Spain

For the occasion of my nephew-in-law's wedding we visited Sevilla for a few days. My first time in Spain. Apart from the wedding itself we spent a lot of the time with our relatives doing the tourist thing. I am not a good tourist. I don't like being in hordes of people milling around aimlessly. I hate queues. I don't like paying for food that IMHO is not as good as I get at home. Or frankly inedible. They raved about the food and tell me I am fussy. But (short of famine) do I have to eat every squiggly squishy suspect item that some foreigner wants to consume? They tell me I am not adventurous enough and yet I note that "they" don't adventure hiking into mountains or swimming in the lake or bike riding to the coast and back or running barefoot. I don't expect others to be like me.

Found in the paella

They (a different they) tell me that Sevilla is a very beautiful city but, frankly, I would rather have been in the country. So I am a wet blanket. Sure, there are interesting buildings to gaup at and I did plenty of this - walking and taking pictures, like the one below. Walking through hot Sevilla is a whole lot better than sitting doing nothing.

Seville cathedral roof detail

They (yet another they) say that Bruckner had a counting mania - I found myself wondering how all this ornamentation connected with the internal structure and might easily have started counting. One could spend many hours...

Talking of buildings, there are zillions of churches in Sevilla, mostly huge and all ornate. One wonders how there could ever have been enough penitents to fill these buildings and pay for their construction and upkeep. I went inside one and was amazed by its ornate baroque retables. Such incredible devotion, but to what?

Detail from side altar, Iglesia del Salvador

High altar, retable by Cayetano de Acosta (1770- 1779)

In retrospect I find it is possible to tour the crypt and roof of the church. Maybe on my next visit!

In the square in front of the church is a shop where you can buy religious icons. Like the one in my picture below. The workmanship is poor, unlike that inside the church, and I wonder - who buys this stuff and what exactly do they do with it? One of our neighbours has, in her home, a painted plaster statue of some saint, about two foot tall, and she uses it to hang her jewelry on.

Religious icon of unknown purpose

We were staying in the old city where the streets are narrow. Some are open to one-way traffic and finding your way around in a car is a sort of perverted entertainment. We had some exciting times with our GPS telling us to go down dead-end streets.

Typical Sevilla street

Maybe my description has been too negative. We had a great time: the wedding venue and our hotel were excellent. And I am already planning in my mind some routes for barefoot running should I ever return. If only it was a tad cooler and they had a few decent Fish and Chip shops.