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MICHAEL:
Hello from Sevilla. We actually found a picture in the offexploring library that is in Sevilla, one that we walked around yesterday. The Plaza de España was built for the Ibero-Americano World´s Fair in 1929 and is quite a magnic¡ficent building and plaza. (It seems the fair only barely actually happened, as the 1929 stock market crash kind of killed it bfore it began).
So, we´re indoors in an internet cafe in Sevilla, it´s raining outside, and Burton Cummings is singing American Woman to all of us internet nerds. It´s kind of surreal, with the cathedraljust outside the windows.
We had a relaxing cruise on the Guadalquivir at Sanlúcar, and got to see grazing red deer in the national park, as well as some women who had calved off from their tour group for a pee-pee rustica in the woods. They pulled up their pants ikn a hurry when our tour group approached, and our tour guide said, "Don´t look to the right!" What I really wanted to see in the national park was a wild boar, rather than a stranger´s bottom.
JEANNE
Then we took a bus to Seville, so we could go to th Real Alcazar (turns out Real means ´Royal´, not ´the real thing´). What a surprise - it´s a wonderful city. Broad avenues, wonderful gardens, ancient streets. We´re staying in the old (tourist) quarter, which is near the University, so the area is very vibrant. We had a long search for a hotel before we found one that was acceptable and reasonably affordable, and we had to change hotels today because it turns out that Seville is very busy in October - seems it´s way too hot earlier in the season. I ended up buying a fan, because it was so hot yesterday, but I sure can´t handle it with the same flair as the older spanish women. They fan themselves, then snap it shut to use as a pointer in conversation, then flip it open with a twist of the wrist.
Spanish people are very nice. They`re loud and chatty, not rude, not overly friendly, but will help you out. But when you tell them that you don´t speak Spanish, and could they slow down, they repeat faster, and with more words.
We´ve eaten some wonderful food, and I´ve become a true gazpacho addict. We´re tried lots of tapas. Most of it is meat/fish/chicken, so I got really excited when I saw a salad buffet today. Unfortunately, we´d just finished the large mid-day meal, so we may not go back to it. People eat a heavy meal somewhere in the 1-4 pm range, then everything goes dead until 7ish, then eat dinner around 8-10 pm.
MICHAEL AGAIN:
We spent a good chunk of yesterday in the Real Alcázar, which was the Moorish palace of Sevilla, and is now the summer palace of th Spanish Roayl Family. It´s an interesting fusion of styles -- some areas are Moorish, some are pure Renaissance European, and lots of it is Mujedar, which is the name givn to the style that was done after the Christians had reconqured and were ruling Spain, but had Moorish builders and architects .
Tomorrow we´ll go by train to Córdoba, which is only an hour or ninetly minutes away.
We´ll update again from there.
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