The next morning was clear and cool and it remained that way for approximately twenty minutes before transitioning to clear and searing hot where it remained for the rest of the day. For reasons that probably made sense at the time I and a couple of co-tourists had booked a tour of the Alcazar and Seville Cathedral for 3pm a time when the sun had moved from extremely hot to actively murderous.
Our orientation walk took place in the cool of the morning which rapidly became the heat of the morning. Nevertheless the walk was done and we breakfasted in a thoroughly oriented fashion before fleeing back to our air conditioned dungeon which became more appealing with every moment spent in the sun.
Still you can’t spend the entire holiday hiding in an air conditioned room, apparently. Thus in the early afternoon I and my companions in heatstroke sallied forth to find the Alcazar. What we actually found was the tourist office where our tour began. They sent me a helpful text message telling me to register at the desk. I replied that I was right there. The woman behind the desk stopped texting long enough to formally acknowledge my presence on the tour and offer me headphones but a helpful staff member had already given me those so somewhat reluctantly they pronounced me good to go.
A small horde of us set off for the Alcazar following a purple fluffy thing attached to a stick. The stick in turn was attached to our guide who used it to marshal her troops for the assault on the Alcazar. I don’t know if the Alcazar was ever attacked by an enemy but if it was I’m pretty sure the assault troops wouldn’t have got past passport control. Once we had safely negotiated the Alcazar’s defences we set foot in the famous palace while our guide mounted a rear guard action against the passport troops who were regrouping for another assault.
And now I have prevaricated as long as I can so, what was the Alcazar like? It’s very large, awash with handsome gardens and intricately decorated rooms and generally well worth a visit. I have to say I was slightly disappointed largely because my expectations were very high. I have had many reports of the Alcazar being amazing so I felt slightly let down. On the other hand the combination of gardens and thick stone walls meant it was a few degrees cooler inside which was a blessing. It also had hyper aggressive peacocks which is something you don’t see every day.
From the Alcazar we went to Seville Cathedral. The cathedral has an interesting look having been built on the ruins of an earthquake damaged mosque. The resultant look is sort of Moorish Gothic. The bell tower is a former minaret done in the Moroccan style. Indeed the twin of this building is in Marrakech, it’s the one that didn’t quite wind up facing Mecca. The Spanish stuck bells and an ostentatious windvane on theirs and voila, Christian bell tower.
The interior is very Christian and symbolic of a universal church at the height of its power. Suffice to say that normally the only people who go in for this level of interior decoration are mafia wives and gangsta rappers. It actually works though because the cathedral is so big that 400kg of gold and 1200kg of silver just sort of blend into the background. This also gives you an idea of what the background is like. The foreground is much the same but more fore.
There is one priceless, near miraculous thing that being inside several thousand tonne of stone with a ceiling halfway to heaven conveys. The cathedral is cool dare I say blessedly cool and with the outside temperature having left 40 degrees in its wake I was more than happy to contemplate the wonder of God as long as he didn’t kick me out of his house.
The cathedral also houses the tomb of a small percentage of Christopher Columbus. Strangely the great explorer seems to have traveled more after he died than he did while he was alive. His body was housed in a cathedral in Santo Domingo. As the Spanish colonial empire unraveled the body was moved from place to place before eventually winding up back in Seville. Apparently they lost quite a bit on the way. All they have in Seville is a finger and part of a hand and they’re not 100% sure they belong to Columbus. It’s quite an impressive tomb though.
We saw a flamenco show that night, this is obligatory as Seville is the home of flamenco. By this stage I was suffering from heat exhaustion and most of what I remember involved stomping. I do recall the guitarist was better at asserting himself than the one in Granada, he actually got a solo spot part way through the performance.
The next day before we left Seville for somewhere cooler (pretty much anywhere but specifically Portugal) I went for a shave. This was partly because I needed a shave but it was mainly so I could use “Barber of Seville” in a blog title.
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