So, a month has passed since posting last, but I remain determined to persevere.
Since last post I have
- camped overnight at Cheatham Lock and Dam Campground
- enjoyed a tasting "tour" at Nashville Barrel Company
- journeyed to Smith County for Matt and Anitra's annual (my first) "CAMP-o-REE" and slept three nights on their mountain ridgetop, enjoying new friends and music and that big ol' Harvest Moon
- completed my destined-to-be famous painting I call "friendly monster"
But a chill Sunday morning it is, here at Chez Merrique, and I'm a'gonna drink some coffee (half-caff, French Pressed) and get 'er done before memories of the trip of a lifetime have receded into another cavern of past experience so far they are unfetchable.
Ah, Sevilla. Seville, you say tomato I say tomato. I like the "y" pronunciation, and you can make your own mind up with help from
a brief YouTube video on the topic.
One of my favorite aspects of this journey was that everytime we set foot in a new accommodation, we were pleasantly surprised in good ways. This place, the Hotel Alfonso XII, a Luxury Collection Hotel, was well named. It was, in a word, opulent. Shoutout again to RH Travel Design! We checked in after leaving our black-suited driver and his new black Mercedez after having been picked up at the train station. He had been proficient in English and described some of the buildings we passed en route, many of them remnants of the World Expo in 1992, regal and beautiful. Inside, a young man who checked us in was Belgian with great English, and he explained when we told him where we were from that he spent a year as an exchange student with a family and at school right down the road in Franklin, TN. One world.
A funny aside, we got up to our hotel room and it was set up with two queen beds and we were unable to make any lights work. I took the (opulent) stairway down the two floors to the desk, where the clerk from Brussels explained that we had to slip the card door key into the slot at the room entrance. That also activated the AC unit which defaulted to a default setting upon its card being removed. It's clearly an environmentally friendly system which also shuts to default when the double balcony doors were opened. Smart. As opposed to us, LOL.
At the end of my most recent Spain post, I shared the first photo in the large Google album I took while I sat in the Lobby as we had awaited our luggage being delivered to our lovely room. There are a lot of Sevilla pics, because we LOVED Sevilla. We got to the room in late afternoon, so I think we may have napped, then awakened and gone in search of dinner. We got a few hints from the concierge, then stepped out into the City. Hungry, we turned down a side street past the post office, as directed, to find a couple seats at a newly opened tapas eatery, Postiguillo. It was crankin' busy, and we enjoyed some delicious tapas with a wine and a beer, Estrella Damm, of course. A couple pics:
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| My love at Postiguillo |
It began raining just before we finished up our meal, and of course we did not bring rain gear to dinner, so we braved the steady downfall and pulled off a side alley into a cute little restaurant/bar called Vuella for cover about halfway to the hotel. Wine and beer, of course, were mandatory as we waited out the hard rain then made the rest of the way "home" through a light drizzle.
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| My love being cute in the Spanish rain |
We took the lift up this time, which of course was opulently appointed:
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| Opulent private ride to our Opulent room |
We turned in early, watching an episode or two of "The Diplomat" on Lee Ann's Macbook before sleeping well. I awakened early, as usual, and we took our time bathing and dressing to head down for a lovely breakfast, served in the bar. We were hungry, and the offerings did not disappoint, Cava and all.
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| Breakfast at the Alfonso XIII |
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| The lobby on our floor of the hotel. Cozy, eh? |
After breakfast, we met our guide for the day, Virginia, in the Alfonso lobby downstairs. She was every bit as interesting as had been each of our guides, and she took us into and through the oldest Royal Palace still in use, the Real Alcazar de Seville. According to
its website's History page, it was initially ordered built in 913 AD.
The compound which makes up the Royal Alcazar of Seville was founded in the early Middle-Ages, when the ancient Roman city of Hispalis, the Spali of Gothic times, evolved to be re-named Ixbilia. According to the most trustworthy sources, it was at the beginning of the tenth century – in 913, to be specific – that the Caliph of Cordoba, Abdurrahman III an-Nasir, ordered new government premises, the Dar al-Imara, to be built on the southern flank of the city. Previously, the ruling al-Andalus powers had been seated inside the Low-Roman-Empire city centre, not far from the Hispalis Mosque, where the Collegiate Church of El Salvador now stands.
I can now proudly say that I visited Ixbilia. Subsequent ruling cultures added to and revised (a unifying cross-cultural pattern in this fantastic city) until we see what we saw that day. About midway through our tour of it, Virginia had us stand and look into what was once the throne room, and asked us if we recognized it. We did not, but now we plan to revisit Game of Thrones and enjoy having been at the site where such, dare I say "opulent", a set was reimagined in fictional history.
Watch a behind the scenes video from HBO for episode 42 of Game of Thrones. I took a load of pics at the palace, but you can see similar ones in
the Google Maps entry for it, in the Reviews section. Of course you can see mine in the big ol' España
Google Album from our trip.
