19:45

Apparently getting up at 6:30 am on a Sunday in Seville puts you in a pretty exclusive club. When I set out at 7:30 to try and do some laundry, get some breakfast, and see some sights, everything was closed. I did see a few cars, but very few pedestrians, and almost no open stores. And closed stores in Seville are very closed: steel shutters and heavy locks everywhere. After wandering for a while I somehow managed to find the Museo de Bellas Artes and arrived moments after it opened at 9 am. It's a beautiful building with several open courtyards and a phenominal chapel, and its collection was also excellent, though I confess to be getting a bit tired of 17th c. Iberian paintings of the Annunciation.

Once I´d finished at the Museo, I wandered back to the train station. I had had a few different ideas about where to go next from Seville, the main options being Cordoba (an important city and destination itself, as well as on the recommended train route to Algeciras), Algeciras )an ugly industrial city but the jumping-off point for ferries to Morocco) and Tarifa (near Algeciras at Europe's southernmost point, a nice seaside town but without a railway station). At the Seville train station, I deliberated for a few minutes and decided to try for Tarifa. To allow myself time to complete my laundry before departure (the laundromat being naturally closed on Sundays, and the hostal hostile to the idea of using their sinks as laundry basins,) I booked a spot on the 1:19 train to Cadiz, from where I am assured there is a frequent bus service to Tarifa. I´m not going to book my accomodation there yet because I´m not sure where I´m arriving, but hopefully I´ll be able to call ahead from Cadiz.

After the train station, I went back to the hostal and made a lunch from the leftovers of the last couple of days´ picnics. (There were a lot of leftovers--I was stuffed!) I set out again at 3pm to return to the Internet café and go see the Alcázar, a royal palace originally built in AD 913 as a muslim palace. When I got there at 4:30, I was disappointed to find that the Lonely Planet had got the wrong hours listed and in fact the Alcázar was closed for the afternoon. I´m hoping to stop in tomorrow before leaving Seville.

Since there wasn´t much else to do, I joined the throng of tourists heading into the cathedral. The interior of this, one of the largest churches in Europe, did not disappoint. It had dozens of richly decorated chapels and statues and devotional artwork everywhere, but the place was packed with clamoring hordes, most following guides with raised umbrellas, and taking flash photos (ignoring the posted rules to the contrary). I joined the queue heading up an interior ramp in the Giralda, formerly the minaret of the 12th c. mosque that was used as the starting point for the construction of the cathedral. After climbing up about 150´, we were rewarded with excellent views in all directions. Still, the crowd behind continued to press forwards, so after taking a couple of photos I made room for them and headed back down to street level.

After yet another experience of getting lost in the Barrio de Santa Cruz I made it back to the hostal for a nap before dinner. Time to go get it now...
posted by Tom at 7:59 PM | link |