16: Wednesday 15th December 2021
The Vincci La Rabida hotel is, for us anyway, high quality. It’s an old mansion building that dates from the 18th century, in the city’s old town, converted into a modern hotel, but managing to retain many of the building’s original features. Our room is large, and the whole hotel feels luxurious. There is a good rooftop terrace with views of over the cathedral, although the terrace isnt really somewhere to go in the winter as the temperature is quite chilly in the evenings when the sun has gone down.
One of the pleasures in being in a 4* hotel is the breakfasts. Over our many cycle trips we have learnt the value of a good breakfast and by choice normally now take the ”in hotel” option, even if they sometimes seem expensive; in this case though it was very good value with a buffet spread that included fresh fruit, and a spread of cheeses, meat, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. Only the coffee let them down – the filter coffee often being left out for a long while and getting stewed and often quite cold.
One of the tricks we have learnt is also being able to save some of the food that we “inadvertently” have piled onto our plate for later. Debbie argues that compared to most of the residents we eat far less, and in any case she does not eat any of the meat or fish dishes, so morally we consider this is reasonable. It has however on a number of occasions saved us at lunchtimes and those of you who are cyclists will know the importance of keeping “fuelled”, especially on very long cycle days. We have had days in the past when we have not found any cafes or shops open for the duration of our rides so taking precautionary steps like this is in our book good planning.
So even though we aren’t cycling today we had a good breakfast before Debbie headed off with the Pinacle (her touring bike) to find a repair shop, and I settled down in the room to do some office work and personal admin. We met again at lunchtime, by which time I found out Debbie had already done a whole bunch of sightseeing, so we were a little out of sync and I ended up following around trying to catch up.
My early impressions are that Seville is a really excellent city to visit and probably to live in. It has that good vibe of being cosmopolitan, modern and with a good balance of interesting history, mixed with many bars, restaurants and theatres. In December we also have the benefit of moderate weather – although it did get officially “hot” between 12.00 and 15.00, the rest of the time it was warm but not chilly. Perfect weather for sightseeing.
As is our way we did not really have a set itinerary we wanted to follow, but Debbie had done some homework and we had a few historical buildings and sites that we had down as “must do”. First off was the Bull Ring.
The Bull Ring is spectacular. It is steeped in history and drama, with rooms containing pictures and historical items of clothing and such like used by the toreadors through the ages. I suppose my view of bullfighting is that it goes alongside fox hunting as a barbaric sport that should be outlawed, yet when you see the way it is regarded by the Spanish it becomes more complicated – it is a form of art, where the event is bigger than the simple act of blood thirsty killing – including the fear of the toreador, the aggression of the trained bulls, the noise of the crowd, the heat, the colours and fashion of the clothing, and ultimately the rewards are given to the toreadors who manage the cleanest and most artistic ‘kill’.
I left feeling it would be “interesting” to visit a bullfight to see the spectacle, even though I would have my eyes shut at certain times I am sure.
We walked on after this to the Cathedral. The fourth largest church in the world, the Catedral de Santa Maria de la Sede, is a World Heritage site and is truly spectacular. The size alone is jaw-dropping with its width being about the length of a premier league football pitch. Its dimensions are 135m long, 100m wide and 42m high, and it is full of such intricate art work, carvings and paintings that it was really hard to take it all in; we came out feeling it was all a bit too much and over the top – probably not quite the reaction they wanted, but have a look at the pictures below that I took – am sure there will be better ones on the internet, but I have tried to get a feel of the place photographically, because as has been said, a picture tells a hundred words…..
The tomb of Christopher Columbus is actually quite interesting. He died in 1506 in Valladolid Spain, and his body was moved shortly thereafter to Seville, by orders of his surviving brother, Diego. In 1542, the remains were again moved, this time to Colonial Santo Domingo, in what is now the Dominican Republic, where they were installed in the newly completed Cathedral of Santa Maria. There they remained for a couple of centuries until Spain lost control of the country a couple of hundred years later when they were moved to Havana, Cuba. Then, another 100 years later, they made their final voyage back home to Seville, and placed in the cathedral. They are therefore very well travelled remains, but there is in fact still some doubt as to whether these really are his remains as another box has been found in Santo Domingo and despite DNA testing efforts the results aren’t apparently conclusive. So they may or may not be his remains – not a very satisfactory situation in my view….
