Saturday, December 15, 2018

The Hollywood of Andalucia

While roaming around the city these past few days, we have run up on filming locations for an, as yet, unnamed movie that is apparently set in Sevilla. This location on the Plaza de Pilatos seemed to be a scene with a young woman running from a larger, somewhat out of shape, man. You see the woman run by and then the out of shape man giving up the pursuit:


This morning the same film crew was set up on San Jacinto, the main street at the end of our street.


They were filming a scene in which a small blue car races down the street and nearly strikes a cafe waiter:


Moments later, an antique car, decked out in just married decor, races down the street after the blue car and nearly strikes the waiter again:


Over the past couple of days, with Rachel and Taylor, we've visited much higher profile filming locations in Sevilla too. For example, we visited the Real Alcázar. This garden:


and other sites in the palace were used in the Game of Thrones series:


Yesterday, we visited the Plaza de España:


This site was used extensively in Star Wars as Queen Amidala's Palace:


***

This afternoon Palma invited us to her sister's bar, Bulebar Cafe. It was the 23rd anniversary of its opening. It's a lovely little place and the only bar I've ever heard of that hosts a regular series of science lectures called "Ciencia en Bulebar". Because it was a big event for Palma's family, we were able to meet a lot of her friends and family. We met her parents, her sisters and even her daughter. Even though there were a lot of people there that she knew, Palma graciously spent a lot of time chatting with us.


Also, she promised to send Mario a picture of us under the 23rd anniversary sign (Mario was out of town and couldn't be there). She shared it with us too:


Plus, free beer!

Empty Fountains

Today we continued our walkabout with Rachel and Taylor. We had lunch at a Mexican tapas place in the Alameda called Mano de Santo. Excellent chicken tortilla soup by the way. Maybe the best all around Mexican food we've had here in Sevilla.

Afterwards, Laura went grocery shopping and home while Rachel, Taylor and I walked over to the Plaza de España. It's a fairly long walk and we went by the Cathedral and central tourist areas. We stopped and watched a flamenco group busking for a bit:


A couple of the big fountains around Sevilla were off, including this one at the Plaza. I thought it was interesting to see the guts of the thing, but was disappointed that Rachel and Taylor didn't get to see it. Maybe it's off because we're now in the coldest part of the year, I don't know:


We went up into one of the balconies at the Plaza and looked down at the "river" and the bridges:



We wandered back home and Laura made a charcuterie board, a common entree here in southern Spain:


We went out again in the evening with the intention of seeing the 3 kings Christmas display, but also to take some night pictures:



We made it to the 3 kings display just in time to see them flashing in time with a rendition of "Carol of the Bells":