When you get breakfast free with
your stay at a hotel you never know what you are going to get. Well, at the hotel by the side of the road
breakfast consisted of toast and orange juice.
I heard complaints about that breakfast for the entire trip. Oh well, it was food and what they didn’t
serve us, we ate back in our room – fruit and yogurt.
Our journey for this day was
Seville. It was just under a 2 hour
drive from where we were. Jake
downloaded the maps to his new Kindle Fire and we were able to use that to find
the place pretty easy. This is where I
need to say that we had a very strict budget for the trip which meant most of
the time we stayed in hostels. This
particular hostel called itself a B&B, but it was still a hostel. It was right in the heart of the old city, so
the streets were narrow and shops everywhere . . . I LOVED IT! Everything was in walking distance and at
night the streets were filled with Christmas lights and little Christmas
markets. I love Christmas in Europe!
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| Ok, I thought I had turned this, sorry. Outside our B&B. |
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| The street we were on. |
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| The reception area of our B&B |
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| Jake and kids' room |
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| Mine and babies' room |
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| Beautiful artwork in the lobby |
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| I love mirrors - in the lobby |
The main thing we went to see was
an old mosque turned Cathedral. After
the conquest of the Spaniards over the Moors, the Catholic church rededicated
the mosque as a church. They then
changed some of the architecture and added a gothic wing onto the existing
structure. In fact, it is quite evident
on the outside of the building where the old mosque stopped and the “new”
church started. The size of the place is
breathtaking, as is the ornate nature of the stone sculptures. As I looked around at the intricate carvings
in the stone it hit me hard that this is a lost art. And no modern machine can produce the same
result as the old hand sculpted stones.
Absolutely breathtaking.
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| The more modern "gothic" side of the cathedral |
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| The mosque portion. Can you see the old dome? |
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| No one today could produce this |
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| Absolutely amazing skill (PS, the real statue is being restored, so we got the gaze upon this replica) |
The most memorable part of our
visit to the cathedral was climbing the bell tower. It was 17 stories up, but luckily the stairs
were replaced by a ramp long ago. It was
34 turns around to the top (as each turn was marked by a number). Along the way there were windows to see from
(or probably places to take a rest because it was a long, steep climb) and
little rooms filled with history. Once
at the top you could see all of Seville.
It was such a beautiful view. And
the number and size of the bells was really neat to see. I’m really glad they don’t ring the bells
while the tower is open. That would be
deafening!
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| The bell tower from the outside |
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| Seville from the bell tower |
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| The roof of the cathedral as seen from the bell tower |
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| More of the cathedral's roof |
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| One of the domes turned turret |
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| From one of the windows along the ramp up the bell tower |
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| Same window, different view |
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| Some of the bells. The bells were hung like this on all 4 sides of the tower |
After seeing the church we ran
into 2 different street performers on the way back to the car. One was a man painted green, decorated with
flowers and standing in a flower pot.
The other was a man who had puppets of a man and woman dancing strapped
to his back. His legs were the man’s
legs and his arms were the woman’s legs.
When he bent over he made them dance.
It was very fun to watch.
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| Jackie and the flower guy |
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| Rachel, Jackie and Sammy with the flower guy |
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| The one-man dancing couple |
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| Here you can see the couple |
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| Here is the man with the couple on his back |
One last stop before the car was
in front of a beautiful, old building that I don’t know the name of. It looks like it was once a palace but is now
probably government offices, based on the UN and Spanish flags out front. But the architecture was really neat, so we
stopped and got our pictures taken there.
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| The fam in front of ??? |
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| I wish I knew the name of this building. It was beautiful (sorry its on its side, can't figure out how to turn it) |
We decided to eat dinner at a
sandwich place in the mall we parked the van under while staying in the center
of town. It was a horrible
decision. The meats on the sandwiches were
cold, including the hot dogs we ordered the little ones, and it was
expensive. We should have gone to
McDonalds (which was next door). One of
the difficulties we ran into while in Spain was the time the restaurants
opened. 8:30 is bed time for our kids,
so fast food was really our only option for dinner.
Jake wanted to take the kids to
see a movie after dinner and left me and the 2 little ones in the hotel while
he went out. The movie ended up being a
dud, but he was able to take the kids down the street a little ways and get
some delicious ice cream, which no one thought to bring back to me. Jake and I tried to go out later after the
kids were asleep, but by then everything was closed. Oh well, live and learn.
Here are some random pictures from our time in Seville.
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| Some artwork in the cathedral's art gallery |
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| More artwork |
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| Ok, you can't see it, but there are carvings in Latin from these original stones which were in the cathedral at some point in history. |
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| Inside the cathedral |
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| How you redecorate an Islamic dome to a Catholic one |
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| In one of the chapels inside the cathdral |
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| Thought this was absolutely beautiful |
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| Gold-leafed saints carved in stone |
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| This is actually taken from a mirror set up to reflect the ceiling. Isn't it beautiful? |
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| In front of a beautiful water fountain |
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| I love the architecture of Europe |
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| More architecture |
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| Murals in mosaics on the outside of a building. Can I live here please??? |
