We started our day with a trip to Sevilla's Alcazar. This is a Moorish palace similar to the Alhambra that we visited in Granada. King Pedro the Terrible (nice name right) dumped his wife and wanted to impress his mistress, plus he had castle envy so he decided to bring a bunch of Moorish workers to Sevilla to build him a mini Alhambra. Although it´s a lot smaller, the Alcazar was impressive because a lot of the color that didn´t survive at the Alhambra was still visible here.
Also interesting was that Isabel received good old Chris here after he came back from discovering America. She built a whole wing to manage affairs in the new world. We´re starting to realize that Isabel wore the pants in that royal relationship. By the way, I thought this was interesting, her name is Isabel La Catholica, not Isabella. I think Americans just ran it all together, forgot the Catholica and she became Isabella.
After visiting the Alcazar we headed for a walking tour of what used to be the Jewish Barrio, Barrio Santa Cruz. It´s full of tiny lanes, orange trees, and alleyways so narrow that only one person can walk through them at a time. It was here that our friend Isabel and that guy Ferdinand started the Spanish Inquisition, killing many Jews who either wouldn´t convert or were convicted of practicing in secret. It's hard to imagine such a cheerful place being a place of such horror.
Next we took a tour of Blake´s most anticipated place, the Cathedral. It´s the biggest in Spain and third largest in the world. There is, of course, a Guinness Book of World Records plaque prominently displayed. I think the Spanish care deeply about these records because this is the third or fourth Guinness plaque we´ve seen in the country.
The inside was beautiful with an altar piece that took three generations of one family over 120 years to complete. Can you imagine being born and your dad is like, ¨Hi, glad you´re here, start carving...¨
A highlight here was the tomb of Chris himself! His body was actually buried in about 12 places before he finally landed here in his adopted home. The people of Sevilla actually had the crusty old body DNA tested to prove it was him. The four kings acting as his pallbearers are supposed to be the kings of the different regions of France. However, Columbus actually died a poor, stressed out man!
With any cathedral visit there is always (say it with me) climbing! There´s no dome here, only a giant belltower. Problem is, climbing it is free and it was built with stairs made to ride horses up. Yes, that big.
This means that everyone, including people with heart problems and over 18 inches wide can climb up. This made Blake very mad. He believes that church climbing means you must pay to climb up 835 winding steps. He about lost it when he saw a person strolling their baby up the passageway. The coolest thing about the top was all the bells that actually chimed on the hour. They were LOUD!
To top off our evening in Sevilla we had to finish with the heart and soul of the city, Flamenco! Simply amazing! The girls in these beautiful brightly colored dresses stomped and clapped and even snapped in perfect rhythm with the Spanish guitars and singers. For once we were so glad that we couldn´t understand the words. The music is strong, dramatic and forceful, but we have a feeling the words are a lot like a bad country song... ¨My dog ran away and my wife left me, and it rains all the time.¨ It might lose some of it´s magic that way.
There was one male flamenco dancer who looked a lot like Antonio Banderas (ooohlala!). I swear his feet were moving so fast they were a blur. From the waist up, he was perfectly still except for these fantastic arm and hand movements. The weirdest part was, it made him look SUPER masculine. He TOTALLY gets all the chicks. The strangest part was that all seven people on stage were clapping and snapping and stomping at different times to make the song. I have no idea how they knew when to clap, but I loved it. It was an AWESOME way to end our trip with something so unique to this country.We´ve had such a GREAT time here. Spain is a laid back place full of so much natural beauty and culture. We can´t wait to come back!
