Anoche en los Jardines del Real Alcázar

Another late night yesterday, so this journal entry is now a day late. The day ended with a wonderful concert by the ensemble Stolen Notes in los Jardines del Real Alcázar. The event was part of the Noches en los Jardines del Real Alcázar concert series. The series runs from June to Sept with events 6 nights per week. This was the 4th appearance for Stolen Notes this summer. As you can see from their web page, Stolen Notes is a Celtic style 5 man ensemble with bagpipe, accordian, flute, guitar, mandolin and drum. They were pretty tight and handled sophisticated rhythms and syncopation like pros. Apparently their banter was a hit too, based on the laughter from the audience, but my language skills are too slow to really pick up everything they were saying, let alone get the joke.

Another bonus, besides good performances, is your ticket gets you access to the walled gardens. Laura and I went early and walked around the gardens for a while before the concert. In the waning like, I could only manage a few long-exposure shots. They do provide a nice smoothing effect on the numerous fountains on the garden grounds:

 The fountains were mostly low to the ground and were connected by networks of flowing water channels. This one was isolated in the center of a rotunda:

 One of the buildings on the grounds was covered by these hand-sized painted tiles, this is one small section. Every tile is different:

 Here we are waiting for the show to start. No photography was allowed during the concert:

Earlier in the day, I went for a walk south along the river. After reading about the port of Sevilla yesterday, I decided to see if I could get a glimpse of it. Turns out, it wasn't too far (only about 2 miles):

These shots are from a drawbridge that's about 3 bridges south of our bridge (the best bridge). Yesterday was a national holiday for The Feast of the Assumption. I guess the city took advantage of the lull to do some repairs on the bridge:

On the way home, I passed by this sculpture in the middle of a traffic circle:

 As I got closer to the centro, I saw where the tour buses gather:

Here are a couple more photos from our walk to the concert. The moon is making its monthly comeback. This time from its traumatic eclipse last month, haha:

The cathedral area was pretty in the dusk:

I took these as we wandered around looking for the concert location. Turns out there are a lot of potential entrances to the gardens and the first few we encountered were locked. Eventually, after walking almost completely around the gardin wall, we found the entrance! We're definitely getting our share of walking while we live here: