Land of Star Wars

Hola!

I´m back, sorry for my little hiatus with posting this week, I obviously needed the time.  Also, I've been quiet busy distracting myself and getting some work done.  But I decided it's time to finish up posting about last weekend so I can move on and post about other such mundane things.

So Friday was full of monkeys and traveling and I arrived in Sevilla to our beautiful hotel room.  Well Saturday morning we had our wake up call at about 7:30 so we could be ready to go by 9.  We left the hotel, after a delicious breakfast, and headed into the centre of Sevilla to kick off our tour of the city.

We started by just driving into the city and we saw an are of the city that has a bunch of Pavillions that were made for a World's Fair, I think...I'm pretty sure I'm actually wrong about that.  But there are 20 something of them representing a bunch of different countries that were made for some really big event in Sevilla.  They are really pretty and are designed to reflect the traditions of that country at the time.  Although the U.S.'s is really really boring, it's just white.  Does that mean we were boring then? haha

After that we got off the bus to do the rest of our tour, which was mostly walking around and seeing beautiful sights.  The first place we walked into was Plaza España.  This is the most gorgeous plaza I've ever seen.  The picture to the left does not really accurately portrait how gorgeous this place was.  Luckily, I have a video of it for you!  So we walked in and we see this ginormous plaza, which oddly was empty.  Maybe that's because it was only about 9:30 in the morning on a Saturday.  Spain during that time of day on a weekend is pretty dead.  Just like a college campus!! All the young adults were out till the break of dawn the night before so there weren't many people around at the time.  That was nice for us though, because that meant our pictures were uninhibited.  So that's me on one of the many little bridges that they have in there.  At the main entrance of the Plaza there are 50 something columns that represent different parts or provinces of Spain.  Also, along the wall are a bunch of murals that represent different provinces of Spain.  There's Granada's!  So me and my friends decided to take a picture in front of Granada's gorgeous mural.

Granada's main painting is this picture of the Arabic Sultan handing over the keys to the city to King Fernando.  This did not actually happen, but it's symbolic of when Spain finally conquered over the Muslims and that's when they gained control over Granada.  I'm fairly certain that is the picture here on the wall.  Either way it's absolutely gorgous tilling.

So we walked into Plaza España and our tour guide was telling us all about the Plaza.  About how all the columns represent one thing, and the bridges represent another, none of this which I recall.
  But there is something really cool about this place.  It was in a movie!! Do you know which one?  I bet you do since I've talked about it on Facebook.  But if you don't, and in case you don't recognize the place...STAR WARS.  Yup, this place served as a Planet I believe for a few scenes in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.  In case you don't know what I'm talking about...here's a link!  Star Wars in Sevilla  Don't kill me though...the scene is in Spanish because that's all I could find.  But you'll still be able to see what I'm talking about.  I also made my own little video of the Plaza.  It shows the whole Plaza so you can see how big it is.  I ended up back at Plaza España later that day with my friends and took a nice video. But we basically just got to hang around the Plaza for a good 15 minutes and take pictures and enjoy the sites.

From there we walked over to the Alcazar (click on Alcazar for the link to their website) that they have in Sevilla.  Before Granada was conquered Sevilla was a pretty big hot spot for them to create big buildings and rule from there.  It used to be inhabited by a lot of people, and today is the capitol of Anadlusia.  For those of you who don't understand why Spain has more than one capital...well it's kind of like in the U.S.  Except, instead of states, they have autonomous communities.  So each community has their own capital, just like each state has it's own capital.  So Sevilla is now the capital of Andalusia and it has a lot of history in it.

So we went over to the Alcazar, where we were told by the guy greeting us at the gate to not touch anything or do anything really that requires common sense otherwise we would be kicked out.  It always astonishes me what people do and sometimes I wonder why some of these rules need to be said, like who's really that stupid to do things like that.  Either way, it was comical because Imna had to translate for us what the guard was telling us, because there are some kids in the program who aren't fluent enough to understand.

So our guide started walking us around the Alcazar.  Alright, now don't kill me, but I honestly don't remember a whole lot.  I think I'm starting to reach my saturation point and my mind kind of just goes weeee when someone starts talking about all the history and cool things there are to know.  I've just seen so many places that I can't always concentrate on everything they're saying to us.  But I'm going to look through my pictures and hopefully they will job my memory.  This is a musical fountain!  It was playing music when we got there.  It's powered by the water, and it sounded really pretty.  We didn't spend much time there though.  Just enough to see it, hear it and then continue, because the Alcazar is huge.

From there we walked into the Alcazar and got to look at a bunch of gorgeous rooms.  There's a lot of arabic influence in this Alcazar also, because the whole of Andalusia has a long history which being inhabited by a lot of Muslims.  So there is a lot of arabic design and they did a lot of the construction.  Also in the Alcazar you can see evidence of the three main religions.  For example, here on the wall you can see the Star of David, the Arabic star and then the Christian cross (which is more or less a regular star).  Star of David is in dark blue.  Arabic star is in orange and the christian one is the lighter blue between the black pieces.  It takes some looking, but you can see that is pretty much every place you go.  Which I think is pretty cool.

Also, in all of these places they reused a lot of things, or what my tour guide liked to joke about, recycling.  They really did recycle a lot though.  You can see the evidence of that in this photo with the columns. All of those columns are different, because they took them from older roman buildings.  Oh yea, another thing they did here was knock down the old stuff and rebuilding something else where it once stood.  So Andalusia has a lot of Roman history from when the Romans came over here.  So there's Roman influence and Arabic influence.  So these columns were once in a Roman building, and they reused them to build the Alcazar.  So these columns all look different, but I think it's a pretty cool look.  It gives the place character.

Oh, did I forget to mention that this is the place where Christopher Columbus was given permission to cross the ocean? Oops, yea, it totally is.  So this picture here his a painting in one of the rooms in the Alcazar.  This represents the maiden voyage that they took, and Mary watching over them.  It's one of the first paintings to depict/describe/embody the time period.  It's obviously not at all acurate but it has the three ships in it and a bunch of other people.  I did stand in the room though where they had that interaction.  It was pretty cool.  That room had a lot of people in it because it became a center for making trades and stuff.  But, yea I guess I totally forgot to mention that, sorry guys. haha.  And this is just another really pretty room, you can see the ceiling and the walls.  Everything is covered in design, it's gorgeous.  And that pretty much rounds out the Alcazar.  There's not much else, just a lot of gorgeous rooms, that all have a lot of designs on them.  There's a lot of reoccurring designs hidden in the place, like shells that represent the Patron Saint of Sevilla.  So I'll just round out Alcazar with a video I took while inside.

After that we went over to the Cathedral in Sevilla.  This Cathedral is the second biggest cathedral, second only to Saint Peter's Basilica.  Isn't that cool!  But it's techincally only the biggest square footage wise.  I can't remember how much it was, but it's a lot.  So I thought it was pretty cool to be there.  There are also many cool little factoids about the place, and things in there that you would not have expected.  For example:  Christopher Columbus' tomb is there.  He actually has a lot of places where they say he is buried, because his body/ashes have traveled to so many places.  But his actual tomb is in Sevilla.  So that was actually very cool to see.

They are also doing a ton of restoration in the Cathedral because after years of oil lamps and burning candles the dirt has just settled and covered everything.  Our guide was pointing out places where they have restored columns and paintings verses places they haven't.  It's amazing how dirty things get after a few hundred years...haha.  But it's amazing that almost all of the stain glass windows, after several hundred years of having sunlight shine through them, are still just as brilliant as ever.

So as we were taken around the guide stopped to show us this painting. Well I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo, but right above St. Francis' head is a big dark line, and it goes all the way around a little bit past his hand and around the other side of his body too.  Well, that's there because long ago something stole that part of the paniting.  Yup, someone cut out the circle of where St. Francis' was and just walked away with it.  It was gone for a while, but luckily someone noticed at an antique art shop what it was and alerted the authorities.  But I thought it was pretty comical that someone literally just walked up and cut him out.  So now there's that scar there, and if you look carefully you can pretty much see the whole part that they cut out.  I thought that was an interesting tid bit of info.  It's crazy was some people will do.  But it's a beautiful painting, so I guess I can understand why someone would want it.

After we looked at that painting we got another amazing surprise.  I guess they had just finished restoring this gorgeous room.  I looked up and that's what I saw.  It looks a lot bigger than it is, the person who designed this room was an excellent illusionist, basically he was a genius.  The whole ceiling is curved, there are gorgeous things written in Latin I believe all across the room and up there is a stunning painting of the Virgin Mary.  Our guide told us that when they were restoring it they had the painting down on the ground and it looked so strange because it's actually a concave painting.  So when it's flat on the ground it looks all distorted, which makes sense.  Well this room was breath taking and apparently was actually suppose to be in the designs for St. Peter's Basilica, but the Pope turned it down.  So instead, he built the room here.  Guess who designed this room and made this stunning photo, guess, guess.  I bet you don't know.  LEONARDO DA VINCI.  Yup, he designed this room.  The moment our guide said his name we all just gasped and went omg, lol.  Then of course everyone started snapping pictures.  Not me, I knew this room was special when I walked in.  So we just gawked in there for a little bit and I just stared, not really being able to believe that I was in someplace like that.  It was an amazing experience.

