{"id":542,"date":"2018-04-04T21:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T21:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=542"},"modified":"2018-05-24T03:43:03","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T10:43:03","slug":"seville-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/seville-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Seville \u2013 Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There may only be a part one as we are only here for 3 days.\u00a0 But wow, just wow. Seville or Seh-vee-ya as it is pronounced here, is just amazing.\u00a0 Stunning architecture and picturesque vistas along the Guadalquivir river that runs through the city and where Columbus initially sailed from to go to America.\u00a0 It\u2019s Spain\u2019s 4th<\/span><\/sup> largest city and like Cordoba it is spread out and dotted with cultural relics from Roman, Moorish, and medieval Christian times.\u00a0 And like any place here with relics (not us I just want to be clear), there are a LOT of people wandering about.\u00a0 Our airBnB host told us that it\u2019s the start of the busy season (April and Easter etc.) so we should expect crowds.\u00a0 I pointed out that Spain seems to have crowds 365 days of the year.\u00a0 She said, well, it\u2019s the start of more crowds.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The first stop on a long walk day was the Plaza de Espa<\/span>\u00f1<\/span>a.\u00a0 Most cities in Spain have one but the one in Seville is very nice with the huge Maria Luisa park and garden as frontage for a beautiful palace where Spain\u2019s royals visit from time to time.\u00a0 Like the Roman bridge in Cordoba, it was used as a backdrop in \u2018Game of Thrones\u2019.\u00a0 Down the street from this is Seville\u2019s main attraction, the cathedral and giralda. This is the world\u2019s largest gothic cathedral and is immense.\u00a0 The giralda is the giant bell tower next door and was the minaret in Moorish times.\u00a0 Instead of stairs to get to the top, it has 34 flights of ramps and this was so the Muezzin, who led the call to prayer, could ride his horse up instead of walking.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Seville seems to be a vibrant city, pleasant weather, lots of history and plenty to see. Interesting neighborhoods, markets, and narrow streets.\u00a0 We poked around the Santa Cruz area, a center for flamenco, the old market in Triana on the west bank, which is built on the remains of the castle of San Jorge (St. George for you gente Ingles) and was the seat of the infamous Inquisition from 1481, more markets on Feria street, and just generally wandered. \u00a0We will miss the big fair in a couple of weeks, the Feria de abril, which is a week-long wine, beer, food, costumes, and flamenco festival, but we can\u2019t see it all. \u00a0We walked a lot and just for fun, on the day we left, we walked the 3 miles to the bus station just for something different.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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We\u2019re not sure whether we wanted to spend any longer here than the 3 days we had.\u00a0 After 3 large cities and many ruins, we are a bit tired.\u00a0 Seville has a frenetic pace to it, high energy, and we need some down time.\u00a0 We also found Seville a bit cold, people-wise, and often they just seemed rude.\u00a0 Maybe it was timing or maybe the inhabitants are fed up with tourists or maybe they think we are Americans.\u00a0 Don\u2019t \u00a0really know, but the only friendly people we met (besides our airBNB hosts) were a couple from New Jersey.\u00a0 In any case, we are looking forward to the smaller, quieter town of <\/span><\/span>Ronda, which will have its share of tourists as well, but we\u2019re hoping way less of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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There may only be a part one as we are only here for 3 days.\u00a0 But wow, just wow. Seville or Seh-vee-ya as it is pronounced here, is just amazing.\u00a0 Stunning architecture and picturesque vistas along the Guadalquivir river that runs through the city and where Columbus initially sailed from to go to America.\u00a0 It\u2019s Spain\u2019s 4th largest city and like Cordoba it is spread out and dotted with cultural relics from Roman, Moorish, and medieval Christian times.\u00a0 And like any place here with relics (not us I just want to be clear), there are a LOT of people wandering about.\u00a0 Our airBnB host told us that it\u2019s the start…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":851,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}