Sevilla

After driving for 2.5 hours to Sevilla, we were ready to see some cool stuff!  Sevilla’s Cathedral is the third-largest church in Europe (after St. Peter’s at the Vatican and St. Paul’s in London), and the largest Gothic church anywhere.  It is built on the sight of where a mosque of brick once stood.  The Reconquista Christians bragged, “We’ll build a cathedral so huge that anyone who sees it will take us for madmen.” (Rick Steve’s Spain pg. 544)  Today it is recorded in the Guiness book of Records as the cathedral with the largest area, 126 meters long, 82 meters wide, and 30 meters high. 
 
It definitely was very impressive!  The four kings below carry the tomb of Christopher Columbus.  500 years after his death, DNA samples were drawn and gave Sevillans the evidence they needed to be sure that it was in fact Christopher Columbus as part of the celebration of his 500th death anniversary.  
Below is the Antigua Chapel.  It houses the oldest piece of art in the Cathedral, a fresco of Virgin Antigua.  Builders were captivated by the beauty of the Virgin holding the rose and the Christ child holding the bird and decided to incorporate it into the new building.   
The different orange, brown, gray, and black marble were so amazing…..too bad the lighting was not….hence the black and white photographs. 
As part of your admission to the church, you can also climb the Giralda Bell Tower.  It gave some amazing views of the city sprawl of white washed Sevilla.  The ramp was a welcome change from the many stairs we climb her in Europe to get grand views.  Thanks to Rick Steve, we know that it was to accommodate riders on horseback who galloped up five times a day to give the Muslim call to prayer. 


The Patio de los Naranjos:  These trees were once the mosque’s Court of the Orange Trees, where Muslims would stop to wash their hands, face, and feet before going into pray.  You can notice the lanes between the bricks that were once used for irrigation.  Muslims introduced irrigation to the Iberia. 

  
Just outside the Cathedral was this amazing courtyard with lots of horse and buggy tours with the most beautiful horses. 
We paused for lunch at a Tapas Bar.  We had ham, cheese, croquettes, pizza, salad, and some soups.  Then we were off to tour the Alcazar (below) which was originally a 10th century palace built for the governors of the local Moorish state.  It has been since rebuilt and the Christians purposefully left some of the Moorish style architecture. 

   
 
The grounds of the Alcazar were just as amazing as the inside:

 
The kids enjoyed playing “Freeze tag” against the Dads on the grounds and finally after about 20 minutes the Dad’s finally beat all the kids!! 



Our last visit of the day was the Plaza de Espana.  Built for the 1929 World Trade Fair the Plaza de Espana actually flopped back in 1929 no thanks to the Stock Market Crash.  They had a second chance in 1992 when Sevilla hosted a successful World Fair.  It is a wonderful place to stroll in the evening or to take a boat ride as we did.  Lisa photographed us all as we all got on one boat for a 20 minute ride around the water way in the Plaza.  It is accented with lots of colorful tiles, a trademark of Sevilla. 

In the boat: 

Each province of Spain has a decorative bench and map  in front of it highlighting its region.  We of course had to sit in the Malaga one and get a photo since that was the name of Jared’s mission!