Seville at Sunrise
Better than Barcelona
It came as a surprise that Seville would be such a clean and beautiful city, especially after the dirty and graffiti-covered alleys of Barcelona. In fact, while we would never recommend Barcelona, we would wholeheartedly suggest a trip to Seville. Here’s some of the highlights of our time there:
Plaza de España
Built in 1928 for an exposition that also included the redevelopment of the entire southern end of the city, the plaza building now holds government offices. This doesn’t stop the hoards of tourists who come to take pictures of the semi-circular building, ride boats in the moat, and take photos of the many historic images on the walls from ancient Spain.
The plaza is a fabulous space. Along the semicircular building is an elevated arcade that provides good shade in the afternoon. In front of the building is a large open area edged by a moat; in the centre of the whole plaza is a large fountain.
We ended up visiting the plaza twice because the first time was in the middle of the afternoon and Yuki thought it would be great to come back at sunrise with her blue dress.
The morning was cold but since there were very few other people at the plaza, it made for great photos.
Alcázar of Seville
Getting up early also allowed us to get in line for the Alcázar of Seville and not have to wait too long. The royal palace is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city and there is typically a long line to get in because buying tickets is slow and they only allow a maximum of 750 people in at a time, but it’s not really clear how they count.
The ticket office lady was not the nicest. She wouldn’t allow payment by credit card in Euros, only in the card’s original currency, so that they could get an extra 2% markup. I don’t think this is even legal because every receipt I received in Spain has a declaration that the payer had the chance to choose currencies.
The place has buildings with ornate halls and high ceilings, but the majority of the property is dedicated to gardens. In the typical European style, all the hedges and pathways are symmetric. Most of the ponds were a distasteful lime green from algae.
We saw a few peacocks and wandered through a small hedge maze. It was clear that a lot of people had gotten fed up with trying to get out and made shortcut holes through the walls.
Metropol Parasol
This great wooden structure was the decisive point for us going to Seville. We’ve read and studied about it in school and it was great to see it in person.
For a low 3 Euro fee, it’s possible to take an elevator up to the roof and walk around. From the top, we could see a Calatrava-designed bridge to the north and most of the city around us.
The parasol is possibly one of the largest wooden structures in the world. It is built of laminated veneer wood and actually has a lot of glued-in steel connectors, which help with the clean design.
