Seville

Seville is every Spanish stereotype you can think of. It unabashedly embraces late nights, wild gypsy music, bullfighting, Flamenco dancing and partying til dawn. It is the hottest place in Europe, literally, and is featured in more operas and stories (think the Barber of Seville and Carmen) than anywhere other Spanish city. And rather than resent these labels, or try to fake an image to live up to them, Seville simply IS the label, with a passionate zeal for life.

Cathedral from the tower

After our evening drinking Sangria on the hostel rooftop, we decided to get some culture into us. We took the hostel`s free (well, tip-based) walking tour and over the course of a four-and-a-half hour ramble through the city, we learned a LOT. What sticks out most to me now was the architecture - Seville`s signature cathedral, one of the biggest in all of Europe, stands where the Islamic mosque stood until the city was captured and Christianized in the 12th century (in fact until a fire a few centuries after the conquest, the cathedral actually just existed in the building of the mosque itself, because the king liked the building).

the organ

The tower that adjoins to the cathedral, called the Giralda, was once the minaret of the old mosque. The windows have the traditional keyhole shapes, and the way to the top of the tower is a ramp rather than stairs so that the man calling everyone to prayer five times a day could ride a donkey up the seventy metres rather than walk.



We went into the cathedral the next day to explore and the thing is huge... the organ alone is over a hundred feet high. The decorations were all made in the colonial era, so there is Peruvian gold all over the elaborate displays. It is stunning.

Ham hocks hanging in a traditional tapas bar

After our walking tour, we jumped right onto the tapas tour, also organized by the hostel. Tapas are small plates of virtually anything... meat platters, mushrooms stuffed with cheese, stews, salads, fish, olives, pig cheeks, eeevvverything. It is essentially how you eat in southern Spain. This tour took us to a traditional tapas bar, the kind with full smoked pig legs hanging from the ceiling, to a more modern place with contemporary dishes, and to one half way between that had amazing tapenade  (on fried bread. So oily. So delicious).

All fed and mildly liqoured, we took off on the bar tour (all tours all day!) led by a leaping madman of a guide. On a Monday night we found decent bars and saw the nightlife districts of Seville. Dan and I left early... at 3:30 am. Seville is a wild, fun city. Dan even danced. Well. Swayed.

The next day we took it easy, explored the cathedral and went out for more tapas for Dan`s birthday dinner. A nice day after a wild party.

S