Saturday, September 8, 2018

Park Bench

Today was a breezy, cool day with puffy clouds. It's really the first opportunity I've had to just go to one of the many parks here in Sevilla and sit with my Kindle. I was not the only person with that idea:
Also, as in the US, Saturday is a big wedding day. Here's a newlywed couple working with their photographer down by the river, just beneath the bridge:
Speaking of weddings, bachelorette parties seem to be a popular and visible thing here. This crew was walking down our street with the bride-to-be leading the way:
Not sure if alcohol was involved, but I'm certain it was imminent. The friends all wore sashes saying "Amigas Cachondas" which translates politely to "racy girlfriends". Looked like they were going with a pirate theme. These parties also occur on small chartered river boats like this one:

***
I started a new audiobook today, Don Quixote by Cervantes. I wasn't sure how it would go, but it's really good. Written around 1600, it's amazing how many of the usual tropes we see in modern fiction can be found in just the first couple of chapters of Don Quixote. Also, it's funny. Downside, the audiobook is 38 hours! Largely this is the result of a lovely, but very deliberate (i.e. slow) narrator. Fortunately, I've found that running the audio speed at around 1.3x still leaves the narration perfectly acceptable and cuts the run time down to around 29 hours. I listened to it on my morning walk this morning. It's somewhat surreal to be listening to a book that was written by an author in Sevilla over 400 years ago.
***
Last night I mentioned that we walked down into the cathedral area and saw some flamenco dance. Frankly, it was more just modern dance, but hey, any excuse for art in my opinion. Here's the video that I didn't want to wait for last night: