Spain: Vibrant Seville

The Giralda, the belltower that was once a minaret, rises in the distance above the
Seville cathedral. The Real Alcazar, a medieval royal palace, is at right.

 Seville was one of the major stops on our spring 2024 trip to Spain. The name itself seems to convey romance, flamenco, and royal intrigue.  Other tourists seem to have the same fascination with the city. There were crowds just about everywhere. 

Must-see attractions in Seville include Santa Maria de la Sede, the world's largest Gothic cathedral, and its belltower, a former minaret called La Giralda. The cathedral was built on the site of a 12-century mosque. Next door is the Real Alcazar, a royal palace dating back to the early Middle Ages that blends medieval, Moorish and Renaissance styles. We didn't get to see inside because we had not gotten tickets on line before they were sold out for our time in town. 

There are royal palaces elsewhere in Spain, but only in Seville is there the Setas de Sevilla, a lacy wooden canopy that stretches over two plazas and claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world. Buy a 3-euro ticket and you can walk on top of it and watch an immersive 15-minute film that captures how Seville sees itself. "Seta" is mushroom in Spanish and residents dubbed it las Setas because of its appearance. Its original and official name is Metropol Parasol.

The Plaza de Espana is another place like no other in Spain. It's a huge plaza with canals and a small lake where you can rent a rowboat. It's surrounded on one side by a half-circular building that was designed for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1928. There are 50 sections in the curve of the building that honor each of Spain's 50 provinces and you will see people from each province posing for pictures at their section. Jane visited the plaza when she was in Spain before we met, and she insisted on seeing it again.

We arrived in Seville by car on Monday, May 6, not feeling 100 percent. We drove from Cadiz where we spent most of our time in our hotel room after coming down with covid.  We easily found our hotel, Only You Seville, which is convenient to the train station (where we promptly returned our car at the Hertz office) but not to the old quarter where most of what we wanted to see was.  Since we had five nights here and thus four full days, we took it easy the first day and dived back into determined sight-seeing on Wednesday. 

We stayed here after having originally booked five nights at the Cetina Seville in the old quarter, but our stay at a Cetina in Murcia was so unpleasant that we looked for another hotel in Seville.  May is high season and we could find a room only at the Only You, which had been open only a couple of weeks when we arrived. In Malaga, we had stopped in at the Only You there and enjoyed its bar and the contemporary vibe. The hotel's bar in Seville was pretty close to identical, but bartenders and other staff were still on a learning curve. Breakfast here, however, was the best of any during this trip. There was a barista so we didn't have to use Nespresso machines to get our cafes con leche. And there was an omelet and pancake station along with the usual breads, pastries, hams, cheeses, cereals, yogurts, fruit, etc.  The outdoor pool was open but the water was cold and the poolside bar area was still under construction. At the end of our trip, we stayed two nights at the Only You Boutique hotel in Madrid. The location and the bartenders were much better, but breakfast wasn't as good as in Seville. 

Besides the train station across a large traffic circle, the area around the Only You included a Burger King and several sidewalk restaurants of little appeal. There are major commercial streets nearby with a Corte Ingles department store and an Orange telephone store, where we renewed the service on a smart phone that we bought in Madrid at the beginning of our trip. 

A taxi ride between the hotel and the cathedral area cost about 12 euros, and we took taxis most of the time, though we did make it on foot our last day. Seville is a city of almost 700,000 and it feels like a big city. The old quarter, which includes the Alcazar, the cathedral and a bullring, seems like a city within the city. When it was time to leave, we pulled our wheelies to the train station. Next stop was Cordoba, another city on the Quadalquivir River.

Here are some photos: 

There's enough water for a fleet of rowboats at the Plaza de Espana. 

There seem to be miles of highly decorative 
bannisters and railings at Plaza de Espana.

At the bottom of the curved building are 50 sections,
each dedicated to one of Spain's 50 provinces. The
buildings house an assortment of government offices.

Plaza del Cabildo is one of many pleasant
discoveries in the old quarter.

The ground floor of this odd little building
is a Haagen Dazs ice cream shop.

The Torre de Oro stands beside the
Quadalquivir River, the only navigable
river in Spain. Boats from Seville 
can reach the Atlantic at Cadiz.

A trolley helps people move around in this sprawling, low-rise city.

Tourists, I think, are more likely to end up in a 
horse-drawn carriage than aboard a trolley.

Even with tickets bought long in advance, visitors must wait on line
to enter the Real Alcazar.

The Giralda belltower and the cathedral.

The interior of the  world's
 largest Gothic cathedral.

There was a line to buy tickets and enter, but the
cathedral doesn't require advance tickets.

The cathedral's main altar.

The tomb of Christopher Columbus is in the cathedral.

The view from the Giralda. The dome in the
lower right belongs to the cathedral.

Some of the many bells at the top of the Giralda.

The English portion of a sign explaining Las Setas. Much signage, especially
in the touristic areas, is bilingual.

At the lower right is a booth for buying 3-euro tickets to ride an elevator to the
top of Las Setas where there is a walkway. Also included is a 15-minute
immersive film that is shown in a theater hidden in the structure. Beneath
the raised plaza are restaurants and a food market.

The rooftop walkway snakes its way
to different views of Seville.

Access to the raised plaza is free and seems to be a popular place for 
neighborhood children to gather after school. We sat at a cafe across
the street from Las Setas and watched children play as they
waited for parents to show up and summon them home. We were
at Las Setas late in the day but not late enough for the light show 
 it puts on every evening after sunset.

We found a Chinese restaurant near Las
Setas, but Chinese food in Spain isn't
quite the same as in the U.S. 

We had a better dinner at Alwadi, an Arab restaurant two or
three blocks from the cathedral.

