I Adore Sevilla! (Seville)

History meets reality in Sevilla. I could see and touch places I'd read about for most of my life. I walked from my hotel to the Cathedral, the Alcazar and the Barrio de Santa Cruz. It was all mine to enjoy and take in. Double fantastic! Beware of the sun and heat in the summer. Hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk. It is said that the people of Sevilla prefer to dine at home; so there are fewer restaurants than you would expect in a city of this size. Very true, but you should do very well in whatever price range you choose. The quality of the food served is excellent from tavern to elegant hotel dining room. I had an excellent lunch of tapas in the cafeteria in the garden of the Alcazar. Cafeteria in the Spanish sense, not what we think of in North America. Really a cafe with bar. Very nice! Price per meal about E15. Wines for sale always very good. Beers from Denmark. Curious!

Quick Tips:

I didn't miss the chance to shop for the famous blue tiles of Sevilla, silver work and hand made items. Avenida de Constitution offers an enthusiastic variety of items at very good prices. Also keep looking for authentic Flamenco recordings, clothing and dance shoes. The Flamenco dresses for little girls are charming. Plenty of ruffles. Not expensive. E20 and up. Grandmother material.

Disappointment not to find for sale either fine knives that gentlemen prefer or sterling silver table ware. We did buy a clock, dressed in a fine silver case. Items of a religious nature for sale nearly everywhere including little china festival figures that bore an odd resemblence to the attire of the KKK.

Best Way To Get Around:

I walked as much as I could as the area I visited is very compact. Walking gives time to think. For longer distances, I traveled by bus. Hardly anywhere to park a car if you don't know your way around. Parking is said to be inexpensive if you know where to look for it. A mystery to me! However a large underground parking lot is being built to the west of the Alfonse XIII hotel with no completion date at hand. I understood that the tourist boat trips on the river Guadalquivir, even those with dinner served, are an overpriced disappointment. The ever present horses and carriages offer a 40 minute ride for a couple for around E40, depending on how well you bargain. I couldn't bare to do this as I saw no water for the horses as they stood for hours in the hot sun. Perhaps there are rules, laws that protect them. I do hope so!

Said to be the only hotel in the world designed by a reigning monarch and used by him as an annex for the overflow of his relatives from the Alcazar, the Alfonse XIII is superb. (Alfonse XIII soon lost his throne during the Spanish Civil War.) It's listed on both the Conde Nast Traveler Gold and Reserve lists for 2002 as well as the Top 50 hotels in Europe. The hotel is elegant, rich, detailed, vast, and well located. It boasts superb service and is polished to a high gleam.

Arrival is a fantastic experience. The lobby is a marble hall trimmed with dark wood. The old-style elevators are original to 1929. I preferred the stairs: I felt as if I were making a grand entrance every time I went down to the ground floor!

My bedroom may not appear as large in my photos as it actually was. Two nearly double-sized beds made up a super king. Linens were linen! The room was cool, dark, and detailed to a fault. What an experience!! The bathroom, up one step (like a cruise ship), was decorated with hundreds of copper tiles. These were the usual fittings for a European hotel, but every detail was to the highest level of comfort and luxury: large bottles of shampoos, huge cakes of soap, towels the size of sheets, marble floors that feel oh-so-good on a hot day.

As you enter the room, you pass a very large double closet for clothing and another very large double closet substantially filled by a mini bar. Also in the room were A/C, a large sofa, a couple of side chairs, a table for room-service trays, and a huge antique desk. No, I couldn't take that desk home! The colors were all planned to give your eyes and mind a rest from the strong Spanish sun.

Modifications to the hotel made for the installation of air-conditioning are not objectionable. Glass walls surround the patio, and windows that used to open onto the courtyard are now sealed. All rooms are outside units; a few have balconies. Rooms on the upper floor facing north have a view of the Alcazar and the Cathedral. Also in the hotel are three very sedate shops. Note that the old carriage entrance on the east side is blocked; the way into the hotel is past a very serious doorman. The horses and carriages are out of the east gate as you head to the fountain.

