The unusually mild summer continues here. I went out for a run this morning and it was so clear and almost cool. The sun on the riverside buildings was pretty striking:
I was out a little earlier than usual because we had a 10am breakfast meeting with Mario and Palma (the folks renting us the apartment). We worked out the details of our remaining stay in their apartment. We also had a good, wide-ranging conversation, mostly in English, about schools here in Spain, both high school and college, Palma's parents, August in Sevilla (how it mostly shuts down) and their impending trip to Germany for vacation.
I talked to my mom and later Rachel. We also did laundry and other weekly cleaning chores.
This evening we went out for a short walk. It was again breezy and cool-ish. This guy is always on the main drag in Triana, mostly nuts and roasted, salted beans:
These two were sound asleep and not really a parent in sight, but I'm sure it was fine, haha:
This is the front of the bread store on the main street, it's actually closed with the big metal doors rolled down. Traditionally, the metal doors on stores around here are painted with representations of whatever the store sells:
This is the bottom of our bridge (the best bridge):
Here is the cobblestone path along our side of the river:
This statue is very strange, also along the river, couldn't get a shot from the front since it's too close to the river:
Finally, back home, I realized I don't have a picture of the front of our building, our flat is on the 2nd floor (remember in Europe, floors are: ground, first, second, in the US our flat would be said to be on the third floor).
Laura and I walked north along the river path down to the Parque De San Jeronimo. I run this path quite often, but Laura hasn't been on it to the north very far. We saw the homeless guy in his regular spot with all of his belongings. His bundle is so big, that I think he's kind of bound to that spot now, but it seems to be working for him so far:
We saw folks fishing along the river:
Finally, we made it to the end of the path and the park. Therewe saw the Huevo de Colón (again for me):
The park itself is lovely. There were a few visitors. The trees provided welcome shelter from the sun (which can be fierce here):
Laura and I pulled some bikes out of a nearby bike station to head home. Along the way, this piece caught my eye (I don't know why):
This afternoon we trekked to our usual grocery store to get food in for Sunday (when everything is closed). Recently, we've been taking a side street that parallels the busier main street to the store. I noticed this hostel for the first time:
This evening, we went across the river to check out a bookstore that carries Spanish language instructional material for English speakers:
This narrow place had 4 floors (and no elevator). The English language stuff was on the top floor (obviously):
Laura did find a couple of useful texts. Also on the way over, we saw this couple driving an unusual vehicle:
and there was also this pretty yellow trike, haha.
On the way home, we hit a gelato shop on our street. I had mint chocolate chip in a chocolate dipped cone. I'd show you a picture, but I ate it before I remembered to take a picture.
When I went out for my run this morning the take down of La Velá de Triana was well under way. The stage was gone with just trash in its wake:
The temporary beer & tapas tents were mere skeletons of their former selves:
Not to worry though, the 6 billion other brick and mortar beer & tapas places will be open, business as usual, tonight.
Fun surprise, this morning we heard what sounded like a multi-piece brass band playing:
Turns out a few enterprising young brass players were busking out on the main street here. They were "doing it their way", with police approval, or at least police indifference:
They played for about an hour and were pretty good. God knows it's hard to find a good trumpet player.
After that, pretty typical day. Me math, Laura language school. This evening we went to Domino's of all places for pizza:
It was pretty good and not too expensive, just 6 euros for this medium pie that was enough food for Laura and me. We got drinks too, but we didn't really need to because outside the restaurant there is some "potable water":
We went home after dinner, but went back out to see the lunar eclipse. Lots of other folks here had the same plan. You can see them all lined up for the view along the bridge:
It was pretty. I managed few decent shots with my phone and its new tripod:
and:
From the day-late-and-a-dollar-short desk, here are last night's festival videos. Some traditional style Andalusian music:
and the same performer accompanied by some traditional flamenco dancers:
This person was clearly very popular. There were young kids in the audience singing along getting every word. I think the performer's name was Maria de la Colina.
