I dismissed Cervantes' connection to Sevilla a bit too quickly yesterday. Laura pointed me to this article, Cervantes in Seville: The Prince Of Spanish Wit In Andalusia. The TLDR, he moved to Sevilla in the late 16th century and was a tax collector. He cheated, went to prison. His time in prison is said to have motivated his writing of Don Quixote. The bronze of him I showed yesterday is on Calle Entre Carceles ("between the jails"). Street names are on the buildings here (and in a lot of Europe). If you look closely at the corner of this building across from the bronze, you can see the aforementioned street name:
Went out for a walk this morning and hit some areas with more modern buildings:
The building in the center is beautiful and seems to house lots of social service agencies. The tall one on the right is still a mystery to me. It's closed.
This bridge is a couple bridges north of our bridge (the best bridge). It doesn't really go anywhere and is very lightly used, which is why I'm able to stand in the middle of the road and take a picture at 8:30am (rush hour):
It seems to be yet another relic of the expo in '92. Here's my running path along the river as it looks from this bridge:
Looks like they're painting the building across the street from us. They start early and end around 1:30pm, I guess to avoid the peak daytime heat:
At the market today, we saw this little dog waiting for its master in the foyer/entrance. Pretty friendly:
Got a decent amount of math done today. Time for bed now.
In a massive effort of will, I did manage to run this morning. Once I got out there, I felt pretty good. It's always impressive to see the Sevilla city workers cleaning up the river area after (and even during) the weekends. I realized this morning that there's so much activity down by the river on the weekends, that without constant attention, the place would be a dump. Here they are hosing down one of the streets:
I walked with Laura to her class this afternoon. Still super hot out there. On the way back, I noticed this statue of Miguel de Cervantes most well known for his novel Don Quixote:
Not coincidentally, about 100 meters down the road is this bar:
Just for clarity, I don't think Cervantes has any special connection to Sevilla. On the same stretch I saw this shop selling flamenco dresses:
I stayed home out of the heat and worked on some data analytics. While Laura was in class, Mario dropped by with the final version of the lease for our flat for the remainder of our stay here in Sevilla. He and Palma have been so amazingly accommodating. Laura came home and co-signed the lease. Then we took the trash out and happened to run into Mario returning home from a trip to the store. He came up to the flat and we gave him the signed lease. In exchange, he gave us... frying pans:
He was concerned that the frying pans in the kitchen were too old and worn, so he purchased these new ones for us. Honestly, the old pans were fine, but this is the kind of person he is, he really wants to make sure the place is in good shape for us.
On a related note, Laura had a couple of CD-ROMS for doing Spanish language exercises kicking around the apartment. None of our computers has a CD-ROM drive, so we couldn't use them. Mario lent us a USB CD-ROM drive and we were able to rip the cd's to our computer. I managed to do that in the time between the lease drop-off and pick-up, so was able to return the drive to Mario this evening too.
Mario and his family are going to Germany for a summer-ending vacation. They'll be out of town for a couple of weeks. I think he's a little worried about us, but the place is in good shape and, even without a toolbox, we can fix or deal with anything that might go wrong (knock on wood).
There's an amusement park about 2km north of our flat along the river called Isla Mágica. We couldn't live here for a year and not go right? Also, there's a serious dearth of public swimming pools here in Sevilla. Given the typically long, hot summers, this doesn't make sense to us. With the hot weather, we've really been longing to go to a pool--any pool. There are several water rides at the park, but there's also an attached water park with a pool, water slides, lazy river and a wave pool. With the weather hot and sunny, we decided to spend the day at the park and attached water park.
We rode over there on a couple of the bike share bikes. I didn't get too many pictures, but we had a good time. We did a circuit of the amusement park and rode what seemed interesting. They only have one major rollercoaster, Jaguar. It was pretty good, but it beat you up a bit. There were also the usual amusement park shows. They were all in Spanish, so not as engaging for us on the entertainment side, but engaging in the "what-the-heck-are-they-saying?" side.
Aside from the ubiquitous Spanish, the scenes were indistinguishable from what you would see in a US park. For Walla Walla people, the park is on the same scale as Silverwood up there in northern Idaho.