The way to the swimming pool is a bit hard to find. A side stairway/elevator takes you down to the garden level. The large pool's full-service bar serves snacks. We hit the pool at happy hour: buy one drink, get one free. Didn't expect that! Each bartender has his or her own recipe for sangria--a delight.

This is a surprisingly private space considering that you are in the middle of a large city. I put this very high on my list of hotels, second only to the Cape Grace in Cape Town, South Africa.

Dining at the Alfonse Trece is in the courtyard of the hotel. Covers like sails protect you from the sun. When they are drawn back in the evening, the experience is beautiful. The ladies menus have no prices! The table is covered with nearly every piece of silverware and stem of crystal you can think of. Service is of the highest quality, calm and quiet. Heavy on seafood, chicken and a little pork. I don't recall beef on the menu. A vegetarian could do very well.

I began with a fruit cocktail, the others had seafood cocktails (as usual heavy in mayo). We had a plated salad in the Europeon style: sliced cold fish, white asparagus, small tomatoes--no lettace, no dressing. I ordered salmon poached in white wine. As good as salmon can ever be! Served with small white potatos and fish knifes. (My mother would be so pleased!)

In the style of Spain, the table was ours for the entire evening. No reservations booked behind us. We sat down at 9pm and stood up again at 11:45pm. (2100 to 2345 hours). We spent the time between courses chatting, enjoying the atmosphere and trying several different wines. As we had a celebration, we bought several bottles of Spanish cava. As far as I am concerned a superior product to champaign.

The dessert was a flan (said to be made in a convent). Many of the finer desserts in Sevilla are such. Truly milk and honey!

After nearly having to throw a rope around one of the waiters to get our bill, we signed and went upstairs feeling like royalty. However, a very, very expensive evening. To us, worth every cent.

This is yet another expensive Flamenco show with dinner put on for tourists. Why do I keep doing this? Well, I love Flamenco, we need to eat and I don't feel comfortable hunting around for a bar with a more authentic show. The truth is out.

The dance is fine, the dinner was multi-course and served remarkably well considering that most of the service (and the eating) was done in nearly total darkness. We arrived and were surprised to be ushered past on theater on the ground floor to a second one up a creaky staircase on the floor above. We both looked around for fire exits! Nightclub seating, small tables close together. No restrictions against non-flash photography! Finally!

Photographers came around and took several photos which were so good, we bought most of them. I hope they last for a while. Dinner began quickly with bottles of wine and fizzy water placed on our table (2 couples, lots of wine). A large plate of tapas, in this case fried prawns and fried chicken and almost at the same time a seafood cocktail (heavy in mayo AGAIN!) I soon found out why the waitresses were rushing as the banged our salads down on the table. The lights were going down and the show beginning. I had just enough time to see my salad of white asparagus, tomatoes, white cheese and olives when we were in a darkness worthy of a photographic darkroom.

I have experience in the dark and continued to eat and drink, taking care to eat off my plate and not the one of my neighbor, a lovely lady from Ohio. The show begins! Music, then dance. Lots of dance. Very fine dancers, but with the look of a very often repeated performance.

The main course, a salmon with small fried potatos and a fast switch of plates to dessert. A nice, fattening flan.

For those less interested in dance, the show which ran for 90 minutes without an intermission, was too much of a good thing. It was impossible to get up for a rest room break and it was so dark and the stairs weren't marked with guide lights.

I enjoyed the show very much and also enjoyed my first real chance to take some photos of Flamenco in performance. A bit blurry, yes, but hand held, wide open, long exposure, no flash.

I wouldn't recommend this sort of performance if you've either already seen Flamenco to your fill or want to see a more authentic version in a bar/cafe. However, if you want a nice elegant, if rushed evening; do it. When you hear the Mararena, they pitch you out.

Breakfast, served in the courtyard, in this hotel is elegant, unhurried and easy on the mind. You are escorted to a table which is covered with white linen, silverware and glassware. A question, 'cafe? te'?' If cafe, a very rich blend, you are given a large silver pot of your own with a matching silver pot of hot milk. Use the milk! The coffee is very strong. Rest for a while before walking to a shaddy area outside the courtyard for eggs made to order and a huge buffet. All sorts of freshly squeezed juices and fruits, waffles with melted chocolate and whipped cream, and also heavy sausages, pastas and meats one would normally think of a dinner food. Kellogg's cereals in oversize, but still individual boxes. At least 10 kinds of bread and rolls (hard as rocks) and a long table of pastries and sweets.

