This morning we walked into a slightly different section of Sevilla and added the Catedral de Sevilla to our list of things todo. Here's a passing shot that does not do it justice.
We also saw the Fuente de Hispalis:
and the Fuente Generacion del 27:
We've been into this area several times now and we're still finding vast areas of unexplored territory.
We also finally visited the Mercado de Triana (the market around the block). This looks like the go to place for a lot of our produce and meat shopping:
They even have sweet onions, though not from Walla Walla, haha:
In Spanish, "cebolla" means onion, and "dulce" means sweet.
After returning home, I set about doing some math while Laura made sure she knew the way to her language class on Monday. I have to say I had a great time reading papers and learning about machine learning.
I used Google Voice to put in a call to my sister Jo-Anne to wish her a happy birthday. We had a good talk. I was pleased with how well GV worked. It lets me call US numbers for free over the internet connection in our flat. Unless something changes, I'll continue to use that to call folks in the US.
We went out again this evening to dispose of our trash. Don't worry it was after 8pm, so it was ok. Here are the trash cans where local residents are supposed to drop their trash:
From left to right: in the maroon/gray, used textiles (i.e. old clothing); in the yellow, plastic, cans and cartons; in the green, glass; in blue, cardboard and paper; in the grey, everything else. The attention to recycling is admirable. Interestingly, one may only bring trash to these bins after 8pm. If you are caught putting trash in before 8pm, you will be fined.
We also walked a ways west for the first time. There it becomes much less touristy and more just Sevillians being Sevillians. We found a small shop with inexpensive housewares and checked a couple of items off of our todo list: ice cube tray, trash can for the bathroom, bathroom scale, and pitcher (for iced tea). We actually kind of borderline had a conversation with the clerk there in Spanish.
I slept pretty well last night, not sure about Laura maybe check out her blog at villawalla.blogspot.com. Went out for a run first thing this morning a.k.a. about 8:30am. The path along the canal is wonderful for running and was very busy with walkers, joggers, cyclists, and dog walkers. Along the canal, club rowing teams were out on the water or putting their boats in for workouts.
The big event of the day was Mario visiting us and getting us all the additional details of our flat. He was joined today by his wonderful wife, Palma. Mario is a secondary ed science teacher. Palma is a secondary ed english teacher. They had a lot of good advice and are very willing to help with our Sevilla project. I don't think we could have found better here if we tried. They have two children that are both competitive swimmers. Mario too is a competitive swimmer. Palma proudly noted that Mario won a gold medal recently in a Sevilla masters competition. At the end of our conversation, about 2 hours, our table was covered with notes about everything from beaches to visit, how to dispose of our garbage, to where to purchase bus cards:
In addition to that, Palma tried to explain the daily clock that folks here in Spain live on. The day starts at around 7:30am with a light breakfast, then off to work around 8am. A "second breakfast" (hobbits would love this place) would be around 10-11am. Work or school will break or end between 2-3pm and a large-ish lunch meal will occur. Many businesses are closed from 1:30pm-3:30pm. Things resume at around 4pm-ish and continue on into the late evening. A light snack might happen at around 5-6pm ish. A full dinner may occur at 9-10pm ish. Folks typically go to bed around 11:30-midnight, and the whole thing starts again.
We've definitely noticed this because there is a cafe/bar right across our street that runs from about 10-1pm and then 8-midnight and it's pretty packed with people eating, drinking and conversing. Mario had special windows put on the flat to dampen the noise. You can still hear the ruckus, but it's just a low background murmur and if you have the TV on or are playing music you don't really notice it. Here's a shot of the place as seen through the window in our living room:
We walked deeper in to the Sevilla side of town. The people in our neighborhood, Triana, kind of think of themselves as their own city with Sevilla across the bridge. Regardless, the maze of streets over there is mind-boggling. I don't know what we'd do if we didn't have Google maps to show us around. Also, every little alley and street has stuff going on. The city is clean and bustling everywhere. I think it'll take much of the year to really get to know these streets.
OK. Ways in which Spaniards are superior to us. Shouldn't all Pringles cans be this big?
And, every dustpan, even those in regular homes, have long handles?
And, the dishrack, be in a bottomless cabinet above the sink so you can put the dishes away wet and they just drip into the sink?
Our flight from Madrid was 7:20am this morning. Neither of us slept well in anticipation of the travel. We needn't have worried though. The hotel van, clearing security in a Spanish airport etc, all went smoothly.
We got a cab from the Sevilla airport to our flat and met our landlord right on time. He seems really thoughtful. He seemed to know we'd be frazzled, even at 9am, so he just let us in to the flat, gave us the major info and agreed to meet us again tomorrow once we have the lay of the land.
After living out of a suitcase for the past three-plus weeks, unpacking our suitcases and expanding out into our living space, knowing we were settled in for the long-haul, was wonderful:
The flat has a washer but no dryer. Clotheslines for all of the flats in the building are on the roof. We went up there, just to check it out:
We tried to keep moving today, so walked around the neighborhood a bit. Our street is quite narrow and comes off of a touristy strip off of the west side of the Puente de Triana (Triana Bridge) that crosses the Canal de Alfonso XIII. Our neighborhood is called Triana.
