Seville

The next stop on the Spain trip was Seville. It was also the city Kenna left me in. She had to get on a plane and fly all the way back to Rome, how tragic.
I thoroughly enjoyed Seville. The weather was beautiful, the architecture was beautiful, the people were beautiful. The whole city was done up for Semana Santa, chairs for the upcoming processions lined every street. The whole city seemed to be in a vacation mood, or maybe it was just me projecting my happiness on everyone else. Either way, it was great.

The funny thing I noticed about the people in Seville is that, I assume the Mother's, dress up their pod of children (generally not more than 3) in matching outfits. It was adorable when the kids were all under the age of 5. Cute little blouses with matching embroidery on all their kids, both the girls and the boys matching each other. And these outfits seemed like something from 1914. The little girls had matching bows in their long dark curly hair and the boys were also in tights. No seriously. Although it all started to get strange when you saw an 11 year old boy in an outfit that matched his 3 year old sister and 2 year old brother. The matchingness had no age limits. I felt sorry for these boys, they looked rather silly, because they were obviously old enough to dress themselves and they very obviously didn't. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of this because it's creepy taking pictures of other people's kids.

This is the outside of the large cathedral in Seville. Originally on this spot was a Moorish Temple, but they did away with that when they did away with the Moors in Seville and built this huge cathedral. What they didn't do away with were all the orange trees, which were original to the yard of the Moorish mosque. There were orange trees every where and they were all filled with fruit and the air smelled like orange blossoms. It was absolutely incredible.

This dark picture is actual the dark interior of the above cathedral. These two statues hold up one end of Chris Columbus' giant tomb/memorial thingy. Chris was actually buried in the New World - don't remember which part. But I have heard that he was broke, sick and nobody liked him when he died. So they weren't really sure where he was buried. But someone decided that he should be dug up and moved to Seville. So they dug up a skeleton and hauled it on a boat across the Atlantic ocean. Now they still weren't really sure if it was him, so they didn't tell anyone this and continued on like nothing was wrong. Flash forward to the age of genetic testing and someone who remembers - or read in a book or something - that people were a little uncertain about these bones in Chris' tomb. So some scientists pop open the tomb and extract some DNA. Now you're thinking, they can't just read the DNA and it will say 'Chris Columbus was here'. No. What they do know for sure is where is brother is buried, which if I recall correctly is somewhere else in the New World. So they dig up Brother Columbus - he was not of a religious order to my knowledge, nor was he anyone's "soul brother", just little old Chris' bio-bro. So they test the DNA against each other and apparently the two sets of bones are brothers. So the people, who are probably all dead now, who dug up Chris are all celebrating that they got the right dead guy. YIPPEE!!! However, I'm wondering how many of the bones in the tomb they actually tested. It could be possible they only tested one bone, and that one bone matches. But that's almost too much good luck.

Anyway, so while the Catholics were pulling down the Moors' mosque, probably a long time before Chris sailed the ocean blue, they decided that the minaret that the Moors built was pretty nifty, and they didn't tear it down. Good choice! It is pretty nifty too. It was built with a ramp instead of stairs all the way to the top so that the soldiers could ride their horses all the way to the top. Or for future annoying tourists to push their baby carriages up, thus blocking everyone from going in the other direction.

Despite annoying tourists, the view from the top is pretty stunning.

These are some other building that I didn't go inside, but the evening light was so pretty I took a whole bunch of pictures of it and here's a decent one. The light in the evenings was so beautiful, low and golden.

This is another building in Seville whose name I can't remember, real helpful right? Anyway, it's obviously left over from the Moors. Oh wait, I remember, it was a Moorish section of a palace that each monarch since like forever (probably actually only 1200ish) has added their own section to. So every part of the entire compound is different. It's pretty cool. And the gardens were amazing. And so many orange trees. So if you go to southern Spain drink the orange juice. It's fresh squeezed and the most amazing orange juice in the world. And I actually don't like orange juice. Also, they call it zumo naranja. For anyone whose taken Spanish, they DON'T use that other word for juice. The one that just slid out of my brain.

Ok, so next stop Tarifa.