Ronda in the Rain, Seville in its Grandeur

Thursday, October 19, 2017, Seville, Spain--The past two days and nights have been incredibly full.  In the middle of the night on Tuesday, the wind blew our window open in the midst of a huge rain and thunderstorm, waking John up.  He raced to close it as the pelting rain began to smatter on the window and the heavens lit up with lightening.  Quite a sight at 3 AM. 

Our room was in the
middle of the cloud

Used once a year!

By dawn, at 8:30 AM--it's strange being at the western end of a very large time zone, daylight is really screwed up--the rains had turned to off and on and the lightening had gone.  We breakfasted with fog moving up the Tajo gorge and made decisions for the day.  Ben headed off to a local art museum in honor of Joaquin Penado, who had grown up in Ronda and left to pursue his art work in Paris in 1940 and did not return until the late 60s. He became friendly with Picasso presumably in Paris and was a neo-cubist.  John headed off to the Bull Ring to see where modern bullfighting began in Spain in the mid-18th century.  Both were excellent for the respective attendee.

Following that we lunched at an organic restaurant, Biopicnic, on a salmon bocadillo, and then were picked up by tour director Barry Simpson of Your Andalusia and headed off to Seville. 

The view from our window

Seville is magnificent.  It's a relatively large city, about 700,000, the fourth largest in Spain, and the site of the Spanish court when the last Muslim kingdom in Granada capitulated in 1492, and coincidently 
Columbus sailed for the New World. 

Celebrating Columbus

Columbus has a a mausoleum in Seville Cathedral, though there is some doubt about where he is actually buried--Madrid, Santo Domingo, Havana or here. He brought great wealth to the city but that ended when the river silted up and the boats began to anchor at Cadiz on the shore. 

The cathedral is the third largest in the world after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London.  It's enormous and excessive, almost mad in decoration and design.   The belltower is an old minaret, but the cathedral itself is post-Muslim.   There is no easy way to describe the grandeur of the place, the ostentation of the decoration, or the gold, but it is a site to see and enjoy.

Barrio Santa Cruz
street scene

-Today we also did a tour of the city on foot, seeing the Torre d'Oro on the river where Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand decreed that all ships from the New World would dock and unload their treasures; the financial building that headquartered the merchants making a killing from the Americas business; the old Jewish quarter, the Barrio Santa Cruz, from which the Jews were kicked out in 1492; and, the site of the Ibero-American Exhibition of 1929, whose architecture is an overblown collection of bits and pieces reminiscent of American 1920s movie theaters or the grossness of San Simeon.  This is not a city that does anything quietly.

Wild white pidgeons

Plaza de Espagne,
1920s architecture

We dined last night at the San Marco restaurant where we enjoyed carpaccio of ostrich, pâté of scorpion fish with grilled shrimp, then roast pork and grilled sea bream.   Our wine was a local, a Borsoleta, a combination of temperanillo and cabernet sauvignon with a touch of petit verdot, 2015.  Tonight we will eat tapas.  White anchovies, John hopes.