We arrived in Seville at 4 PM, Central European Standard Time.  There is a 6 hour difference from the East Coast.  We departed to the airport at 4 PM Eastern Standard, arrived at 4 PM Central European, carry the 5, subtract 2 due to inflation, and you arrive at a 18 hours travel time on 3 hours of sleep.  It’s an insult to the body that gets harder to politely ignore.  I should travel with more sleeping pills.

The train station in Seville is quite lovely.  

Just to compare … 

This is one of the “nicer” passages in Penn Station, the busiest train station in all of The U.S.  American exceptionalism indeed.

After a nap, we headed to The Mushrooms of Seville, or Las Setas.  They claim to be the largest wooden structures in the world, though with everything Spain says take that with a grain of salt.  They were built in 2011, and as you can tell their aesthetic really jives with the environment.  I kid. It really doesn’t.  I bought tickets to go up in them and view the city at sunset.  Sadly, we slept through our entry time.  

My genetics teacher is from this area, and the environment around the setas was very reminiscent of our lab classes together: complete chaos.  Screaming and yelling, tears, confusion, sixteen different things happening at once, somehow I am in the way, and is something on fire over there?  I wondered how any professor could run a class like this, now I see she’s just echoing her heritage.  Underneath the mushrooms was a Christmas market and carnival geared for kids.  Everyone was having a good time.  

We found dinner and collapsed at home.  Thus ended Friday, a very long day. 

Saturday dawned and we continued to sleep.  Morning came and went, as did mid-morning.   By noon we (barely) made our entry time for the Royal Alcázar of Seville, a palace that time did not forget but updated every chance it could.  It is a hodgepodge of styles from across many centuries that parallels much of Spanish history.  I will discuss none of that history here.  Nobody cared in 7th grade Social Studies, and I doubt much has changed. Suffice to say there were kings, queens, Christians, Sultans, and lots of illicit sex in the baths.  All pretty standard stuff.

Here is a map of the Alcázar, and you can see it is a variety of buildings from various eras pushed together.  The gardens are immense.  The royal of family still maintains a residence here.

We finished off the day at The Plaza de España.  

I’ll send pics of all this in a subsequent email.  

Lkd

As of 12/24:
Churches:  4
Cathedrals: 0 
Miles Walked: 9.38