Virginia took us through the historic Jewish district, as we marveled at the understated but clearly visible richness of the architecture, then we made our way back to our Alfonso. Our last location with her was the Cathedral de Sevilla, a massive structure whose history repeats the multi-cultural architectural patterns of so many iconic buildings in Savilla, and where I learned where much of the precious metals taken from the Americas by the Spanish invaders went. This structure is all silver and gold plated, and much of it solid, y'all:
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| Alter de Plata at Catedral de Sevilla |
We also saw "the" burial place of Chris Columbus, the only one of the three worldwide burial places that has been DNA verified to contain at least some of his remains, reportedly about the quantity of a fingernail. That's
a story in and of itself.
We parted ways with our Virginia and instantly discovered that we were both starving.
Casa Robles to the rescue!
NOTE: Weesh, this was a long day. I'm taking a stretch and coming back to finish. My butt's getting sore from sitting and my dog is fed up with me sitting and typing and clicking! I'm going to go ahead and publish this and come back after to finish it. There's only an afternoon walk, a nap, an almost private Flamenco music and dance show, a failed dinner reservation and great stumble-upon dinner recovery to come!
I'm back. Let's power through this together. After the awesome late lunch (not late for Spain!) we had scheduled an "Afternoon at Leisure." That it was. We moseyed back to our hotel and laid down for a nap or two. We both snoozed, and awakened refreshed and ready for our 6:00 to 8:00pm Flamenco show at Pura Esencia, a ten-minute walk from the hotel, over the Guadalquivir River bridge. We ate a snack at a little cafe next door, which was memorable only because we ate at a little table on the sidewalk and there was a raucous group of young men inside playing foosball. We thought at first that the yelling came from a group watching a soccer game on television, but when I went inside to pay the bill I laughed at the truth.
We didn't realize how intimate Pure Esencia would be; but we had our tickets, which included two drinks apiece, and were tickled that the place had seating only for 14. The guitar player opened on the tiny stage just a few feet away from our tiny table, and he was brilliant. A male singer came out and ended his guitar-accompanied set with the entrance of a powerful male dancer, then came onstage the female dancer (everyone was in traditional clothing) who set the little "crowd" on fire. Such drama, such rhythm, such beauty and tradition. It was exciting, fun, and a new memory made. Here's a 32 second snippet Lee Ann grabbed:
We had plenty of time before our 9:30 pm dinner reservation at Recoveco. It was to be a bust. We moseyed across the beautiful bridge to our hotel, then grabbed a taxi to the heart of Sevilla. Its website bills it as spacious, cozy and warm for a dynamic sensory experience. Refurbished with respect for the traditional Sevillian architecture and suitable for a lunch or dinner where the tranquility in the enjoyment of the food and the professional attention is the protagonist. Well, we found it none of those. We were seated in a very small two-top inside what was essentially a tiny room off the lobby of a hotel. There was a couple across from us, who never spoke to one another the entire time, but the place was pretty much otherwise empty. During pre-planning we had grown the expectation of an open, rooftop dining space with lovely views. The server took his time getting our order for a beer and a wine, took his time delivering them, and took so much of his time getting back with food menus we stood without a word and walked back to the hotel lobby receptionist who had first directed us to the restaurant. We asked to see the rooftop space, were told they were booked there for the night but we could take the elevator up just to look. The receptionist was professional in demeanor but the manager who escorted us up on the elevator was curt and unfriendly. It was indeed a lovely looking place. We left. While walking away, we were both a bit flaming mad. Lee Ann's cell phone rang, and it was Recoveco. They wanted a credit card payment for the two drinks. Ha. Can service get any worse? She gave it to them.
We settled down, walked sort of pointlessly through the streets, and were drawn to loud and wonderful jazz playing somewhere. It turned out that it was issuing from a humongus sculpture/building affectionately known to residents as The Mushrooms.
Known as "Las setas" ("The Mushrooms"), it is the largest wooden structure in the world. Opened in 2011, the work of German architect Jürgen Mayer is 26 metres high. The structure is made up of six large parasols in the shape of mushrooms, and it affords fantastic views of Seville from the walkway/viewing point. There is also a restaurant. The Antiquarium is situated in the basement, containing important Roman archaeological remains. The area in which it is built includes a market and a raised square where different kinds of events take place. From https://www.spain.info/en/places-of-interest/metropol-parasol
The music was top-notch and we listened for a good while, basking in the cool night company of the throngs of locals and tourists. We were getting hungry though, so we strolled some more in what we thought might be the direction of the Alfonso and lo and behold, right across from the Mushroom we spied a cute little place called La Malvaloca. We sat at a cheery little two-top, in a buzzing environment that was anything but sterile (see above) and had a lovely little tasting meal of tapas with wine and beer. Our walk "home" was relaxed and chatty and fun and we held hands the whole wild--yes, I was that old American with the beautiful young bride walking in a bubble on a Spanish Boulevard. Cherish the time.
Okay! We took a cab home, had a tasty adult beverage in the Alfonso bar, slept like drunken babies, and I awoke the next morning to write down some notes and preview the day's (Sunday's) itinerary before embracing it with the love of my life on this trip of a lifetime. Here's what I could see across the opulent room as the morning Sevilla light filtered in to welcome us to its Spanish loveliness.
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| My lovely denying the morning light :) |
It was going to be another relaxing day. Yay. See you for day seven, next post.
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