51. Seville, Espana

It is incredibly hot in Southern Spain.  We are currently in Seville, having travelled west from Granada, and it is about 33 degrees by 10.30 am and around 37 in the afternoon.  Every day.  No cool change in sight.  

We have also been a bit "off colour" - Paul has had a queasy tummy and I've had a head cold.  So there have been no flamenco dancing lessons for us at the local flamenco club across the road from the hotel, although we hear the fabulous music each night as we try to catch a breeze through our meagre hotel windows.

So taking the pace slowly, we toddled off to the tram stop, not too far from the hotel and got to the centre of the old city in no time at all - for 1.30 euros each.

The trams are fabulous - several carriages long, solar panels on the roof to augment the power supply, absolutely silent, on time every 7 minutes, every day from very early to midnight.  There are no cars or buses or motorcycles in the central city.  Only a small metro system, these trams and bicycles.  The trams and buses meet at the outer metro parking hubs and all services are interlinked.  And this is a city of only 850,000 people.  Come on Melbourne.


Here comes the tram.


And inside - high-tech and spotless.

Here is the driver in his or her glass cockpit.  The red and white machine on the red pole is the ticket validator of which their are four or five.

We pottered around the shops and saw this one selling a huge range of spices as well as teas, including my favourite, Rooibos red leaf tea from Africa. 

Precious Ramotswe of the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency calls this African bush tea - she loves it!

www.mccallsmith.com/botswana.htm

We resisted the marinated olives and chick peas.

Settled for a punnet of fresh blackberries, which we ate while wandering the streets.  Delicious!


We found a sombrereria, which would have been handy had either of us needed a new sombrero.


And there were many, many flamenco outfitters.  Even a flamenco dress in something less than traditional design, is not cheap at $850 AUD.  Maybe its a good thing I wasn't feeling up to those flamenco lessons.


Finally we made it to the cathedral.  This is the largest gothic cathedral in the world and the third largest cathedral of any type, in the world.  It is only smaller than St Peters in Rome and another I can't remember.  But being large doesn't mean it's beautiful.

It is so big inside that it is like a city.  Entirely impersonal.

The main alter is silver and the wall behind the alter is carved wood coated with gold.  This alter, and all of the side chapels, are barred by these gates made of wrought iron coated with brass.  I think the audio-guide said the gates were added during the Renaissance.


To the left of the main alter, is this silver secondary alter.  Very beautiful and backed by a dark velvet curtain.  It was originally much, much larger, but sometime in the 16th C when the city of Seville was under attack, it was whisked into hiding and considerable sections were melted down to pay for the war.


The bit I liked best - Christopher Columbus' tomb.

Both the cathedral and this beautiful Girelda Tower, are on the UNESCO World Heritage register.  The tower was originally a minaret when the cathedral was a mosque, around about 1200.

But when the christians won the war in around 1500 and took power in Spain, the minaret became a bell tower (with an additional section built on top) and the mosque became a catholic church and eventually a cathedral.

There were two more UNESCO World Heritage sites in Seville, the Alcazar Palace and the Archive of the Indies, but it was so hot and Paul was feeling a bit unwell, we retreated to the hotel for some air-con and a large bottle of cold, cold water.

Next stop - Cordoba.