Sevilla & Gibraltar

Today was a day to get out on the road a bit. We set out for the 2.5 hour drive up to Sevilla (Seville) and really enjoyed the changing scenery along the way. Not long after leaving the Mediterranean coast, the roads wound through the hills and then ended in plains filled with olive orchards after olive orchards. It was a beautiful drive and, before we knew it, we were in the heart of Sevilla. Navigating the manual-shift rental car through Sevilla’s old town and trying to figure out new and interesting signage was a bit of a challenge, but Clint finally found us a parking spot, we wiped our brows, and began to explore the city’s historic section.

Sevilla is definitely a city of incredible ancient architecture and many, many orange trees. We enjoyed looking at both on what was appearing to be a fairly warm and sunny day. We didn’t know too much about the city, but had read that the cathedral there is the third largest in Europe and included a tower that visitors could ascend – up 36 interior ramps made from stone. The tower, called the Giralda, was originally built in 1184 as part of a mosque. It was later converted to a bell tower as part of the cathedral, which itself was built on the ruins of the mosque. What we were surprised to find out is that Christoper Columbus (or, as they call him here, Cristóbal Colón) has his final resting place in this cathedral. At the top of the Giralda, we found that the weather had changed considerably in the time it took us to climb up those ramps and rain had found its way to this part of Spain, too. (In actuality, the country seems to be dealing with flooding across many regions. We’ve seen many flooded areas since arriving.) We were still able to enjoy the view, even though the skies were not as clear.

We later toured the area known as Barrio Santa Cruz – a labyrinth of narrow alleys, medieval architecture, and a smattering of shops and restaurants. It was still raining a bit, so we dipped into a small eatery for some tapas (while a tennis match from the Palm Springs area played on their TV), then continued on exploring the barrio as the sun returned.

As it was getting late in the day, we decided to head back towards the coast. Instead of retracing our steps, we took a different route which took us very near Gibraltar. We decided to head over to “the Rock” but as we approached we saw that the line of cars to actually get there was quite long to process through customs/immigration (it is still a British Overseas Territory). So, instead, we stayed on the Spanish side of the fence and took some photos of it (all while the Prudential commercial jingle about “getting a piece of the rock” played over and over in my head) and then headed back towards our condo.

Oranges in Sevilla