Setas de Sevilla

The last part of securing our legal year-long residency here in Spain is to get our National ID cards. That appointment is coming up Thu. With Mario's help, we have a pretty good understanding of what we need to do. One step is to pay the fee associated with the National ID card. Government offices here in Spain don't collect fees like that. Instead, all banks are equipped to accept payments of government fees after which they provide you proof of payment that you then present to the government office. Long story short, we completed that part today at the bank around the corner from our flat. All went smoothly and we feel ready to present ourselves on Thu at the immigration office. Bonus, we met this little dog waiting for its master outside of the bank foyer:

Afterwards, we walked up to the grocery to cobble together the ingredients for a lasagna. Here's the finished product. It was ok, but we're thinking we need to add more sauce:

Triana is getting ready for its week-long summer fair. Tents are going up along the river:

and lights are being strung over the main square:

We have no idea what to expect, but base on pictures of previous years, it'll be packed with people all week.

This evening we walked over to the strange Setas de Sevilla. This umbrella-like structure sides incongruously in the middle of ancient neighborhoods:

If you go up on top, there are walkways that allow for nice views of the city:

It was near sunset when we went up there:

As the sun set and darkness fell, the illuminated churches all around began to stand out:

Beneath this structure are Roman ruins:

On the way home, the moon (with Venus) was beautiful (that's for you Kathy):

Unfortunately, this is a pretty out-of-focus photo.

On the math front, I met my goal today and set a new goal for tomorrow.

Aquathlon?

Still relatively cool here. I went out for a run this morning and they were setting up what looked like a transition zone for a triathlon:

 Turns out it was an "aquathlon" put on by the city. It's a 2.5K run, a 600M swim, and a 2.5K run. The run part was in the Triana neighborhood.

The swim was on the river:

 The winner of the unranked class here crossing the line:

 We didn't stick around for the "pro" group race which followed.

This afternoon, Laura and I walked north along our side of the river for the first time. This is called "The Alley of the Inquisition" which, of course, nobody expected. It's only about a block from our flat and if you look closely, you can see the river through the other end:

 Along the way, there were stairways that went right down to the river. Here's a view of our bridge (the best bridge) from one of them:

 The buildings along the river were pretty. This one has a nice flowering bush growing in front:

 Here's a tour boat coming under the next bridge north along the river. They just go up and down the river all day:

 The graffiti under that bridge is pretty elaborate:

 This is the underside of the span as it goes across the river:

 Continuing north, you start to enter a long stretch of elaborate but abandoned structures. According to Palma, they were all built in the years leading up to the Sevilla Expo '92, sadly it's all in a state of decay. The site is known as Isla de la Cartuja, though it's not really an island. Doing the math, I guess it was a celebration of the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. That voyage started here in Sevilla.

There are some places that are still in use. For example, this ceramics factory:

 and its kilns:

 Further along, it gets wild again. Like this patch of cactus:

 and this politically charged graffiti:

 and this weird abandoned circular collection of basketball courts:

 Near the end of the trek north, we encountered an active engineering college. In front was this massive electrical generator:

There's also an active amusement park complete with roller coaster:

Laura continued walking. I found a Sevici bike station and grabbed a bike and rode home.

The world cup was a bit of a disappointment with France crushing Croatia.

My time is so flexible here, it's been a bit of a challenge staying on task mathematically. I'm trying a new strategy this week where each day I write down one specific goal for the day and work to achieve that goal. Tomorrow my plan is to work on the "breast cancer" data set from the scikit-learn python library and do at least two machine learning methods on it with PCA pre-processing. Wish me luck!

Carrefour and tapas

 There's a Carrefour (sorta like the Walmart of Europe) here in Sevilla, but it's kind of far from the apartment. Now that we're in the bike share network, we decided to use the bikes to get over there and have a look around.

It was another cloudy, unseasonably cool morning. There were the usual boats and ducks on the river as we headed to the bike station.

 

 The bikes can only be out for 30 mins at a time. We thought we could make it to Carrefour in under 30 mins, but we ended up having to check them in and out of a station about 3/4 of the way there. The Carrefour was pretty huge. It has groceries, clothes, housewares etc. We scoped things out, but there really wasn't anything there that we couldn't find in smaller places near the apartment. Further, the prices, especially on food were basically the same as those we find in our neighborhood stores. Long story, short, we probably won't be going there too often:

 We rode about halfway home, then ditched the bikes and walked along the river for a while. Along the way, I managed to get a better photo of the purple flowering trees along the river. Some kind of jacaranda I'm guessing.

 Also, got a picture of the last bridge to the north of Sevilla. Really unusual design, but beautiful:

 Here's the path along the river we walked:

 There are a lot of boathouses along the river for the many rowing clubs. Here's one where there are a bunch of retired shells sitting on the roof:

 We stopped for some tapas at a place along the river, far from the center, so no tourists. Not much English going on there, but we managed:

 We ordered 3, a pork, a chorizo and a ham & cheese + a couple of diet cokes, about 10 euros:

We did a little meal planning and grocery shopping back in our neighborhood this afternoon. Everything is closed on Sundays here, so you do have to plan a bit to make it to Monday.

Bikes and gelato

Another overcast and cool morning in the Villa. Noticed these trees with purple flowers on my way back from my run along the river:

All this running is definitely improving my pace. Not great, but did 4 miles in just under 35 mins this morning.

Laura and I did some grocery shopping, then lunch. Laura made a kind of mediterranean pita/hummus/meat thing. It was good. Then, Laura went to language class and I did some math.

This evening we signed up for our Sevici accounts. This bike share service has pick-up and drop-off points all over the area. We successfully tried it this evening. I have to admit it was nice to get around a bit faster than our feet can carry us:

To celebrate our new mode of transportation, we got a gelato (helado in espanol) at a little shop near our flat. It was called "brownie" and it was really good:

Finally, here's a picture of our bridge in the waning light as seen from the next bridge to the north. Our bridge is the best bridge:

Plaza Nueva

We walked over to a stationary store this morning to pick up some 3"x5" cards for Laura to study Spanish with and to get a notebook for me. I noticed that people had put padlocks on the bridge railings since we last crossed it, presumably in the spirit of this bridge in Paris. I'm guessing that these tend to crop up from time to time on our bridge since it's definitely the coolest bridge, haha. Also, guessing that authorities are careful to clean them off pretty quickly to avoid the problems encountered with the Paris bridge.

After getting our stationary needs met, we wandered back home and encountered Plaza Nueva. This plaza is on the site of a convent that occupied the square from 1270-1840. Some of the tiles had simple designs rendered in small river stones. The tiles were about 3 feet square. I took pictures of many of them and put a few of the more interesting ones in a collage:

In the center of the plaza is the obligatory bronze of a famous person on a horse:

I found the pebble art much more interesting.

Later in the walk, we encountered a store that sold vestments and other items for Catholics. These little figurines with KKK-like robes complete with pointed hoods were a bit weird, but are apparently traditional and in no way connected:

Finally, if you ever need a pharmacy here in Sevilla, just look for big green crosses lit with LEDs and mounted on facades:

They are mesmerizing. The LEDs strobe and flash in eye-catching patterns. Sometimes they show the current temperature.

This afternoon, while Laura was at Spanish class, I read a bit and started playing around with neural networks. I also spoke to Emily a bit.

It's still unseasonably cool here, but nice.