Guapissima Sevilla - Saturday, December 10, 2011:

              Sevilla is the stereotypical Spanish town. It's palm trees and orange trees and flamenco and charming neighborhoods and castanets and Christopher Columbus and Catholicism and royal palaces all wrapped up into one. The vegetation actually reminded me a bit of Hawaii, which was surprising considering Sevilla is inland and much further north than Hawaii. It was a charming little town, full of students, bicycles and history. Sevilla, I learned, was once the richest city in the world; it was from here Christopher Columbus set sail to "discover" America. A few years later, the thousands of ships importing goods from the Americas  were legally required to stop in Sevilla, unload and pay taxes on the goods. Thus, in it's heyday, Sevilla was quite a place. It was famous worldwide and became the setting for the operas "Carmen", "The Wedding of Figaro" and of course "The Barber of Seville". While there I visited the stunning Real Alcazar, the royal palace built in a Muslim-Christian style, and the Cathedral of St. Mary, which is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. I also spent some time admiring the stunning Plaza de Espana, which was built as part of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. This international fair was essentially an apology from Spain to the South American countries it oppressed during colonization. There are also museums dedicated to Peru, Columbia, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay, all part of Spain's apology.  It made me wonder if some day the States would apologize to Iraq - whether democracy was the new Christianity.

Plaza de Espana

Plaza de Espana

Plaza de Espana

Each province is featured in tiles around the Plaza de Espana. This is Barcelona's tile.

One of the courtyards in Real Alcazar, with the Cathedral in the background.

Another courtyard in Real Alcazar.

A ceiling in the elaborately decorated Real Alcazar.

The fountain in the gardens of the Real Alcazar.

The gardens at Real Alcazar.

Close up of various garden features at the Alcazar.

Me in the gardens of the Alcazar.

Another view of the gardens.

                  I enjoyed my time in Sevilla, but I've always been a big city girl, and after leaving Barcelona it seemed sleepy, though quaint. But this was a blessing in disguise, as I had several papers to write for school. So I spent my nights in the hostel, cooking dinner and trying to finish these assignments. I did have one funny experience at a cafe where, amidst my sightseeing, I stopped for a bite to eat. On the menu, under the "verduras" (vegetables) section, was listed "habas con huevo" - something with egg. I asked the waitress what "habas" were and in Spanish she explained to me that they were a bean that came out of a long pea pod type vegetable and that they were good. I decided to try them and ordered a cana to go with it - a small beer. My vegetable dish arrived full of pork. Of course. Why would it not have some sort of pig product in it? True to my word, I ate it anyway, but the pork overwhelmed the dish and made it taste too salty for me to truly enjoy. When I was done I tried to pay with my credit card and the host came out to tell me that they had a minimum for paying with a card. Then our conversation went like this:

Me, reaching for my wallet: No hay problema, tengo efectivo. (No problem, I have cash.) 
Him: De donde eres? (Where are you from?) 
Me: De los Estatos Unidos. (From the United States.) 
Him: Entonces, por que hablas espanol? (Then why do you speak Spanish?) 
Me, blushing and searching for the Spanish words to explain: Porque ... Estudiaba. (Because... I studied.)
Him: Vale, guapissima. (Ok, very pretty girl.)

For the rest of the day, I giggled at the encounter.

Part of the cathedral.

Traditional dresses reinvented in a storefront.

My bike rental in front of the Isabel II bridge: still my favorite mode of transport.

View of the Torre de Oro, or Tower of Gold. From here the Spaniards would collect tolls and taxes from the ships importing goods from the New World.

The Cathedral seen from across the river. The statue on top actually turns in the wind, to show sailors on the river when the wind was good.

A festively decorated statue.