This breakfast will last you well into the late afternoon. For most people the breakfast is included in the cost of the room, but some folks do come into the hotel just for breakfast. You get much of the beauty and ambience of the hotel at a much lower price than a formal dinner.

If you want an early coffee you will need to order room service. Also this hotel does not have the common Europeon custom of a coffee/ tea maker in each bedroom. No one will rush you if you want to keep your table for a very long time. You will not feel the pressure of others waiting for a table. If the morning light is just too much for you, you can have a 'continental' in the deep shadows of the bar. See photos for the fireplace in that bar. What a place.

Fantastic shop! Drinks served to waiting husbands, alcoholic drinks! Lovely clothing, purses, silver jewelry and household decore items made in Spain. The most elegant shop I saw in Spain, but with prices that were also enjoyable. Although the shop is very detailed and luxurious, the prices are moderate to upper level depending on the item. Scarves around E40 to E100. A lamp I really liked for E50. Blankets and throws from heaven for E100 to E150.

This shop is in an old, old house; so a visitor can get an idea what it was like to live in a fashionable and expensive house in Sevilla. What had been an open patio is glassed over to give more selling space. The rooms were about 14 feet wide and the house from front to back about 40 feet. The front of this building is less than 40 feet wide. Living space was and still is expensive in Spain. This house always was a prime location as the back garden is remarkably close to the Alcazar.

I purchased a handmade velvet purse for E89, silver necklace and earnings for my secretary E39 and a very unusual wire bracelet for myself E8. All of the items were artistically very interesting. The wrapping and packing up of all items in a level usually found in Japan. Receipts with details for VAT refund given gladly.

Credit cards accepted but you must have photo identification, passport preferred. Unfortunately no shipping. No lamp!

Coming from North America, being entirely used to open spaces, the Barrio de Santa Cruz felt like a hike around a series of doll's houses. Streets often so narrow I could touch either side with extended arms. So small yet still a restaurant set out tiny tables along this narrow, overheated passage.

After a tapa lunch in the cafeteria in the wall of the garden of the Alcazar, we followed a narrow twisting lane through the old Jewish district that a long time since had hugged the outside of the wall. A slight slope down, a turn to the right and we were on the Alley de Agua. A tiny street that runs along the old Roman viaduct that still cuts through the Alcazar. Most of this at least 300 years old. The walls, mostly a hot pink, the houses narrow with evidence of garden patios tucked inside. Tiny, but these houses are some of the most expensive in Sevilla. Grills, window boxes, heavily locked doors, drapes to keep both the sun and tourist eyes out of the interior rooms.

Here and there small shops selling the usual sort of tourist knick knackery: clocks in tiled cases, flamenco dresses for little girls, postcards and Nestle ice cream sandwiches, E1.5. The life at night must be fascinating. People live here! Sometimes a tiny car in a courtyard. How did it get in here? Oppressive heat in July. Hardly a breath of air. No charge to walk around. A Coke in a tiny bottle: E1.5.

Come out one way and you are at the Cathedral, another way....a maze of shopping streets of a much more recent century, the 19th.

Does this place look familiar to you? It was used in 'Starwars Episode II, Attack of the Clones'. Built in the late 1920's for the to demonstrate the power and artistry of Spain to the world in a major exposition, this building and park are a very popular destination for the residents of Sevilla who enjoy the greenry and paddling boats on the canals. Many, many vendors of all sorts of things from postcards to so-called antiques; but beware. This is a heavy pick pocket zone.

Style of the building: long curving sweep in a Romanesque style. Tall columns and extensive tile work that is being carefully restored inch by inch. If you walk the entire length of this building on the plaza level, you will be able to see tile plaques that represent all the provinces of Spain.

