One Year Away

Joseph

Penny, my father and I went for a quick tour of the south of Spain to visit cousins and friends in the cities of Seville and Cordoba.  We caught the AVE, the high speed train which reaches speeds of 300 KM/h, and a couple of hours later we were in Seville.  My cousin Almudena met us at the train station and drove us to her wonderful home in an old neighborhood.

My cousin’s husband, Carlos, has taken an early retirement deal from the bank he worked at so he was free to be our tour guide for the next couple of days.  He led us to see the Santa Cruz neighborhood, an old area of streets built very narrow to minimize the effects of the burning hot sun.  Now the pedestrian streets are lined with tourists shops and tapas bars but the facad
es of the buildings retain their original look.  The wooden balcony door/windows open onto cobblestone streets of small plazas with fountains to cool the hot and dry air.

One of the main tourist attractions of Seville is the huge cathedral with its tall tower, La Giralda.  Like many of the impressive old buildings in the south of Spain the tower was built by the Moors who ruled the area for hundreds of years.  We enjoyed the interior with its massive columns and high vaulted roof before climbing to the top of the Giralda tower for views over the entire city.

Seville is hot at this time of the year.  Temperatures peaked at 41 C on the days we were there.  The high temperature has shifted the schedule that most people here keep.  My cousin wakes up at around 7
AM and then goes to work at a government ministry.  She has a coffee and snack break at around 10 AM and then works through to 2.30 PM which is the end of her work day in the summer.  She returns home for a large home cooked lunch and then settles in for a nap.  She’ll sleep until about 6 PM to avoid the worst heat of the day.  By 7 PM the heat is starting to decrease but it really only gets comfortable by around 10 PM.  She and her husband go for a walk in the town and will stop to eat a light dinner of small tapas dishes after 10 PM.  After eating and walking some more they’ll return home and get to sleep
by 1 AM or 2 AM.

We were lucky that other cousins of ours were vacationing in nearby
Cadiz while we were in Seville.  All 6 of them made the one hour drive down to eat dinner with us in what turned out to be a highlight of our trip here. 

In Cordoba we stayed with my father’s friend Jose and his daughter.  They welcomed us into their home and took us to see their city.  It’s smaller than Seville and has fewer sites but we did really enjoy visiting the Mosque Cathedral – a massive Moor built mosque that was converted into a cathedral.  We also saw the royal city ruins of Medinat al-Zarha in the hills outside Cordoba.