We enjoy trying different hotel bars when
we travel. They usually have good mixologists
and good service. We had gin and tonics
at the Alfonso XIII, a hotel Jane stayed 
at on her first trip to Spain.

Spain: Off the Beaten Track in Murcia

 

Cartoons decorate scaffolding at Murcia's Cathedral Square. Light-hearted
public art and activities seem to be the norm in this cheerful town. You
can use your fingers to zoom in on the drawings. 

Murcia was the least touristy of all the places we stayed during our spring 2024 trip to Spain. There's not much in the way of tourist attractions is this city of almost a half-million people. It may not be a great place to visit, but I suspect it's a pleasant place to live. 

We spent four nights, April 17 to 20, at the Hotel Cetina Murcia, a not-great hotel in a great location in the city's small old quarter. Driving to the hotel eventually involved calling the desk to have someone come to us a block or two away and get barricades lowered on a pedestrian street so our car and our luggage could reach the front door. We then parked the car in a public garage several blocks away. 

Murcia is known for two festivals, Holy Week celebrations and a spring flower festival. We were here for neither, but slightly sad-looking flowers still adorned many buildings, including the stately city hall.

This was the only time during this trip that we used our rental car (a high-tech Ford Focus hybrid) for anything other than driving to the next city on our itinerary. We had four nights and three full days here, and on Thursday we drove south to the Mediterranean and Cartagena. We visited a cave bunker that was used during the Spanish Civil War and a maritime museum. We had lunch at a busy brasserie on the waterfront.

On Friday, a damp and overcast day, we drove about an hour into the mountains to Lorca, a picturesque town of centuries-old buildings. We simply walked around the town and had lunch. That Friday evening, back in Murcia, we were having drinks at a sidewalk cafe on the marble-paved, tree-lined and pedestrian Gran Via when a police car came through moving people out of the way. It was followed by hundreds of in-line skaters, some in costume, racing en mass, some with dogs on leashes, some with small children pedaling madly on little bicycles. It took several minutes for them to pass our table. I had neither my phone nor my camera with me, so you'll have to trust me that it was quite a sight. 

Our last day, a Saturday, Murcia surprised us again, this time with free piano concerts in the street at two different locations, a religious procession with oxen pulling an icon on a cart, led by riders on horseback and followed by horse-drawn wagons full of merrymakers. Once more, quite a sight. 

Like everyplace else we visited in Spain, tapas were widely available, and we had duck and mushroom cannelloni and sushi among other small bites here. Our only meal of note here was at Hispano, a restaurant across the street from our hotel. We shared a lobster salad in which lobster, not quite as fresh as it should be, was served in a delightful covered dish that looked like a lobster. Then I had lamb shoulder with warm ratatouille and Jane had sea bass. We shared a bottle of Muga Crianza (years ago in Haro in northern Spain we toured the Muga winery because it was the only Rioja winery we could find that had tours in English).  Dessert was cheesecake with praline pecans and fig marmalade. Other than the lobster, everything was first-rate, including the service. If you find yourself in Murcia, try to get a reservation here.

Murcia may not be a must-see, but for us it was a glad-we-saw-it. A pleasant town with few of the souvenir shops that fill the old quarters of other towns, no tour groups blindly following guides, no double-deck buses, and no lines for anything. There is a stadium-size bullring, though, but we didn't see it, and many, many churches. We skipped all of them except for the Santa Maria Cathedral, impressive but not as ostentatious as others in southern Spain. 

Here are some photos:

On our daytrip to Cartagena, we visited hilltop Galeras Castle, where the view
included this open-air auditorium and the harbor.

Also seen from Galeras Castles was this Roman amphitheater.

The hill that Galeras Castle sits on is riddled with caves
and bunkers that protected local people when Cartagena
was bombed by Spanish Fascists and German
Nazis during the Spanish Civil War.

An exhibit in the Museo-Refugio de la Guerra Civil, the bunkers beneath the
ground of Galeras Castle.

A pedestrian underpass on the walk between
the Civil War bunkers and the Museo Nacional
de Arqueologia Subacatica, a museum of 
maritime salvage housed in a strikingly
modern waterfront building.

This canon is explained below. It's amazing how
cast-iron objects even after centuries underwater
retain their makers' marks.

This is the Plaza de Espana in Lorca. The cathedral
on the left dominates the central part of town.

An arched opening connects the Plaza de Espana with a city street.

Lorca is nestled among steep mountains.

View from the cafe where we had lunch on a rainy Friday afternoon in Lorca.

A street scene near our hotel in Murcia.

Los Zagales, a tavern where we had tapas our
first evening in Murcia.

The hallway to our room at the 
Hotel Cetina Murcia. It looks like
a self-storage facility. We found the
hotel so unpleasant (breakfast was
 in a windowless basement room) that we
 canceled our reservation at
another Cetina hotel in Seville.

The entrance to the cathedral in Murcia.

The cathedral's bell tower.

By the standards of southern Spain, the Murcia cathedral's
interior is rather restrained. 

Late afternoon on a plaza near our hotel.

The Gran Via. Here we saw hundreds of in-line
skaters on a Friday evening.

The Episcopal Palace in Murcia.

The Segura River flows through Murcia. The cathedral bell tower is in the distance.

These riders were the first sign we had on a Saturday
morning that some tradition was being re-enacted.

These women gave us another hint.

The ox cart with a religious icon was probably the focus of the event.

Oxen dressed for the day.

Somewhat anticlimactic, wagons of people came last.

The same Saturday as the religious procession, the city had outdoor stages in two
different areas, complete with TV screens to show close-ups and folding
chairs for spectators. Some of the performances reminded of painful recitals
from my childhood, and some were absolutely stunning.

Murcia is a city with a whimsical sense of 
humor. This municipal building is on a plaza
where one of the piano stages was set up.