If I ever get involved in a pub quiz and the question “What happened in 1492” I will be quite well prepared to give an answer. I suppose the most important point though is what didn’t happen in 1492 – and this is that Christopher Columbus did not discover America as we were taught at school; that was probably the achievement of the Vikings some five centuries before. However, in 1492 as a result of the Spanish Christians defeating the Moors with the ending of the siege of Granada, and the euphoria this gave to technological and explorative advancements including Columbus being sponsored by Isabella I and Ferdinand II to go and establish new trade routes around the world, including exploring the Americas, the world certainly changed decisively, and 1492 may therefore be seen to be the start of the modern world as we know it.
Columbus in fact has, though, in modern times gone through something of a reduction in his reputation as he has been shown to have been a rather flawed man – although as with all such topics it is hard to know if this is because he really was a bad man or whether he was just an ordinary man living in a bad time. He has certainly been linked to unfortunate slave trading, being excessively tough on his discipline with his crews and also taking diseases into the Caribbean amongst other things.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus
After the Cathedral we walked around and took in the ambience of the town, its soul and energy. I enjoy just wandering and Seville is one of those cities where you are so glad for the iPhone and Google maps, although it does take away all the old fashion fun of getting completely lost and not finding where you wanted to go, like when I went interrailing around Europe whilst at university in the late 1970’s! We then headed back to get ready for an evening entertainment of Flamenco music and dance at the Tablao Flamenco Seville, Los Gallos, http://www.tablaolosgallos.com/ that The Rough Guide has as one of their 1001 things to do before you die. Apparently, so Debs told me, it is the Ronnie Scott’s of Flamenco….
A little side story here on my past and why I like flamenco music. When I was very young, in my mid twenties, I went on a holiday with friends to a timeshare in southern Spain (Malaga) and we visited a number of places including the Alhambra and Seville. My main objective in going to Seville was I had heard it was where they made Spanish guitars and I had this (crazy) idea I would buy one then learn to play it. I remember us driving into the grubby, industrial city and of us wandering round failing to find any guitar shops. I could not revisit this first journey on this trip as the town really has changed its character; as I said in an earlier post, the town was redeveloped for the expo in the late 1990’s and it really has, as far as my memory goes anyway, really changed the city for the better. Eventually we did find a music shop and I remember being very pleased with my purchase even though I embarrassingly had no ability to be able to test play it in the shop as most other customers would do and the salesman would have expected (I went on appearance and colour rather than the test of its tone) to know if it was any good or not, and I was not able to negotiate on the price as I spoke no Spanish; it was bound to be a bargain though because I had bought it in Seville!
On getting it back to the UK I met a friend of my father, called Guy (pronounced “Gee”) who had taught my father when he worked for Shell in the 1970’s to speak French and they had become good friends. Guy used to come to visit the family occasionally for Sunday lunches, and he was always great fun – very French, even down to his appearance with a beret. Along with teaching French he was a superb classical guitarist (I think taught by Julian Bream although it is possible I am confusing stories). I remember asking him about the quality of my Spanish guitar and him telling me, probably in an effort to save my feelings, that it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t really very good…
Following this conversation Guy and I came to an arrangement. We had been discussing snooker and his love for the game on TV (this was in the days of the famous Taylor v Davis Crucible final when snooker was a very popular TV sport and the country watched it avidly on TV – in many cases on new colour televisions (remember the classic Ted Lowe commentary that: “for those watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green”), and we came to an agreement that if I taught him to play snooker he would teach me to play the guitar. I was at this time working and living in London and we therefore started a rather strange relationship where we would disappear once a week into the City Road Snooker Club and play snooker, followed by a few nights later me driving over to his flat, in a mansion block in Hampstead. He had a top floor flat I remember which he must have lived in for years and would now be worth a fortune – with many rooms, all very bohemian, and most of them I recall full of guitars – he must have had dozens and all of high quality. He never let me play on my own Spanish guitar, but always lent me one of his collection; I think he thought it would help me with my playing, although most of our lessons I am afraid to admit were spent with him continually correcting the tone of my playing – who knew playing a guitar was so difficult!
One evening instead of a lesson Guy and I went to watch Paco Peña at the Wignore Hall. Paco Peña is an extraordinary guitarist who did much to make people aware of the flamenco guitar and music in the 1960’s. I recall he had learnt his guitar from his family (as is the tradition with Flamenco music) but had never learnt to read music. That just made my poor efforts to master the instrument even more galling as even though I almost knew what the notes were I was trying to play, they just never seem to sound right. Back to my lessons, as I said most if my early lessons with Guy were spent mainly with him trying to get me to play the tone of the note correctly – we would try again and again and still the tone I got displeased him. I knew then I was never going to be one of his top pupils, but then he never beat me at snooker!
