D119 - The Alcazar

We cleared the air on our meltdowns yesterday and then headed out to see the Alcázar. It's a place where rulers have lived from Roman times all the way through the Catholic monarchs. Most of the present structures date from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, but there was one patio that has been around for about 900 years! There were so many impressive and well-preserved rooms with beautiful stucco work and tile. There was even an underground room with a huge shallow pool – the room was so cool you would swear it was air conditioned.


In addition to the buildings, there were huge gardens that just seemed to go on and on.













We both thought the Alcázar was awesome and ended up spending 3 hours touring the massive complex and listening to our audioguide headsets. Man, I love those things!

By the time we ate lunch (Italian again) it was 4, and we decided to go back to the hotel to do more trip planning. Around 7 we went on a walking audio tour of Sevilla. We rented a CD, CD player, and headphones that provide interesting commentary about buildings and streets along several different walking routes. We chose the “historic” one that took us through the area around the cathedral and Alcázar, and then through the narrow streets and picturesque squares of the Jewish quarter. One of the houses on the tour belonged to the woman about whom the Barber of Seville was written.

Two and a half hours and 30 stops later, our feet were killing us. We cut the tour a little short and returned to one of the restaurants we passed on the tour. It was actually our third choice, as we'd tried unsuccessfully to find a place that was serving vegetable paella or jamón serrano. Instead, we had chicken soup that can only be described as “way too chicken-y,” a mixed salad, and a couple of glasses of sangría. Thomas went back to the hotel to get ready for bed, and I took the tripod out to try to get some pictures of the cathedral. You might not know it from this picture, but even at midnight there were still lots of people out.

-Elva