Sunday 29 January 2012

Sevillian Civilians

Our odyssey continued to Seville where we spent a few days before we head down to Morocco. Once a great city at the centre of trade with the New World, it is now a vibrant and energetic place with busy streets, late night tapas and of course flamenco.

Often the most memorable cities are those with a "thing". Lisbon had tiles all over its buildings, Jerusalem has its stone and Seville has its streets lined with orange trees.


We visited the Alcazar, which is a Moorish fort turned royal palace turned exploration headquarters turned tourist attraction. It was here in 1494 that the Spanish and Portuguese divided all of the Americas between them (prior to actually discovering them).



The other major sight is the Seville Cathedral, the 3rd biggest in the world. (Stay tuned for visits to 1 and 2). Those that built it wanted people who saw the size to "think we were mad". So in addition to their belief in invisible spirits and supernatural miracles, we concluded that they were indeed mad.

Inside the cathedral is the very elaborate tomb of Christopher Columbus. He is held by the four kings of medieval Spain.

We also took some time to do a few self-guided walking tours through the narrow alleyways. On the tour of the Jewish quarter we saw four churches, three crosses on pillars, two convents and one nice patio.

In every city so far, we've seen people wearing weird costumes expecting to get money from tourists. This is the first guy who actually got some from us, because he was floating in mid-air.

After Seville, we went to Tarifa which is the Southern-most point in mainland Europe.

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