That's when pointing comes in very handy. But when we were getting free tapas, we just took what they gave us.

These tapas were less delicious, but still free. I lost about half of our french fries as I made my way through a crowd of drunk Spanish men. I managed to keep our sandwiches.

After we were sufficiently full, we wandered around...the cathedral! Every city has one!

Even the ice cream is beautiful in Spain. So beautiful that Jim couldn't resist and had to get some.

Here he is, having to take a break with his ice cream halfway up the giant hill.


Although it appears that all we did was eat and drink, we also did A LOT of walking. Jim took some great pictures of our walk around the Muslim Quarter in Granada, which I will have to download off of the other camera. The only picture I appear to have taken (which didn't get deleted by someone) was this:

It is kind of a funny sign.

After our Muslim Quarter walk, we got in line to go to Alhambra. We had bought our tickets at about 10am for the 2pm slot.

Jim thinks these used to be living quarters of some sort. It was all in Spanish and ti didn't occur to us to get the audio tour, so we actually don't know what anything is.


This cat was inside the palace, plotting how he was going to get to the koi in the pond, which were about the same size or bigger than he was.

The detail on the walls and ceilings was pretty incredible:

I took an up close picture. A lot of the rooms had Morrocan/Muslim poetry carved into the walls. Beautiful!

Jim wanted a fish, too.

The garden was the best part of the palace. It was huge and full of beautiful fountains and flowers. Unfortunately, my pictures don't do it justice. The ones that are still on Jim's camera do, though!

Here is a bush carved into the shape of a chicken with eggs. I have the feeling that the Moors didn't originally card their bushes into the shape of chickens, but what do I know?


And a view:


Very exciting, I know.

After a couple of days in Granada, we were full and ready to move onto our next destination, my favourite of all, Seville!