Do I Look American?

We usually go out to eat on Friday nights after Laura's language class. We were both pretty tired and not up for decision making, so we walked out onto our main street and picked the first place with an open table (literally right at the corner of our building). It's called El Patio San Eloy. We sat there for a while looking at the menu and decided on a few tapas. When the waiter came, we asked for the tapas and he claimed that they didn't offer them at this time and pointed us to another menu with only full entrees. Our Spanish isn't perfect, so we deferred and ordered a significantly more expensive meal that was also more than we were really looking to eat. It was ok, but not great.

In retrospect, it seems like others were ordering and getting the tapas that we were denied. Maybe we were tired and grumpy, but it seems like maybe they ID'd us as foreigners and upsold us. We should have just up and gone to the next place down the street and gotten tapas (tapas places line the street), but for whatever reason we stayed. Live and learn.

Here's us picking our "unavailable tapas":

 They did get the beer "right" because they brought us an extra beer that we soon realized was for the next table over. They didn't charge us for the error:

We didn't leave a tip:

The building across the street is pretty to look at. Also, the street was pretty busy. The camera makes this look lighter than it really is. At this point it's around 10pm and the sun is well down:

Finally, the singing busker that we hear from our apartment almost every night, made an appearance. Definitely not our style, haha:

Pretty quiet day today. Another good math day. It's warming up again, but I think the worst of the heat is behind us.

Hopscotch

Had a good, productive math day on a topic that just popped into my head this morning. I love when that happens. Gonna keep it short today.

I saw this sparrow contemplating a game of hopscotch:

 And this guy cleaning windows at the bank:

Sevilla's not the cleanest city I've ever been in (Vienna), but they do a pretty good job of keeping the centro clean. It's tough to keep the streets clean when it never rains. Also, like Budapest, graffiti. I don't get graffiti. Specifically, why is it so prevalent in some places and non-existent in other places? I guess that's a question for sociologists.

Anoche en los Jardines del Real Alcázar

Another late night yesterday, so this journal entry is now a day late. The day ended with a wonderful concert by the ensemble Stolen Notes in los Jardines del Real Alcázar. The event was part of the Noches en los Jardines del Real Alcázar concert series. The series runs from June to Sept with events 6 nights per week. This was the 4th appearance for Stolen Notes this summer. As you can see from their web page, Stolen Notes is a Celtic style 5 man ensemble with bagpipe, accordian, flute, guitar, mandolin and drum. They were pretty tight and handled sophisticated rhythms and syncopation like pros. Apparently their banter was a hit too, based on the laughter from the audience, but my language skills are too slow to really pick up everything they were saying, let alone get the joke.

Another bonus, besides good performances, is your ticket gets you access to the walled gardens. Laura and I went early and walked around the gardens for a while before the concert. In the waning like, I could only manage a few long-exposure shots. They do provide a nice smoothing effect on the numerous fountains on the garden grounds:

 The fountains were mostly low to the ground and were connected by networks of flowing water channels. This one was isolated in the center of a rotunda:

 One of the buildings on the grounds was covered by these hand-sized painted tiles, this is one small section. Every tile is different:

 Here we are waiting for the show to start. No photography was allowed during the concert:

Earlier in the day, I went for a walk south along the river. After reading about the port of Sevilla yesterday, I decided to see if I could get a glimpse of it. Turns out, it wasn't too far (only about 2 miles):

These shots are from a drawbridge that's about 3 bridges south of our bridge (the best bridge). Yesterday was a national holiday for The Feast of the Assumption. I guess the city took advantage of the lull to do some repairs on the bridge:

On the way home, I passed by this sculpture in the middle of a traffic circle:

 As I got closer to the centro, I saw where the tour buses gather:

Here are a couple more photos from our walk to the concert. The moon is making its monthly comeback. This time from its traumatic eclipse last month, haha:

The cathedral area was pretty in the dusk:

I took these as we wandered around looking for the concert location. Turns out there are a lot of potential entrances to the gardens and the first few we encountered were locked. Eventually, after walking almost completely around the gardin wall, we found the entrance! We're definitely getting our share of walking while we live here:

Tides?

I'm always obsessing about how things work. The river here has been one of those obsessions almost since I got here. Here's an annotated map of the river around Sevilla:

 This is the Guadalquivir River as it flows through the greater Sevilla area. It appears to split into two channels above Sevilla and merge back into a single channel below Sevilla. From there, it is navigable to the Atlantic Ocean. Because of this, Sevilla has been a significant naval and commercial port since the Romans established it in the 2nd century BC.

I say "it appear to split" because if you look closely at the top of the diagram, you see a land gap between the left and right channels. In fact, the right channel is really a spur that extends northward from the southern junction.

For being a long spur with no natural current, the water is surprisingly fresh, not stagnant. Though Palma once claimed that it was tidal, from my observations, the spur is not tidal. That said, the water level does change, but only by small amounts and only over a period of weeks (not a couple of times a day like a normal tide). This suggests that the water is some how engineered or managed. I can imagine that there are pipes underground at the north end that can be opened or closed. I know for a fact that there is a lock at the south end that controls flow and ships in and out of the Port of Sevilla (which is actually located on the spur).

According to Palma, Sevilla was subject to severe and regular flooding until the lock system was put in place. During high flow events, the lock prevents the water level in the spur from rising past flood stage. Meanwhile, the left-hand channel has built up dykes and flood walls to protect the city. From the wikipedia page, it looks like the river here has been an ongoing engineering concern almost since Sevilla was first settled by the Romans.

This morning it was cool and foggy. Here's a before and after photo of the river, last night (dry and sunny), this morning (damp and overcast):

It cleared pretty quickly this morning, but didn't get quite as hot.

Enough about the river. Tomorrow is the Roman Catholic holy day called "The Assumption of Mary". It's a big holidy here and everything is closed. We went to the supermarket today and made sure we had enough to get us through tomorrow (we have to do this for every Sunday too, so nothing new). Here's our goto market, about 1km from our flat:

Almost always get to see a dog in the foyer waiting:

This afternoon, I took a break from math and walked with Laura to her language school. I saw this other dog outside of a tapas bar, waiting:

On the way home, I spotted a sign with a cool contraction that I've been seeing in lots of places around town, but finally remembered to take a picture to share. In Spanish, there isn't really a possessive form with an apostrophe. Instead of  "Alice's car" you say "the car of Alice" or, in Spanish, "el coche de Alice". In this case, "de" means "of". It's such a common word that there's a symbolic contraction where the 'D' and 'E' a placed on top of each other. You can see an example of it in this sign:

It says "ASOCIACION SEVILLANA DE CARIDAD". Notice the 'D' and the 'E' atop one another. (It's amazing the stupid things I fixate on.)

A quiet day

Went for a walk this morning. Another clear, hot day in Sevilla. This is the view straight up in the courtyard of our building at around 8am:

 Spent the morning doing Spanish study and the afternoon doing math.

This evening, after 8pm, I took the trash out to the dumpsters and paused to have look around. I'm still not tired of just standing on the bridge and watching the people go by:

 And, our main street, San Jacinto, was pretty relaxed this evening too:

After about 6 weeks, it's starting to feel like home. The rhythms and routines are sinking in.