¡Sevilla!

Seville (Sevilla) is a historic city in southwestern Spain. We spent two days here, and I found the city to be very interesting and fun to photograph. (I am having trouble adding pictures to the blog over this connection, but there are many cool pictures here.)

We arrived in Seville in the evening and then went for a tapas dinner. Our first night, we ate sheep's milk cheese with olive oil and rosemary, paella, ceviche, grilled pork, gezpacho, cuttlefish, and beef with mustard sauce. Dinner was delicious, and in Spain, a tapas plate is usually about €3 and wine is about €2, so by splitting these small plates, you can put together a great meal with many wonderful flavors for very little money.

The next morning, we rendezvoused with our Canadian friends, JS and Rebecca, and went to see the Seville Cathedral, which is the world's largest gothic cathedral. Southern Spain was under Moorish rule for almost 700 years, so the large tower that is connected to the cathedral, La Giralda (the namesake of our hotel), features Islamic architecture. The Catholics liked La Giralda when they took the city, and they decided to keep it. From both inside and out, this cathedral was truly awe-inspiring. It also featured some amazing "Treasure" rooms featuring important artifacts, including some priceless Goya works such as Cristo Crucificado ("Christ Crucified"), and we climbed the 35 ramps to the top of La Giralda for full views of the cathedral and the city.

After touring the cathedral, the four of us sat down to one of the best lunches I've ever had. We started with two cheese plates: more sheep's milk cheese with rosemary, and goat cheese in rosemary oil. Next came Spanish flatbread topped with goat cheese, carmelized onions, and honey. This is one of those simple dishes that just puts you in awe--extremely delicious. (Hungry yet?) We also ate chicken cooked in cerveza, pork dishes with green pepper sauce and whiskey sauce, and flatbread with jamon and a spicy ground beef mixture that was a big hit with the table. Lunch concluded with the "Ecstasy of St. Theresa," a raspberry-cream mixture the name of which we found pretty interesting for a restaurant situated right next to the cathedral.

After lunch, we had "cafe con leche" with our Canadian friends and then bid them adieu. Then Nathan and I toured the Alc ázar, a large fortress that was originally built by the Moors. The structure featured a lot of beautiful Islamic architecture, and it should serve as a great warm-up for the Alhambra in Granada. Within the walls, there are also many acres of well-kept gardens, and it was fun to wander and see the interesting flowers, fountains, and peacocks on the grounds. The gardens also had some extremely loud insects that together created a noise reminiscent of the cicadas that come out every 17 years in Illinois.

Our stay in the Alcázar went a little longer than we had planned due to an afternoon thunderstorm, but it was quite nice since it cooled the city down and I miss the large midwestern thunderstorms that I used to fall asleep to as a kid.

For dinner, we ate tapas again (picking up on a theme yet?) and ordered chicken with mustard sauce, pork with green pepper sauce, paella, chicken cous cous, baccaloa (cod) with red pepper sauce, and tomatoes with young white cheese and oregano. We ended the night by going to watch a flamenco dance, which is a fun style of Spanish step-dancing. I was quite impressed, and the roughly 30-minute show was a lot of fun.

Before bed, Nathan and I were walking around our hotel's neighborhood, and I spotted a familiar face. On the street, in the middle of Spain, was our friend and Berkeley Law classmate Sarah Rezvanpour, who was traveling through Spain on her way home from Tehran, Iran. Jen has commented that I manage to find one of my friends or a close connection in almost every city, and maybe it's true.

The next day we ate churros and chocolate for breakfast and then went to see a few more sites, starting with the Plaza de España, an impressive structure built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Today, it houses several government offices.

After this, it was on to the Torre del Oro ("Gold Tower"), a structure built in the early 1200s to control access to the river running through Seville. Apparently, the tower served as an anchor for a chain that was stretched across the river and blocked ships from passing on the river.

Finally, we ate lunch at the same restaurant we lunched at the day before, and the main updates to our menu were pork in bleu cheese sauce and slices of cured tuna. I know I write about our meals quite a bit, but for me, food is a very important part of culture and travel, and the local cuisine is culturally significant to practically every region in Europe. Also, I found the food in Seville to be particularly delicious.

After a stop at the heladeria (ice cream shop), we grabbed our bags, walked to the train station and caught our train for Algeciras, a port town on the Mediterranean with ferries to Tangier, Morocco.

The train to Algeciras was fairly empty, but there was a girl assigned to the seat next to mine. Quickly digging through my pack that morning, I had grabbed and put on an Illinois t-shirt, and sure enough, on a mostly empty train to a remote port town in southern Spain, my new friend Irene had just spent an entire year studying ECE at the University of Illinois. It truly is a small world. We had a great time talking about all things Illini and technology. Also, she asked me to explain some funny cultural differences, like Americans' general aversion to both touching in general and the southern-European custom of cheek-kissing specifically.

Irene's lovely parents gave us a ride to our hostel, and after a few hours of sleep, we were on to northern Africa and our most exciting adventure yet. TBC . . .

- R

(Again, please view the Sevilla album here. Thanks again for reading and looking at the pictures. I have really appreciated the comments and e-mails, and it is really fun for me to be able to share my experiences with all of you.)