Its time to say adios to Portugal, its only been a few days, but its time to head back to southern Spain. Im not sure why I thought we were going to today, but because I did, we thought it would be cold and we wore jeans. But we are actually going inland to Sevilla, were its hot! When we got off the bus it was 37C or 98F and that is certainly hot, even by Florida standards! But were now true Floridians, so we just dealt with it. Those of us from Florida, Arizona, and Texas didnt have much trouble, but some of the northerners were dying.
Sevilla is a beautiful city of about 800,000, home to the third largest cathedral cleverly named the Cathedrale de Sevilla, actually the official name is Our Lady of the Holy See. (Holy See is another name for the Pope, for all you It is very modern city, and it seems to have a much younger population, at least from what we have seen. There is a lot more actual shopping near the hotel, not just the souvenir shops. I think John and Linda have given up on ever getting their
Our first stop upon arrival was the Cathedrale de Sevilla, the third largest cathedral in the world at about 250,000 sq ft. It has a bell tower that it about 320 ft tall, the tallest structure in Sevilla. The cathedral was originally built in the 12th century as a mosque, but was damaged in the 14th century by an earthquake. It was then converted in the 14th and 15th century to a Catholic cathedral. Interior is huge and the altars, vestry, and organ along with all the other appointments are really impressive. Most of the rooms are protected by iron gates to protect the massive amount of gold and silver used on the carvings from being stolen.
The cathedral also contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus. There were evidently several sites that had claimed to be the burial site of Christopher Columbus around the world, and even rumors that his body was cut up and buried in several places. But thanks to modern DNA and the remains of some of Columbuss known descendants, evidently they were able to prove in 2006
that the remains in the Cathedral de Sevilla were indeed the actual remains of Christopher Columbus. At least thats their story!
The courtyard of the cathedral contains many orange trees, and the surrounding has around 40,000 orange trees planted everywhere. Unfortunately, these are bitter oranges, not sweet enough for eating, but they do have the sweet aroma of oranges, and the orange blossoms smell great in the spring. The added benefit of the oranges being inedible as that they remain on the trees!
After the cathedral tour, we went on an additional walking tour of the old Jewish district. Before the 14th century, most of Spain was populated by Moors who were Muslim, Jews, and Catholics. At this time, the Jews were the literate ones, so the old Jewish district was closest to the palace. After the 15th century everyone was either converted to Catholicism or forced to leave. Most of the city has been modernized including the destruction of the original 2000 year old roman aqueduct, but large protions of the old Jewish district remain. In fact parts of the Game of Thrones involving the Kingdom of Dorn were filmed in these buildings.
was great, and our local guide was well informed, unfortunately it was really HOT! The temperature had climbed to about 100F and we were still in long pants. We still enjoyed the tour and tried to stay in the shade wherever we could. By the time we returned to the bus, we were ready to check into the hotel and put on shorts.
The hotel room is great, as have all the rooms been on this tour. We were too tired to do any exploring this afternoon, so we just relaxed in the room before heading out for dinner at about 7:00. The restaurant was called La Hosteria del Laurel and was in the old Jewish part of the city that we ahd visited earlier. We were the only ones in the restaurant as no one else in Spain would be crazy enough to eat as early as 7:00pm.
