Yesterday and today brought partly sunny skies and cool temperatures but no precipitation, so we were able to explore the city a bit. The town of Triana sits on the opposite bank of the Guadalquivir river from Sevilla, and is where many people who work here live. We walked across the bridge, past the Torre de Oro, a watchtower built in the 13th century by the Moors to control access to the river. It also served as a prison in the Middle Ages. In Triana, we found people out and about on a Saturday, running errands and socializing in the pubs and restaurants. People were lounging along the riverfront, taking ferry rides, and even skulling and kayaking. In Sevilla itself, throngs of tourists enjoyed the sites, standing in long queues to get into the cathedral and the palace. (I kind of liked it better when it was raining and there were fewer people on the streets, but this was much more comfortable.)
Our lunch yesterday was at the 5 Jotas, a tapas bar and restaurant run by one of the premium Spanish producers of acorn-fed, cured jamón, or dried ham. I took numerous pictures of our overabundance of tapas, which of course included the jamón. Not surprisingly, we weren't terribly hungry at dinnertime, and returned to the Japanese restaurant of the night before.
Today we went into the Centro, or shopping district, of the city to see the Metropol Parasol, a wooden structure built between 2005 and 2011 on the Plaza de la Incarnación, with soaring parabolic mushroom-shaped canopies secured to the plaza on stems. Hard to describe! I took photos. Exploring the place, we discovered the Antiquarium underneath it. When the plaza was excavated to build a parking structure in the 1990s, a wonder of ruins was discovered, dating from the 1st century AD. Different layers revealed structures from sequential settlements, and the whole area was dug up, analyzed and turned into a museum. Just our kind of thing, and an unexpected pleasure. After exploring it, we wandered around the historic district and found our way back to the cathedral, had another tapas lunch, and came home to rest. They say that Sevilla is the tapas capital of the world, and we are certainly finding more tapas restaurants open at all hours than anywhere else we have been.
I'll send the photos as soon as I send this off. It is threatening rain again, and rather than fight the weather, we are changing course. Instead of heading north tomorrow, we will board a bus for Malaga, to the east, and explore the Mediterranean coast around the southeastern edge of the country, ending in Cartagena. From there, depending on the timing, we will either spend a couple of days in Valencia, or head straight to Madrid for our flight home on the 10th. This is the only part of Spain that we have never explored, and we are both particularly curious about Cartagena. I'll let you know what we discover.
