This morning we visited Triana, the neighborhood on the other side of the river. Triana has an open-air market every morning so we walked through and looked at all the fresh meats and fruits and vegetables. Triana is also known for being the ceramic district, so we did little shopping, mostly looking, in that area of town. Then we walked by the river where I felt the need to walk on the curb, leading to the hardest fall of my life, straight on my ass. Good thing there were only like 10 people staring at me. Ha.
We made our way along the river, which is one of my favorite places in the city and eventually arrived at the torre de oro aka the tower of gold which dates back centuries and used to be part of the wall that surrounded the city during the Muslim rule, prior to the Christian invasion. It has a little museum inside with replicas of Columbus’s ships and some history of the tower. We climbed to the top, not that it’s very tall by any means, but it has a really narrow, tight, spiral staircase.
After we took some photos, we got back on solid ground and walked around in search of lunch. One of the chicks that is always in the street handing out flyers for some restaurant directed us to this place that served a variety of stuff…not Spanish food, which I was totally fine with. I had a kebab and loaded it up with hot sauce. It was awesome. I’m not gonna lie, I miss spicy food and I’m pretty sick of Spanish food. It’s rather bland…and I swear if I eat another bowl of garbanzo bean soup…shit is goin’ down.
Anyways, we finished lunch and headed back to the apartment to drop off our purchases and then went to the Alcazar, which I have already had the pleasure in visiting. It was originally built by the Muslims when they ruled Seville and has amazing architecture. When the Christian’s moved in, they added and deleted some things, but the building and the gardens are just unbelievable. My dad had a heyday (sp?) with the gardens…he proceeded to fall behind and film like every plant in sight. And then, Marcelino just wandered off…thing is, these gardens are huge and I’m actually surprised we found each other as quickly as we did. Silly brother. It was a lot of fun and I really think my family enjoyed it.
After that, we took the bus to Barrio de la Macarena where we visited the most beloved virgin of Seville, la Macarena. Her church is little, but beautiful, as was she. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so I only took like three…and then we admired her for a while. Domingo was itching to whip out his camcorder but didn’t. Afterwards, we grabbed some coffee to warm up…it was really cold outside and then we went to Corte Ingles to buy some snacks. We spent an unnecessarily long time in there and then grabbed a bus back to the apartment. It had been a long day and we hardly had the energy to go grab dinner, but we did. We walked to this really quaint, cute place by my school and had tapas and then headed back for the night.
Tomorrow, I have a presentation for my cultural realities class…nothing to difficult. I think we’re going to try and get to Italica and back before I have to get to class…on bpt (brown people time) it could be a bit of a challenge. So...we’ll see.
<3
Maribel