Flowers! in Sevilla

Our program has been taking us to a lot of the more famous/important cities in Andalucia and this weekend we went to Sevilla.  We left early Saturday morning and after about 3 hours we arrived.  Our first stop was the royal palaces, or the Reales Alcazares.  While they are all surrounded by one wall, there are technically three distinct palaces.  My favorite was the middle one (I can’t keep Spanish royalty straight for the life of me, so I’m not even going to pretend that I remember who’s palace it was).  All of the architecture and design is Islamic (looks much like the Alhambra), but it is a distinctly Christian palace. One way that the King made sure that it was not mistaken for anything but a Christian residence was by inserting little symbols all around the building, the most common being tiles of castles (castillas) and lions (leones) – ie: Castilla y León, one of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities.

The best part of the visit to the palaces, however, was the garden.  Flowers are starting to bloom and the flowers on the orange trees are starting to open up so the whole place smelled wonderful.  This was the first time I had gone to a big garden and actually seen flowers!  It was so peaceful to walk around the garden, listen to the fountains and smell the flowers.  Unfortunately, we were on a bit of a schedule and didn’t get to stay as long as I would have liked. 

 

After a lunch of fresh salad and fish, I went with a bunch of people from my program to go check out the Catedral.  It was a pretty typical cathedral, with one of the gaudiest Baroque altars I have seen yet.  This cathedral was a bit different, though, in that it has a huge bell tower that you can climb, from the top of which you can see the whole city.  Well worth the long walk up!

 

The Catedral

Our next stop was Parque de María Luisa.  I’m not sure how big this park is acre-wise, but it is definitely the biggest and coolest park I have seen yet in Spain.  There are tons of paths, fountains, lawns, trees, little rivers, sun, shade, and anything else you might possibly want in a park. As beautiful as Granada is, we don’t get to see a whole lot of grass here, so this park was a nice change.  In the park there are these silly little four person bike/carriage things that I rented with three of my friends for half an hour. Totally worth it!

I got to steer! 

 

The Plaza de España borders the park, so we headed in that direction next.  This is a really cool plaza with a fountain (of course), a really awesome looking building (not sure what it’s used for), and mosaics of all the different regions in Spain. 

 

The Granada mosaic! 

After a short rest in our hotel we went to get tapas, which unfortunately you have to pay for.  I went to two different tapas bars, had some delicious albondigas (meat balls) and encountered some rather rude Sevillanos.  Called it an early night and headed back to the hotel. 

 

On Sunday morning our group went on a little outing first to a monastery and then to Italica.  The monastery is apparently where Cristóbal Colón organized his second (and most important) journey to the Americas. We again walked through some pretty amazing gardens and got to enjoy the sights and smells of Spring!

 

500 year old tree planted by Columbus' son

These are the flowers that make the city smell like magic

We got back on the bus and headed to Italic, so-called because of the Roman ruins there. We had a super funny tour guide and on the bus ride he kept talking about every random detail and every little thing we passed (Mira! Un árbol! Mira! Trigo verde!). It was a really cool archeological site where we got to see an old coliseum, mosaics and ruins in general–all from 2200 years ago! 

 

After another lunch in the city we decided to return to the park.  We only had a couple of hours of free time before we headed back to Granada, but we spent most of it walking around the little paths in the park and taking advantage of every moment! Sevilla really is a great city, and I'm really glad I got to spend as much time as I did outside tomando el sol.  

There is a strange phenomenon in Spain where parents decide to dress their children in matching outfits. Sometimes the kids are twins, but sometimes they are a least a few years apart.  I think this is possibly the thing that "culture-shocked" me the most.