Sevilla
Tuesday morning we all got up and grabbed some breakfast, for a full day of sight seeing. Our first stop, was the Plaza de España. Which was built in the 20s' for the Ibero-American Expo of 1929. The point of the expo was to improve the relationships between Spain and the countries in attendance (Portugal, The United States, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, the Republic of Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Ecuador). As always the Spanish liked to put a little symbolism behind plaza. The four bridges present in the plaza represent the four kingdoms of the middle ages in spain. Castilla, Aragon, Leon, and Navarra. The "river" flowing under the bridges represent the atlantic ocean. Lastly, as you walk through the plaza on the outer walls you will see the murals of the fifty-two provinces .
Side note: This site is also well know because it was transformed into the planet of Naboo, for Star Wars, Attack of the clones.
From there we moseyed on over to the Royal Alcazar, or better known as the Royal Palace. Quick arabic lesson; Alcazar means "Palace surrounded by walls". The palace garden consists of seventeen acres and three palaces. It is filled with orange trees and although they are to bitter to eat, they are used to make perfume, jam, and Liquor. This palace is stilled used today by the Spanish Royalty when they visit. It is extremely pretty and it's style of architecture is known as Mudejar, a mix between Christian and Muslim.
Our next stop was the cathedral. It is the third largest church in the world and the largest Catholic cathedral in the world, this is due to the fact the St. Peters (Rome) is known as a Basilica and St. Peters (London) is protestant. (I don't know the difference between a cathedral and a basilica, but I'm gonna look it up). Either way this place was massive. It also contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus! Well, Kinda. Only 150 grams of his ashes are her but what ever.
Tuesday morning we all got up and grabbed some breakfast, for a full day of sight seeing. Our first stop, was the Plaza de España. Which was built in the 20s' for the Ibero-American Expo of 1929. The point of the expo was to improve the relationships between Spain and the countries in attendance (Portugal, The United States, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, the Republic of Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Ecuador). As always the Spanish liked to put a little symbolism behind plaza. The four bridges present in the plaza represent the four kingdoms of the middle ages in spain. Castilla, Aragon, Leon, and Navarra. The "river" flowing under the bridges represent the atlantic ocean. Lastly, as you walk through the plaza on the outer walls you will see the murals of the fifty-two provinces .
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| one of the four bridges. |
Side note: This site is also well know because it was transformed into the planet of Naboo, for Star Wars, Attack of the clones.
From there we moseyed on over to the Royal Alcazar, or better known as the Royal Palace. Quick arabic lesson; Alcazar means "Palace surrounded by walls". The palace garden consists of seventeen acres and three palaces. It is filled with orange trees and although they are to bitter to eat, they are used to make perfume, jam, and Liquor. This palace is stilled used today by the Spanish Royalty when they visit. It is extremely pretty and it's style of architecture is known as Mudejar, a mix between Christian and Muslim.
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| Royal Garden, with all the orange trees. |
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| One of the four palaces. |
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| Mudejar architecture. |
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| More Mudejar architecture. |
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| Royal Palace fountain. |
Our next stop was the cathedral. It is the third largest church in the world and the largest Catholic cathedral in the world, this is due to the fact the St. Peters (Rome) is known as a Basilica and St. Peters (London) is protestant. (I don't know the difference between a cathedral and a basilica, but I'm gonna look it up). Either way this place was massive. It also contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus! Well, Kinda. Only 150 grams of his ashes are her but what ever.
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| Me and Columbus. |
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| Columbus' Tomb |
As you can see there are four men holding up his tomb, representing the four kingdoms. I can't remember what they all stand for but heres what I have. The man of Leon has a staff with a cross on top, a Saracen sun in the middle and a pomegranate on the bottom. They represent the retaking of spain from the Arabs and the pomegranate, which represents granada, was on the bottom of the staff because it was the last kingdom to be retaken. The man from Castilla is holding an ore representing exploration of the Americas. I did a quick google search to try and find out what the other two represent but I couldn't find anything on it. Isto facto, this Cathedral is one of my favorites.
We polished off the afternoon by climbing the Giralda, simply put as a giant tower. It consists of thirty five ramps, but don't let this fool you, it will take the wind out of you to get to the top in one swift walk. It has ramps instend of steps because when this cathedral used to be a mosque, before the christians came, the Muezzin (the chosen person of a mosque to lead the daily five prayers) could ride his horse to the top of the minaret to call out prayer. After we caught our breath we enjoyed the amazing view.
Ps. wikipedia, and Italian Mike's notes helped me get through the history parts of this post.
We polished off the afternoon by climbing the Giralda, simply put as a giant tower. It consists of thirty five ramps, but don't let this fool you, it will take the wind out of you to get to the top in one swift walk. It has ramps instend of steps because when this cathedral used to be a mosque, before the christians came, the Muezzin (the chosen person of a mosque to lead the daily five prayers) could ride his horse to the top of the minaret to call out prayer. After we caught our breath we enjoyed the amazing view.
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| Sevilla! |
Ps. wikipedia, and Italian Mike's notes helped me get through the history parts of this post.
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