Our street Alfareria, we are on the 3rd floor (2nd in Europe) of the the reddish building at the right of this photo:
Right behind me in the above photo, our street joins Calle San Jacinto, one of many touristy strips about the downtown:
Mario, thoughtful person that he is, provided us some fruit, bread and tea to get us started. Laura and I found a small grocery store with a relatively good selection and decent, less than touristy prices, about a block west and bought a few additional things, including cheese and meat. We made sandwiches for lunch using Mario's bread:
After lunch, I slept for about 2 hours, then Laura and I walked around a bit. We crossed the bridge to the other side of the canal, deeper into the tourist area. It was a warm, clear, sunny day with very low humidity, very much like Walla Walla at this time of year:
This "turret" is at the west end of the bridge:
The view of the east side of the canal from the bridge, the so-called "Centro" neighborhood:
In the Centro neighborhood was what appears to be an overgrown moat around an old building that is now the University of Sevilla:
This building is ambiguously described as a "State Government Office" by Google, pretty building though:
Back on the west side of the canal, my attempt at an artsy photo of the east side of the canal:
Finally, the obligatory first day in Sevilla selfie.
We're hoping to get some sleep tonight, meet with Mario tomorrow to get additional details about the flat, visit Carrefour for some household items we didn't find at our local grocery store and start thinking mathematical thoughts.
Sleep was a bit weird last night. Exhausted from lack of sleep the previous night while flying from Miami combined with a 6 hour time change, I went to bed around 9:30pm local time and woke up around 8:30am local time. It was a somewhat fitful sleep, but the room was wonderfully quiet and dark.
Pardon the clutter.
After a chat with an amazingly friendly and helpful woman at the hotel desk, we got on the bus/metro for downtown around 11:00am and made it to downtown just in time for lunch. We had sandwiches at a Spanish chain called Pans and Company. It was good. Sadly, there is not a location in Seville.
The US fast food restaurants we've seen while traipsing around Madrid: McDonalds, KFC, Carl's Jr., Subway, Burger King and, for Rachel, Taco Bell:
Following the advice of the hotel desk worker, we took your basic tour bus around Madrid. This particular tour bus had two different circuits and unlimited on/off privileges. It had a headphone jack with audio commentary in about 15 different languages depending on which channel you selected. When you encountered something of interest, you just got off the bus, explored and got back on a later bus. Here are some random things we saw while riding and getting on and off the buses:
This generically called a "Cultural Center". It's a converted palace. It's hard to see here, but the main tower is being renovated. I like how the tarps covering the workers have images of what the tower should look like underneath. We saw this strategy used all over town on construction projects. I've never notice that being done in the US. Usually, it's just ugly old tarps until the renovation is complete.
Speaking of "mildly disturbing fish", we saw this monkey fish for sale in the market place:
Actually, this isn't mildly disturbing, it's wildly disturbing. Also, who knew you could eat the things inside barnacles?
We grabbed a light meal at this market. Laura had some seafood tapas that she really liked. I had some small chicken curry wraps, also good. We took the public transportation back to our hotel which involved walking about a half a kilometer at the end. Here is an awesome Spanish manhole cover, very safe:
and inexpensive. Plus reduce, reuse, and recycle, the three r's of conservation.
Tomorrow we get up early for a 7:30am flight to Seville and hopefully settle into our home for the next year.
It was a short day today. We lost 6 hours flying over from Miami. Good thing too, because we're both pretty beat. The flight went on time and our passage through customs was smooth. We even managed to get the customs person to stamp the correct page of our passports (the ones with our visas) without too much fuss.
I'm sure we looked like your average overwhelmed tourists as we wandered around looking for our hotel shuttle, but that too went relatively easily. The shuttle showed up pretty promptly and took us to our hotel very near the airport:
It's pretty isolated out near the hotel. Laura and I went on a couple of walks trying to find anything useful--a grocery store, an ATM, but kept running into dead ends where pedestrians were clearly not meant to go. That said, the room is lovely, clean and well-appointed. Also, the international electric outlet adapters that Emily got me for my birthday work like a charm. Thanks Emily!
We exchanged a $20 at the hotel desk at the very noncompetitive rate of 0.62 euro/dollar instead of the going rate of 0.86 euro/dollar. Upside, the hotel clerk told us how much the bus to downtown cost and gave us our euros in coins that were appropriate for the bus. Consulting google maps, we were able to get downtown to the Royal Palace of Madrid using the public transportation, bus to metro to city center about 45 mins. We had no particular yearning to see the palace, but it was a goal for us as we figured out how to get about. We have a full day here tomorrow before flying to Seville on Wed. Today was just to get familiar and get something to eat. Tomorrow we'll head down there again and perhaps take a tour or visit a museum. I actually didn't get a picture of the palace, but the view out the front was typical beautiful old European cityscape (pardon me while I squint into the sun, haha):
There were also a lot of statues of famous Spaniards presumably. Like this guy:
He looks a bit like he's been hitchhiking and without luck for so long that some birds have roosted on him. There were a lot of other statues. I didn't see any women which is probably one reason why these women were protesting the patriarchy on one of the nearby squares:
Neither of us was terribly hungry, so we stopped and grabbed some empanadas at this place in the palace district:
A few technical things. Our T-Mobile One phones work pretty well. Unlimited texting and data (albeit throttled back from US rates) with nothing to do and no extra fees.
We hit a cash machine with our Capital One debit card and after ATM fees etc, pulled about a 0.83 euro/dollar exchange rate. We also made a few credit card transactions using a Capital One Quicksilver card and pulled a 0.86 euro/dollar exchange rate (the going rate according to google). We'll try to use the Quicksilver card as much as possible. Also, if you have one of these cards and logon to your Capital One account and set up a "cash advance" PIN number, it allows the card to work with the "chip & PIN" systems ubiquitous here in Europe. The ticket machine at the metro station asked for the PIN, we used the aforementioned cash advance PIN, and the transaction completed successfully. We researched the heck out of credit cards before this trip and Capital One seems to be the best in terms of exchange rates, no foreign transaction fees, and now the chip & PIN technology.
Tomorrow we hope to be Madrid tourists for a day, then Wed fly to Seville to settle down for a while.