It was a long day and I'm pretty worn out. I'm supposed to run tomorrow morning... we'll see.
Here are a few random pictures. The whole park is kind of lagoon-y and pirate-y:
The water park:
Our rented spot at the water park (11 euros for the two chairs and a locker, meh):
Waiting for dinner:
Misters misting (these are everywhere in Sevilla, not just amusement parks):
Pirate/acrobatic show:
Dancing, fancy horses:
No sunburn, copious use of sunscreen, umbrellas and strategic indoor shows.
Spent a lot of time outside today in spite of the heat. This morning I went for a run along the river. Went 4 miles out and rode a bike from the bike share station back.
Tomorrow we plan to go to the amusement park about 2km north of us. We bought tickets on-line, but we don't have a printer to print them out, so we went on a search for a place to print a pdf file. Just to be clear, a Saturday in August is not the day in Sevilla to find a such a shop open. Google claimed that there was a print/copy shop near our usual market that would be open, but when we got there, it wasn't. We used Google (why?) to find another place and it claimed there was one open down by the university. Since it was about 2.5km away, we grabbed bikes out of the bike share and rode down there:
Neither of us had much hope that it would be open, but it was a bit of an excuse to explore a part of town we hadn't seen before. After a long, sweaty ride, we found the place (yes it was closed). We rode back up to the grocery store and did our weekend shopping. We didn't manage to get the tickets printed, but apparently the amusement park will print them for you at the gate for a mere 2 euros.
This evening we decided to continue our exploratory mode and take the metro to the large indoor mall at the Nervión station:
On the way to the mall, we passed a guy trying to give away some kittens. Based on the engagement we were seeing with passersby, my guess is he'll have no trouble:
However you feel about Cristóbal Colón (a.k.a. Christopher Columbus) whose journey to the "new world" started in Sevilla, there are a lot of references to him and his expedition. We saw this statue today that I thought was kind of interesting:
This depicts a sailor up in the crow's nest of a ship calling out "Tierra!" (or land ho!).
Turns out the Sevilla football club stadium is right next to the mall and there was a match this evening. Here's a shot of the front of the stadium:
Finally, as there was in Budapest, there is a Fridays restaurant here in Sevilla:
I guess they're kind of low-key like Hard Rock, some kind of presence in every touristy city in the world. We'll have to hit this when Rachel comes to visit. She's a fan.
We're back home now. Laura and I have been using our Amazon and Netflix video accounts a lot since we moved here. The past couple of days we've been watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon. Really good, highly recommend.
First, Cheetos kinda suck here (I know, most of your are like, "Duh, they suck everywhere.") On a whim, I bought this bag of Cheetos yesterday. They're like air with a bit of salt added. When you eat them, they kind of evaporate like cotton candy, but also kind of glue themselves to your teeth. Won't be going there again:
Took a walk into Sevilla this morning before the heat really built up. Ran into the "mushroom" sculpture again:
I also came across a nice little park with a statue commemorating a flamenco guitarist named Niño Ricardo:
Later, I walked with Laura to her class and then went to the post office to mail a couple more postcards. The heat was really on, 43 degrees Celsius! I had a lot of sympathy for the horses outside the cathedral in the tourist area. I hope they get a lot of water and rest:
I passed by this store:
for those hard to find American products, like Cheerios!
This evening, we went to a tapas bar called Blanca Paloma recommended by Palma. It was a bit off the beaten path, so not many tourists, but a friendly waiter detected our American-ness and brought us an English language menu, haha:
Laura and I have discovered that 3 tapas seems to be just right for the two of us. Well, 3 tapas and some beer:
I have to say, eating dinner at 9pm was not a thing for me in Walla Walla, but here it just seems normal now. Walking home this evening after dinner, it was still 39 degrees out there, whew! I think that's what really gets to people this time of year--it doesn't really cool off at night, there's no relief.
The tapas bar across the street from our flat was happening tonight too. Here's a patron and his dog:
Thinking of doing another photo series on city dogs. There are a lot of dogs here.
