The Legend of John-Charles: Andalucia! Second Stop: Sevilla

So our second stop was Sevilla. AWESOME. There they have the largest gothic cathedral in the world, they have this castle with amazing gardens, they have an old Jewish quarter, and they have aqueducts from Roman times. (To be honest, those were a little disappointing.) But the coolest was the ambience of the city. Overall, I loved it to death. The first night we wandered a bit and searched for something to eat. We finally found a really good Indian restaurant.

It was just a little slice of all the culture that the south of Spain encompasses. It is a place where the cultures of ages have blended together. Here is a little more of the historical background: Andalucia, or Southern Spain, was the last hideout of the Moors up until 1492. It was a place with a lot more tolerance than the rest of Spain. Obviously when the Spanish finally took over they lost a lot of that tolerance but a good amount lived on. We even represented American culture as we went from there to get ice cream at McDonalds.

It totally hit the spot after the delicious but spicy Indian food. It all got me so excited for the city. Excitement that was not to be disappointed. We were there for 2 days and I could easily have stayed longer. The cathedral was the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world. It was really impressive.

As we walked up I was blown away by how immense it really was.

Aaron and I took a picture at the neat fountain.

Here is all of us in the enterance hearing all about it.

This is the site where Christopher Columbus’s remains are there in an impressive monument to him and the 4 kingdoms of Spain at the time of the American journeys.

I got a bunch of people together and set up a stack of chairs to take a timed picture and just as I was about to take it this huge group of old people moseyed right in front of it and had no respect at all for anyone else...Old People...Sometimes I just don't know.

From there we just explored the grandeur of the Cathedral.

In the corner of the Cathedral there is a very tall tower. This is actually the tower that it talks about in the da Vinci Code. Except in the book it talks about him hiking the stairs but there are no stairs in the tower. I’ll be honest, I’ve never read it but that just shows how famous it is. Here are some veiws from the top.

I finally got everyone back together for a group photo. This time there were no old people!

From there we went to the Alcazar de Sevilla. Alcazar, i think, is the moorish word for Castle so there are a lot of them in Andalucia. But this one was aweomse. The gardens were amazing. It was the perfect place for some awesome pictures and guess what happened, my camera battery died after 5 photos. Here is the only one worth showing.

I did manage to mooch of others so from here on out we are on borrowed cameras. We can thank New Year's Eve for this picture style.

So here are a few pics from the Alcazar. There aren't as many good ones as I like because the people I was with don't have my passion for artzy shots. And I felt awkward asking for to take pictures of me with their camera and such. I did, but not as often as I would like.

This one had a crazy chinese style going on. Inside the "hut" was some odd buhda looking thing. I was slightly confused.

More andalusian oranges.

The fountains were amazing. Nuff said.

Here we are in the famous baths. Yes, I was with 8 girls in the baths...(imagine my shy face.)

After we left the Alcazar we headed towards the Plaza de Espana. On the way there I stopped at the hotel to charge my battery. (So it turned out that Mom was right about the handyness of a second battery.) The path from the hotel to the Plaza passed along a river and on this river was the famous Tower of Gold.

It was amazing. From there we finally got to the plaza. It was probobly the most beautiful place I have ever been.

Here is a candid picture that Brock took of us.

Near the Plaza was an AMAZING park/garden.

I felt the need to express my frogness.

On the other side of the park were two interesting museums. One was a mudejar museum. Mudejar is a term used for the Moors that stayed in Spain and converted to Christianity. It was pretty cool.

Ther other was an old Roman museum but it wasn't that interesting. That night we went to a Flamenco Dancing and it was awesome.

The dresses and clothes were really neet.

I was inspired by the awesome dancing guys and have decided that I will one day take Flamenco Dancing classes. Seriously, their feet were moving at lightning speed.
Once again, it was an impressive mixture of cultural melting and attention to detail. We were later talking about how Muslim music had influenced the Flamenco music and that is why the sound is kind of whiney sounding. That needs to be as good of a connotation for whiney as possible. The next morning we went running and it was really cool to see the city in the new light of the morning.

I got some cool sunrise shots.

This next one is my favorite.

This was when I finally saw the aqueducts that were about the size of a small house.

Dissapointment! We did walk around a bit after breakfast in search of cheap ties and clothes. We found a sign advertizing for the show that we had gone to the night before. It was the only advertisement we had seen so I felt pretty good that we had gone to the most famous one in the city.