Today was going to be another long day, but at least I was able to leverage the small advantage of being able to board the bus ahead of the rest of the group, and thereby grab a seat towards the very front of the bus. I can then get off the bus before the entire rest of the group has already off-loaded and left me in the dust. Every little bit counts.
Our guide for the day was William – though his name is actually Guillermo, he was using the English version. Possibly he was a bit new, as he kept asking for directions from other tour operators.
When we got on the bus there was a little confusion about the seating – there was another woman who also claimed the front seat; she saw no problem – she plopped herself down in the guide’s seat. William was not happy – he told her she could not sit there. We offered multiple times to move one row back – the absolute front row is not imperative – but she refused to move. For some reason, William seemed to think this was our fault and explained many times why we had to move. We knew we had to move. We had no problem moving. It was the other woman who seemed content to sit in William’s seat. After several more minutes of this, she finally consented to move, and we were able to get under way.
The port city is Cadiz; Seville is about a 2 hour drive. William’s litany makes it easy to catch up on sleep.
We did have one bathroom break at a Spanish equivalent of a truck stop. The bathrooms were gross. I will leave it at that.
When we arrive in Seville, William mentions in passing that there’s a huge soccer tournament today – Barcelona vs. Valencia for the “cup”? Championship? Of Spain. So things might be a little more crowded and/or noisy than usual.
William says it’s just a short 10 minute walk to the Casa Pilatos (“Pilates’s House”), where we will switch to a local guide. Any time I hear “a short 10 minute walk”, I know this means a “20 minute race along ridiculously narrow cobblestone ‘sidewalks’ {if you can call them that}”, and I was not disappointed. William, a pretty tall guy, loped off at his normal walking speed and left me in the dust. He did stop every once in a while to let me catch up, but not to rest – he would immediately take off again.
As we’re walking through the streets, we hear very loud chanting and singing by the fans of their respective teams.
Juan was there at the Pilate House – it is an Andalusian palace, the current residence of the Duke of Medinaceli. Most of the house is open to the public.
The palace is a mixture of styles.
The reason the palace is called the Pilate House is because of the Pilate Chapel. Apparently this chapel is the same distance to Seville’s cathedral as the site of Christ’s crucifixion was to Pontius Pilates’ palace in Jerusalem:
There was an interesting painting of a bearded woman breastfeeding a baby – an ancestor of the current duke had a wife, who suddenly grew a beard after the birth of their second son.
Next was another quick “10 minute walk” to the cathedral. This time, not only was there massive chanting and singing, firecrackers and other fireworks were blasting all over the place.
Juan said it was the largest Catholic cathedral in the world. Queue protests from the group – St Peter’s in Rome is a basilica, not a cathedral, etc.
Whatever, no doubt about it, it is huge, with the usual assortment of spectacular windows and famous people buried there.
The most famous person is Christopher Columbus.
Particularly amazing is the path that Columbus’ remains took to be where they are today. He has been buried on multiple continents, and moved many times. Basically all that is left of him are some bones. But, it was confirmed by DNA analysis that those bones do belong to Christopher Columbus, because his son, Frederick, is buried near by. Both Christopher and his son were tested, and indeed the identities of both have been confirmed.
After the cathedral, we walked through the “Jewish Quarter”, though there are no Jews living there today. The only evidence we found of any kind of Jewish anything was this wall plaque:
And most importantly, we found the Barber of Seville:
At the end of the walking tour, we handed in our headsets to Juan and boarded the bus to go to lunch at a nearby restaurant.
During lunch we had a great conversation with our table mates, who were from Australia.
After lunch, we walked just a few blocks to the Plaza de España and spent 30 minutes there, wandering around the spectacularly designed park:
Each of Spanish provinces had their own beautiful benches. Andy attempted to get a photo of the bench for each of the Spanish province we had visited or were going to visit. Once again, the soccer fans got in the way:
Now it was time to head back to the bus and head back to the ship. On the way back we had another rest stop break – this time at a gas station, and thank goodness a lot nicer than the morning’s rest stop.
Another successful day!
Tomorrow – Lisbon! We get to check the box for a new-to-us country!
Maryland Meshugas 