November 12, 2019
In Seville: a photo gallery
We admit it, 24 hours is not long enough time to spend in Seville. A week probably isn’t enough, for that matter. We get antsy fast though, and tire of walking around looking up in amazement pretty quickly. We time boxed our visit and decided to just see whatever we could fit in comfortably in one day.
First off, a couple of thoughts about Seville in general. Once you’re in the city itself, it is very bike friendly. It has a network of well marked bike routes that carry you from the core to the outskirts in all the key directions, and bike/scooter traffic inside the city is significant. We were here 15 years ago with our bikes, and it’s much easier to get around now than it was then, and there are many more bikes in evidence. I’m sure the improved infrastructure helps, as does the fact that the city is almost perfectly flat.
Outside the city though is a different story. We didn’t much like the ride approaching the city from the southwest, and tomorrow we’ll have an even harder time leaving to the northeast. When we were here last time we came in from the southeast and left from the northwest, and those were both pretty awful too. I’d be more than happy to see Seville again, but I doubt that we’d bike into it.
Once you’re here though, what an amazing, charismatic place it is. There are the big two monuments it’s so famous for - the cathedral, which is the largest gothic cathedral in Europe; and the phenomenal alcazar. Take those two away though and it’s still a fantastic place with one striking structure after another popping up as you wander the twisted streets of the old city.
We didn’t plan our visit in advance well enough. We made reservations for a flamenco show a few days ago, which was wise because the one we wanted was sold out when we arrived and turning people away. Then, last night over dinner it occurred to us to see if we could reserve admission to the Alcazar, which we could - but not at our preferred time. And this morning we checked into the cathedral and found we were out of luck. Which was fine, because we wouldn’t have had the legs to see both of them in one day anyway. If you want to see both, you should book slots in advance unless you want to wait in a long line; and you’d probably have a better time of it if you stayed an extra day and split up the experiences.
I would have said the alcazar was the highlight of our visit if you asked me late in the afternoon, as it was for our first visit fifteen years ago. We were astonished by it then, and were nearly as astonished this time.
But in the end it was only the second best thing for us. Best was the flamenco performance we attended, which completely blew us both away. We’ve seen a pair of flamenco performances in Spain before, and they were both memorable experiences - we especially remember the first time, when we caught a dinner show and sat so close to the stage that we could feel the wind from the skirts whirling a few feet from our table.
This show though was on a whole different level. We did a bit of research before ordering tickets (which were 18 euros each btw, a bargain in our estimation) and selected a highly recommended venue that specializes in authentic, high quality performances. It’s roughly a one hour performance, in a horseshoe shaped theater surrounding a square stage. There were five performers: a male and female dancer and a three member chorus that included a guitarist and a pair of singers/percussionists. It was a presentation in multiple acts, beginning with a performance by both dancers together that felt like a feral, exotic mating ritual, accompanied by a chorus of claps, foot taps, slaps, and chant (the combination of castanets and gyrations made me wonder if flamenco was inspired by the mating ritual of storks); then a solo guitar number; then a solo performance by the female dancer; then a vocal number by the chorus; and then a final solo performance by the male dancer. At the end, after the performance proper, there were a few minutes of staged dancing for which photography was permitted.
We were pretty much dumbstruck throughout the entire performance. There are so many things about it I’d like to remember - the tension and severity in the dancers faces, their brows furrowed, their mouths opening and closing and their eyes cast down or averted; the interplay between the chorus members, each other, and the dancers; the implied courtship between the dancers while one was performing and the other was guardedly watching as a member of the chorus; the wonderful syncopated percussive interplay of the guitarist, the clapping, the castanets, and the intricate staccato footwork; the incredibly elaborate costume of the woman, with its pure white mantilla that she whirled around with arms extended and eventually tossed in the face of the onlooking male dancer, to his apparent surprise; the immense blue train of her dress, that she somehow managed to keep spinning around behind her without tripping over it.
I think the thing that may stay with me the longest though was the male dancer’s solo performance. You really couldn’t take your eyes off of him as he strutted, preened, pirouetted and stomped around the stage, snapping his fingers, looking like a bullfighter, using absolutely every inch of the space. There’s no doubt that he knows exactly where he is on it at all times, aggressively and percussively stamping with his feet just an inch from the edge, clapping it from the outside edge even, stamping so close to the guitarist that he had to pull his own feet back. At the end, as he worked his way off the platform he peeled off his jacket and insolently flung it over his right shoulder onto the floor, exiting stage right.
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Everything below is from the Alcazar. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. If you’d like to know more, look it up.
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And the photos of the Alcazar made me a little teary (in a good way!). When I went there in 1999 I was so blown away that I left with a strong feeling that "everyone should see this place before they die".
Wonderful to see that the city is bicycle friendly too!
Reading this post was the perfect way to start the day!
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I don’t know that I’d come back to Andalucia just yet though. Maybe wait a month or five. You were here at the perfect time. The temperature dropped ten degrees last night, and it looks like the rainy season arrives in a few days.
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