18th
Feb 2016
Bus rides, Tapas
bars, and Bull Rings
It poured with
rain in the middle of the night – Well, 4.05 am to be precise ! Yesterday evening I came down with a sudden
cold and hadn’t been sleeping too well when I heard the pitter patter of rain
drops on the roof. Not a big deal – But
we had been assured last night that it wouldn’t rain, so we hadn’t put up our
wet-weather flysheet, nor had I tilted the rear awning down slightly at a
corner so that rain didn’t collect in the roof.
So I was up and dancing around in the rain sorting things out, while Janet, who had taken a knock-out
sleeping pill last night, combined with ear plugs and an eye mask, hardly
stirred from her slumbers ! I got it
done without getting too wet, but climbing around on spare wheels etc in the
dark in the middle of the night is not a lot of fun – Which is why we usually
put the fly sheet up when we are setting up !!
Long and short is that we didn’t really surface till 9 am, and it was 11
am by the time we headed down the road, still under overcast skies. “Let’s skip Seville”, we agreed.
Once we got
started, I felt a bit guilty at just skipping Seville completely, even though
it wasn’t somewhere we had planned to spend any time – But you can’t just skip
it, can you ? So I plotted route on my tablet that would take us almost
through the middle of the City, so we could at least see a bit of it, and off
we went.
So we are coming
up this wide main street into Seville, Paseo de las Delicias, nothing too
exciting, river on our left, fairly ordinary buildings on our right, and cars
parked everywhere. We started to think
about stopping for a quick look around,
but couldn’t see any parking, except one underground car park with a
height clearance of 1.9 m – No good, I am 2.13 m. Then we passed a topless hop on- hop off bus
stand, and we have done these lots of times before in different cities as they
are excellent for a quick overview of a place.
So we started looking for parking a bit more seriously, saw another
underground one, but by the time we had seen that the height (written in tiny
letters) was 2.15 m, we were past it. 25
right hand turns later, (ie we got lost in the tiny back streets !) we came out
right beside the parking lot entrance and went in. Bit tight turning circle wise for me in the
ramps, and the parking spaces are so short, my rear was left sticking out about
4 feet into the lane way ! We found an
area where there were lots of spaces, and decided to park sideways across 3 of
them – Perfect ! All 3 lights indicating
“space free” turned from green to red, so we locked up, got our bits and
pieces, and headed up to ground level.
When we came out
into the day light we were right outside Seville’s majestic Playa de Toros –
Their Bull Ring ! Just time for a quick
pic before we headed the 200 metres back down the road to find the Hop on – Hop
off bus, which we duly boarded, and armed with our head phones so we could
enjoy the details of Seville in our choice of 16 different languages. We first
of all went round the area where the 1992 World Expo was held (ironically the
Expo after Brisbane’s in 1988, when we lived there) and a lot of the pavilions
are still there and being used for various purposes – University buildings,
Arts centres, and so on. There still
seems to be a lot of focus on the ex–Expo pavilions, which is nice, but not
particularly “Seville”. Not to us, anyway.
The Pavilion of Navigation
and Energy was on an enormous site, and had a replica of a European space
rocket there. But the grounds around it were very overgrown, and needed a lot
of tidying up – Or maybe that was just because we were on a double decker bus
and could see inside the walls ? ! The Basilica
de la Macarena was a fine building externally, and is the home of Seville’s
most revered virgin. Inside is a magnificent statue with a golden crown, lavish
vestments, and 5 diamond and emerald brooches donated by the famous 20th
C matador Joselito El Gallo. Across the street is the longest surviving stretch
of Seville’s 12th C Almohad walls.
We passed along
the narrow streets into the Alameda de Hercules, which in 1383, after a portion
of the river was dammed, became a stagnant pool that had hundreds of mosquitoes
and other insects that plagued the locals. In 1574 a local Count drained the
water, and planted white poplar trees to mark off a Promenade through the area.
Originally it was planned to move 4 columns from a temple dedicated to Hercules
(the mythological founder of Seville,) elsewhere in the city, but as the 3rd
column was being moved, it fell apart !
So the two pillars at the southern end are the originals, whereas the
two at the northern end are more recent.
We got to the end
of the bus tour an hour or so later, having decided not to hop off anywhere en
route – Nothing had really enticed us. If one was spending a week or so here, I
am sure there would be lots more of interest to see. When we got off the bus, we were near the
Bull Ring again, but first we wanted some lunch, and we also needed to warm up
– The topless bus and cold wind had combined to make us quite cold. So we went down an alleyway beside the Plaza
de Toros, and found a delightful little tapas bar that was almost empty of
customers, but full of mounted bull’s heads, photos, and paintings of bull
fights in Seville – This was obviously a hang out for the locals before or
after a corrida. I had a beer and Janet
a tea to warm her up while we studied the menus – And eventually decided not to
have tapas, but grilled fish and a brochette with chorizo. By the time our food came the restaurant was
half full of locals – We were definitely in the right place, and the food was
excellent as well. Spent a very good
lunch hour in there !
Then we set off
back to the car – But on the way decided to stick our noses into the Plaza de
Toros. We found entry for Seniors was
only €4, so in we went – 15 minutes before the tour started, so we wandered
around a bit. It all brought back lots
of memories of a holiday in Spain when I was about 10, and we went to a bull
fight in Barcelona, I think it was, and then another time we went with all our
kids in Tijuana when we were staying with my sister in San Diego. Seville’s bull ring is the oldest in Spain,
took 120 years to build, and was completed in the late 18th
century. Bull fighting actually
originated from the training of troops, where wild bulls were used to train the
troops horsemanship, as well as other jousting skills like hitting (fake) human
heads dangling from frames, or, eventually, fighting the bulls. Seville is where bullfighting moved from
horse back to on foot, and where it became a professional sport rather than a
training exercise for troops. So
Seville’s Plaza de Toros is steeped in history, and the museum showed
this. And just out of interest, only 3
matadors have ever died while fighting in Seville – And one of them was
Joselito El Gallo, who was the man who I mentioned earlier gave the diamond and
emerald brooches to the statue in the Basilica de la Macarena.
While we were
there, work was going on to prepare the facility for the next season, which
starts in April and runs through to October.
After our
interesting visit to the bull ring, we really did head back to the car, and
despite parking across 3 lots, the place still wasn’t busy so we paid just the
normal rate ! We then found our way out
of Seville and headed west towards Huelva and the Portuguese border. It was already 5 pm so we didn’t expect to
get very far, plus after not a lot of sleep last night, and my ongoing cold, I
was pretty knackered. So we found the
first campsite just outside Huelva, and set up for the night – And they have
great wifi !!! So working my tail off to
get as much as I can uploaded !
As for Seville
? Well, we really enjoyed the restaurant
and the Bull Ring museum, but found that what we saw of Seville itself was a
bit tired. Understood that we didn’t
head right into the heart of the old city – Maybe we will have to come back
again another day !! And when you
consider that at the start of the day we weren’t even going to go into Seville,
we really had a great time ! That is
what I enjoy about travelling like this without a schedule – You do what you
want, when you want……………
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