Andalusia Day Six - Tile Heaven

Friday 22 October

Today we started by exploring our neighbourhood with its cobbled, narrow streets, pavement cafes, plazas and churches.  We stuck our head into the Church of Santa Catalina to get our daily dose of ornate religious decor.

After this we came across the Case de Pilatos which was a magnificent find.  This palace, of Italian Rennaisance design, also has Mudejar elements akin to other other Andalusian palaces/churches we'd seen.  So it has a Moorish feel but the garden has marble figurines giving it the Italian look that the owner of the time wanted.

The highlight of this building has to be the tiling.  The azulejo, Spanish glazed tiles, are amazing and, with 150 different designs, one of the largest collection in the world.  The courtyard's walls are ablaze with these tiles, each a slightly different design in glorious blues, greens golds and purples.  Absolutely stunning.

Look at this staircase!

And, just in case you thought I was only interested in tiles, I found a sundial albeit sadly tucked away in a corner.

Once tile-sated, we wandered back down to the Parc de Maria Luisa.  Oooh, more tiles.

We stuck our head into the Museum of Art and Popular Customs, but, sadly, the advertised costume exhibit was closed so we didn't linger.  Nearby was the Plaza de España so we strolled around this again, people watching and enjoying a bit of flamenco.

And we rounded off the day with a stroll by the river, and the Torre del Oro, as the sun set, before heading for supper.

Andalusia Day Five - Alcázar and Plaza de España

Thursday 21 October

Today we visited the amazing Alcázar of Seville.  Once known as the al-Qasr-al-Muriq, it was built as a Royal Palace for Peter of Castille on the site of an alcazar, a residential fortress.  It exhibits much of the Mudéjar style of the Iberian peninsula, combining Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance elements.  Its architecture, gardens, tiles etc are amazing.

Inside the layout, colours, use of light, water etc was the magnificent Moorish style I love.

Imagine your staircase like this!

One of the rooms had the most amazing tiled map.  South is up in case you're interested.

This was the baths, built into the lower ground floor.

And beautifully designed themed gardens with fountains, ponds, laid out planting etc.

And I found 'my' gate (it has the initials RA on it in case you can't zoom in).

We then walked down to the Plaza de España.  This was built for the Ibero-American exhibition of 1929 and includes in its Renaissance style, a semi circular canal for which you can hire rowing boats.  I've never seen a shorter circuit for a rowing boat!

Around the walkway it had a series of tiles, in alphabetical order of region, showing a map and regional highlights.  Such amazing tiling.

Andalusia Day Four - Seville - Cathedral and More

Wednesday 20 October

A busy day today.  We started at the magnificent Seville Cathedral.  It is the fourth largest church in the world apparently and quite hard to take it all in!  The Gothic section alone spans 126 x 76 metres.  Like most cathedrals in this area, it's built on the site of a 12th Century mosque and it was taken over as a Christian building in the 13th Century.  From the 15th Century a new cathedral was built to the Gothic style of the day.  

It has a major bling factor.  Catholic gothic style is certainly not subtle, some would call it gaudy, and there is a lot of gold, highly decorative styling happening here.  The gold image on the left, below, is the main alter.  Around the edges of the cathedral are over 80 chapels (below, right) each dedicated to a particular Saint and styled in a unique, ornate decor.  

I much prefer the more muted tones of the Renaissance valt.

This was exciting - the tomb of Christopher Columbus.

 

We climbed up the Giralda, the 104 m bell tower and enjoyed the wonderful views on the way. 

Seville has a strong maritime heritage as it used to be a major port.  I'd spotted the Torro del Oro (Gold Tower) on the map and discovered this once-watch tower was now a maritime museum.  Yippee!  So of course we had to go and visit.  I won't get too geeky on this blog but it was a very Ruth-interesting place full of charts and other maritime artefacts. 

The Nao Victoria was the first ship to sail around the world and a replica has been moored at the port from where Elcano set off for this amazing feat.  It's tiny!

Not content with bagging the cathedral, maritime museum and sailing ship, we crossed the river to explore the Triana.  Our guide book had lots of short exploratory walks detailed for various areas of Seville and, I was determined to do as many of them as we could in our stay.  We wandered up and down small, quaint streets full of beautiful house fronts, tiles and paintings.

And I found a cow.

Once back at our flat JC wanted to capture sunset again.  Although his position looks quite precarious, the worst that would have happened was he would fallen onto the adjoining roof terrace of next door!

It was on days like today that I wished I had a fitbit/step counter.  Except when we were eating or drinking we never sat down.  Fantastic.

Andalusia Day Three - Granada to Seville

Tuesday 19 October

We drove to Seville via Osuna today.  We couldn't arrive at our accommodation until mid afternoon so chose this small town to stop in.  Osuna has lots of fine architecture, baroque palaces, mansions and churches dating back from the 16th to 18th Century.  

The only problem with Osuna was that it was pretty much closed for most of the time we were there.  We strolled the streets, me wrapping my hair up against the sun and the stiff breeze, but nothing was open.  We found a coffee shop, stopped for 2 cokes and a coffee and were amazed that the bill came to 4 Euros!  

After a couple of hours of wandering we found a lovely late lunch spot where we lingered for most of the afternoon.  Our only purchase after this was anti-histamine type cream for a mossie bite which was becoming quite enormous on my elbow.

Our trip into the centre of Seville, where our flat was, was a bit stressful.  Seville has numerous narrow one way streets, some of which are too narrow for even our small car, but our sat nav didn't respect that.  We got lost in a back street with no way to reverse, and a one way detour back to the beginning of the street which took 20 minutes.  Needless to say we are more than a bit relieved to meet our host, her garage, and to dump the car.  We'd chosen our apartment as it was super central and we didn't intend to use the car for the next few days.  To show how close it was we popped up onto our roof as the sunset.  Wow at the Cathedral view!