After that was pretty much the end of the tour.  We saw more parts of the Cathedral, we saw some gorgeous pieces that the church still uses, a really amazing crucifix, some crowns, and a ton of other pieces in  a small room that held all these pieces that are actually still in use.  From there we were told our tour was over and we were welcome to climb the 32...yes 32 flights of ramps up to the top of the tower.  So what do we do?  We climb 32 flights to get to the top of the tower to see the beautiful city of Sevilla.  Well getting up there was quite comical because everyone had heard different numbers.  We started out hearing 14 flights. Yay! That's not bad, we can totally do that.  Then we surpassed 14, and got to 16.  That's when we realized that person was very very wrong.  Then people started shouting out bigger numbers, like 24! and 44!.  24 was something we could handle, but when we heard 44 we were all like WTF? haha so needless to say the rest of the way up was interesting as we continued to go higher and higher, and we couldn't tell if it was every going to stop.  Luckily it was ramps, not stairs, which helped.  But still, we finally got to the top at flight number 32...yup...32.  Granted the sight was 100% worth it, but it was quite comical when we were all trying to guess the number.  This is what I saw at the top.  Gorgeous!  So we all hung out there for a good 15 minutes and just took in the view.  It was so nice and definitely worth the climb. After that we all split up and were set loose for the rest of the day.  It was only about 1:30, so me and my friends grabbed some bocadillos literally right next to the Cathedral and then wandered around Sevilla.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention how HOT it was in Sevilla.  I had on a short sleeve shirt, jeans and my boots.  In the morning it was cold so I thought I'd be okay with what I was wearing.  Well I should have heeded that warning telling me that it would warm up.  Because warm up it did.  I was hot, sweating even at one point.  But it was a breath of fresh air because I'm tired of the cold. haha as most of you are probably too.

After we walked up to the top of the Cathedral we decided to just wander around and make our way to the Parque Maria Jose.  The route worked out very well that we would see things that we wanted to see, and we wouldn't have to ever go out of our way.  So our first stop was the Torre de Oro, Tower of Gold.  It was incredibly uneventful and underwhelming.  I think it used to be a place where they store stuff, but now it's just a tower to go up.  And it's not made of gold, that's just what it's called.  It's just a tower that you have to pay to climb.  We weren't about to do that, so we looked at it, said "cool" and continued on, lol.  Sorry to disappoint people.

Then we continued on and saw the Bull Ring.  That was pretty cool to see.  Again, we didn't go inside because we were cheap and didn't really care that much seeing the museum they have in there.  It was very pretty though and huge.  And to think that they actually have bull fights in there is crazy.  We just looked at it for a bit and then continued on. lol, I know we were boring.  But I was also getting tired of walking.

We headed over to the big park from there and on the way we decided to stop by this ship that was docked near the pier.  It's a replica of one of the ships Christopher Columbus took.  I don't think it's the exact size that it was, but it's the same type of ship.  It was just chilling, anchored right next to the pier that people were walking along.  So me and my friends decided to go down and check it out.  Our tour guide pointed it out to us and said it's not there very often.  So we took some pictures, and even got a group shot after I asked a nice parent to take a picture for me.

Then we just wandered around the park, looked at some of the pavilions they had in the park and oh yea...my friend totally got pooped on by a bird.  haha it was kind of comical actually.  I felt so bad, and then we walked into the area of the park filled with birds and he was like "nope, not going near them".  But we had fun just taking pictures in the park, and wandering around.  After having stayed in Granada for almost an entire month I was really starting to miss greenery, trees, flowers, fresh smells, and silence.  So it was a nice change of pace.  We spent some time in there and then made our way back to our hotel.  We returned by returned by about 5 and then hung around till our dinner at 8:30.  After that a bunch of people just grabbed some wine at a local store and we hung out in a friends room.  It was a nice relaxing day and night, a great end to the weekend.  The next day was Cordoba.  But I had an excellent time in Sevilla.  It's a beautiful city and I wish I could have spent more time there.  But all is well, and it was an excellent day, full of exploring.

Until next time. <3