This boat floats around the river in the morning and rinses off every wall, walk, bridge piling and embankment it can reach with its water cannon:
Really, the city does a great job of keeping clean. They have a massive workforce taking care of trash, streets, trees etc. The folks I've seen all seem to take pride in their work. Heck, here it's probably a living wage job (as it should be). Coupled with a national health care system, you see little crime and little homelessness.
Among the other things I noticed this morning as I walked around, this crocheted artwork hanging along the brick embankment on the Sevilla side of the river:
I liked the look of the old bricks in this wall so much that I decided to make them the background image of the blog:
A little further along the river, you meet La Torre del Oro (the tower of gold):
complete with a few palm trees.
I took the trash out this evening and checked on the moon (there's supposed to be a lunar eclipse, but perhaps not visible here, turns out it's tomorrow evening, thanks Kath). Regardless, it was a full moon and very pretty rising above La Torre del Oro:
I also noticed some folks feeding the ducks and geese below the bridge:
As promised, a day late, here is a video of last night's performers, a band called Alameda. They were pretty talented musically, leaned towards a kind of rock, but with interesting guitar and non-traditional timings. Here's the one song I recorded:
I realize sitting down to write this that I didn't post the promised videos from last night's visit to the square to see who was on the concert stage. The challenge is that I take all these photos and videos on my phone. When I get home, the phone uploads all the stuff to my google photos. I can't put anything into these pages until that upload finishes. The internet here in the flat isn't bad for downloading, but for uploading I suspect it's not much better than the old phone modems we used to have in the 90's. Especially when there's a video, I think the uploads aren't finishing until well into the night. I guess the move is to just post them a day late. So, here are a couple of videos from last night's performance. I should give credit to who these performers are, but I can't find any information about them anywhere:
Tomorrow, I'll post the video I took just now at this evening's performances.
This morning I went out for a run. I ran about 4 miles out along the river, found a bike share station and rode back home. It was a nice combination that I think I'll keep trying.
Laura received her absentee ballot from Walla Walla, filled it out and was ready to mail it (for some reason, mine has yet to arrive, even though, presumably they were both mailed at the same time). We went to the local post office to make sure it received the correct postage, but it was closed (summer hours):
We did notice that there was another post office listed on the sign as having longer hours. Also, it was in the direction of Laura's language school, so we walked over that way. It was open, there wasn't really any waiting and the postal clerk was quite efficient. Laura's vote is on its way back to Walla Walla and should get there well before the Aug 7th election date. We continued from the post office to the language school passing by the Catedral de Sevilla:
The main entrance really is impressive. We haven't been on the tour yet. We're saving it for a rainy day, literally. I'm looking forward to seeing the inside though. With Laura in class, I walked back home (obligatory photo from the bridge):
I spent the afternoon doing math, as per usual. A mathematician's life is mostly coming up with conjectures and convincing yourself (and others) that they're correct. Unfortunately, you have to get used to being wrong... a lot. About 99 out of 100 conjectures that a mathematician comes up with are wrong somehow. The other 1 out of 100, we prove and subsequently publish. I have a conjecture I've been working on for a couple of days now and today I proved it was wrong. I was disappointed. I really liked it. But, not surprised.
Later in the afternoon, while working on the next conjecture, I realized that my proof of the incorrectness of the earlier conjecture was... incorrect. I've been doing this for a while and the mixed emotions are weird. On the one hand, the conjecture that I liked lives to fight another day. On the other hand, I made a mistake convincing myself that it was false. Things like this happen all the time with math. I'm sure after a few hours tomorrow, I'll again convince myself that the conjecture is false and a few hours after that, I'll convince myself that my argument for why it's false is correct. But, it's fun and I'm looking forward to playing around with it again tomorrow.
As I alluded to earlier, this evening, after Laura got home from class, we went out to the square to see who was on stage tonight. I'll post video tomorrow, but the one photo we took, a selfie of us, at least, has been uploaded to google:
One more day of the festival left. We'll see who's playing on stage tomorrow evening.