At this time, the upper level of the building is closed to visitors. The marble stairs are badly worn, no handrails, etc. No charge to visit the building and the park. This is the location for nearly every major and minor festival. Summer afternoon temperatures are extremely high. I made my visit at 9 am. A very enjoyable place for photography, but while you are taking photos make sure a friend is guarding your wallet and your camera bag.

The Plaza de Espana is under reconstruction so there are ugly chain link fences, boarded off areas and baracades. This could go on for years; so there is no point in delaying your visit. Just do it. F8 and go!

Built between 1221 and 1222, this tower is said to be the final contribution of the Alomhade period to the culture of Spain. The tower was the last corner of the castle wall that extended all the way around the Alcazar which is at least a 15 minute walk away. Now a museum of naval history, the name comes not from the fable that it was the storehouse of gold from the new world; but that the sun gleamed off the gold colored tiles of the building.

Generations and centuries of building, earth moving and natural infilling have changed the appearance of the river and the city. Now a controlled channel with concrete walls, docks and stairways, the river once was wild with a tendency to flash flood. As the population of Sevilla increased, people built outward from the walls of the Alcazar in every direction. During centuries of turmoil, the sites nearer the Alcazar (the Barrio de Santa Cruz for example) were believed to be safer from both flood and violence. Location next to the palace walls didn't save the Jews.

When you look at the old exposed castle walls, you often look down at them. How? Well, it is the building up of the ground the city rests on. How many feet up? Well, it would not be unreasonable to say 15 to 20 feet over the centuries. As with all other civilizations, the nature of the way we live causes infill. Just think of all that is tossed away! As they are building the new underground parking to the east of the Torre del Oro, much of history is being discovered. As with the Big Dig in Boston, the archeologists wait for the news of new findings. So, you say, the Alcazar has not been elevated. True, but is always was out of the flood plain.

Open short hours only 1000 to 1400. Closed on Sunday and Monday. No charge on Tuesdays to EU members. Fee for all others. Not accessible.

I found a substantial remnant of the castle wall behind an office building on a facing corner. Testing my husband's nerves, I walked through a passage left open in the office building (look for the brass murals on the outside of the building that depict the naval history of the river.) out on to an observation deck that allows you to get a good look at the old walls. Obviously lit for night viewing, it is an impressive site. By peering through iron grills it is also possible to see more of the ruin to the east. As he was muttering something about 'this is a great place to get mugged', he pulled me away from this site. At least I got to see it for 5 minutes.

Every day in Spain exceeded my expectations. Without doubt I was often astonished, frequented exhausted and usually overheated. I kept falling in love. With the country. With the languages. With the people. With the horses. With the history. With the culture. For most of my life I have lived in the American Southwest. I hear the Spanish language daily. I thought I understood the history of my own area.

Frankly I did not! Being in Spain was for me a continuing process of mysterious questions being answered. A thousand facits of my own life coming into focus. All those assumptions I'd formed in Texas being knocked out of allignment. The prime moment came when I approached the Alcazar in Seville/ Sevilla. The very palace where the man we call Christopher Columbus bent his knee to plead with Queen Isabella to fund his dream of sailing to west to find the east--India. I had always pictured a fortified castle on the sea; but here was the Alcazar, a sugar cake of a palace a 15 minute's walk from a river which leads to the Atlantic ocean after 54 miles. As I stood in the very room where it is assumed that Columbus (Colon) made his plea to her majesty, I felt amazed, nearly overcome. In this moderately sized room, adorned from top to bottom with esquisite tiles and sugary plaster work, the history of my own state and much of the western hemisphere changed forever.

The Alcazar, still the Seville/ Sevilla residence of the reining monarch of Spain, is intensly beautiful. The arabesques of the arches are perfect under the Spanish sun. I saw much of this palace, upstairs and down. I sat for several hours in the garden and in a cafeteria built into one of the garden's walls thinking, wondering, soaking it all in.

This is the place where the history of Texas began. I am so grateful I saw it, had the experience of being there. This is the best part of travel.

For those of us who have been to the Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, the Alcazar is the model. J. C. Nichols feel in love with the Alcazar and copied some of its details when he built his shopping center in the 1930's out on the prairie of Missouri.