Silly in Seville

So, basically it was decided on the first night that Spain part 2 would be all fun and games.

That being said, as this blog is intended as a PG-13 type thing, I can't talk about most of the trip :)
I was traveling with C, an old friend from back home and one of her friends from back home, J. I met J at LHR and we flew London to Seville together and met C at the hostel. I laughed so hard that first night that I may have re-cracked my rib! Totally worth it! 

We did manage to see Seville by day and it may be one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. We went on a four hour walking tour of the city, which took us around to gorgeous little streets that we may have never seen otherwise. Seville is apparently one of the hottest cities in Spain during the summer months and the way it is designed is specifically designed to cool itself. First off, it has a lot of green spaces. Second, in the hottest parts, the streets are really narrow and they all funnel into plazas that have lots of greenery. The way it works is that the hot air from the narrow streets gets sucked into the plazas and then rises out through there. It's the coolest self-cooling system I've ever heard of!

The streets are lined by beautiful orange trees that are full of big gorgeous looking fruit. As my travel buddies discovered, the oranges aren't edible. According to our tour guide, the oranges are inedible because Seville doesn't get enough rain to make the fruit sweet and so the main source of liquid comes from urine. Bear in mind that this is same tour guide who told us that the Giralda, the big tower that Seville is known for, rotates on an axis. In the same way that kids have to touch their tongues to metal poles in the winter, J and C decided that they had to try the oranges even though we were warned against it. They said their lips were burning for a long time afterward.

How did we get the oranges you wonder?
With a little help.
















The walking tour took us through the Jewish quarters and we were told the story of the massacre that happened due to a Romeo and Juliet type story. Susona, the daughter of a Jewish leader told her lover, a gentile, about her father's plans to head off the Spanish Inquisition. This lead to a massacre in the streets. The story goes that Susona was so overcome with guilt, that she requested that after her death, her head be removed from her body and hung in the Juderia (Jewish Quarters). Her skull remained there for many years until it was finally replaced by something slightly less creepy.


A street near it is called Vida because, according to "legend", some Jews were able to escape through holes in the walls of this area. 











Our guide also took us down the "kissing street", so named because it is so narrow that people could lean over the balcony and kiss the person standing on the balcony opposite them.





One of our last stops on the walking tour was to Plaza de España. This was built in 1929 for an exposition. The Plaza is a semi-circle, open to the West to pay homage to the Americas and as a sort of "sorry for all the pillaging and stealing of your resources..." It is gorgeous! All along the base of the buildings are beautifully designed tiled alcoves, one for each Spanish provinces from A to Z.

There is also a moat that goes all around the Plaza, crossed by tiled bridges. I was lucky enough to snap a shot of one of these bridges with a lovely couple in the middle of some good old fashioned PDA.
  
As in a lot of the South, Seville has a lot of gorgeous Moorish influence and the Alcazar was a huge highlight for me! We kept getting really lucky and waking up just in time for beautiful sunshine filled days. We kept discovering hidden rooms and corners and courtyards in the Alcazar, each one more beautiful than the one before it.

Incredible Intricate Details

Doorways