I lost touch with Guy when I moved to America in 1989. The Seville guitar got damaged when I took it with me on the plane to New York, although it gave me a good reason to explore Greenwich Village looking for a guitar repairer, and I did eventually find one who who repaired it for me – I think this probably cost more than the guitar did when I bought it in Seville. The good news is I still have this guitar, but the bad news is I still can’t play it, and having lost the optimism of youth, now realise I never will.
The Loss Gallos club was indeed a splendid place and whilst not quite Ronnie Scott’s was a very enjoyable place to watch an hour and a half of flamenco music and dance. Flamenco singing, guitars and dance is just brilliant – so fantastically choreographed with such tight guitar playing and singing accompanying the mesmerising dancing. The dancers seemed to do their very best to stamp their way through the stage floor, but the precision in the finger clicking, clapping, guitar playing and then managing to finish at exactly the same time is quite brilliant.
17: Thursday 16th December 2021
The following day after breakfast we collected Debbie’s Bike from the cycle shop and then headed out for more sightseeing. The main event today was to visit the Royal Alcazar of Seville, the oldest Royal Palace still in use in Europe. It was built over the forest settlement foundations of Seville with its origins dating back to the XI century. Since then it has been used continuously as the capital palace of the Iberian Peninsula Kingdom and (along with the the cathedral) declared a World Heritage site in 1987. It is truly stunning, and even after visiting many “stunning” buildings and churches, this is probably the most stunning stunning of them all.
It has many rooms that we could visit although an upper storey is closed as it is still used by the Royal family on their visits to the city. Much of the building has been continuously updated and refurbished through the centuries to keep up with changing fashions, and so the building has evolved and been changed – some feel this has been detrimental as it has vandalised the original work – I am not certain I agree as although it may have mixed up various cultures and fashions, the overarching feeling you get is of stunning splendour. The moorish influence is still very evident throughout the palace with the tiling and the mathematical shapes – something I find quite fascinating and that we later saw in even more detail at the Alhambra in Granada. Some pictures I took (there are far more images on the internet and the ones taken in the summer of the gardens outside just look splendid.
The images on this link (with explanations) are far better than my collection and do better justice to the building’s splendour than my own pictures do.
https://homepages.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/spain/seville/alcazar/alcazarindex.html
In the afternoon I visited a replica tall ship called the NAO Victoria – the original was one of five ships that circumnavigated the world in 1519 under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in the Philippines. The whole expedition is quite fascinating and worth a little time to divert from my comparatively dull travels.
The voyage started with 265 men aboard five ships. You can see from the picture that the boats are quite small and from my visit seemed to me to be quite top heavy, but they obviously all floated well enough, although it is really hard to imagine how 55 men could have lived on each of the small ships. Of the crew who started the trip, only one ship (the Victoria) returned, with only 18 men returning alive. Many others had deserted and others died of malnutrition, and others were executed for mutiny or were poisoned; in 1520, after establishing a settlement in Patagonia a fierce mutiny involving three of the ships’ captains broke out but was ultimately quelled, with two of the captains being executed. The third captain (Juan de Cartagena) was marooned on the coast, and although the remnants of the crew tried to retrieve him they failed to do so, so he was presumably left behind. Those who had sided with Magellan and survived the mutiny were later, in April 1521, invited to a banquet in Cebu in the Philippines to receive a gift for the king of Spain, and at this banquet most of the crew were killed or poisoned, including Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão, two of the captains, who the natives wanted to exchange for western weapons, but who were left behind by the remaining crew making their escape. The Pilot, Joao Carvalho, who had survived the trap, then became the captain of the Victoria, but in August, near Borneo, he was deposed and Juan Sebastian Eleanor became the captain for the remainder of the expedition returning home with the Victoria and its remaining 18 men being the sole survivors of those that had set off originally.
Whilst I was exploring the ship, Debbie had gone on a bike ride along the river and through some of the parks in the town. We met up after and took our final walk through the town and had dinner before heading back to start our packing up to be ready for an early start the next day. By the end we were starting to feel we were getting to know our way around Seville, and our final conclusions were that of all the cities we have visited, Seville is one we have probably not allowed enough time for, and it is definitely a place we would like to return back to. A surprise to be honest after my first trip here but it is definitely a good city to visit.
Cycle Touring Adventures! 