Cultural Dessert

Seville

7 April 2022

We had a lovely holiday in Seville last week – our first trip abroad since 2019. We stayed in a hotel in the middle of the maze-like alleys of Barrio de Santa Cruz - the old Jewish quarter. The weather was lovely – particularly when we heard it had been snowing back home! The old centre of Seville is beautiful. We loved Plaza de Espana - a spectacular fairytale crescent building and courtyard with canals full of rowing boats: it was easy to see why it is often used as a film set. I think the highlight of our visit was the Real Alcazar – the Royal Palace - a fascinating collection of buildings and gardens in Moorish styles with lots of painted tiles, water features and spectacular wooden ceilings. The gardens were extensive and stunning, with palm trees, peacocks, grottos, water gardens and hundreds of orange trees. We saw gardeners shaking oranges out of the trees and gathering them in buckets. Seville Cathedral is also very impressive - the largest gothic church in the world which features the tomb of Christopher Columbus and the stairless Giralda Tower (which you climb via an unusual set of sloping ramps). We also caught the train to Cordoba to visit the Mezquita Mosque-Cathedral - an incredible building: the candy-stripe double-arched columns seem endless, stretching off in mirror-like perspective, but the huge gothic Catholic cathedral inserted into the centre of the older mosque is truly bizarre - a surreal juxtaposition. We visited some beautiful art galleries in Seville and attended a concert by the young Spanish saxophone quartet Synthèse Quartet. But above all it was just lovely to be somewhere different after so long and to remember how good it feels to be on holiday.

Labels: Holidays

posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:46 pm