Budding Hooligans?

Laura and I (with Rachel and Taylor) went to our first professional soccer match. We saw the home team Sevilla vs. Girona in a regular La Liga match-up. La Liga is the Spanish national soccer league. At the moment, Sevilla is in 2nd place in that league of 20 teams. We saw the match in Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán. It was overcast and cool, but we were comfortable for the most part. The crowd was large, but generally well-behaved. Not much beer in the stands, which surprised me. Some surreptitious cigarette smoking, which was a bit annoying, especially since I have a bit of a cold with a sore throat.

It was interesting how many songs, claps, and general coordinated activities the crowd engaged in. For example, they don't open with the Spanish national anthem, but rather a song about the Sevilla football club. For a large crowd, they carried the tune quite well:


The stadium announcer was also very dynamic. After a goal by Sevilla he was ready with the traditional "Gooooooaaaaaaallllllll!" call over the PA system:


Overall, I enjoyed it. I could see me going again.

***

After the match, Sevilla won 2-0, we walked back to the city center for lunch. We might have taken public transit, but it was pretty crowded (though they seemed to have things well in hand with not too much waiting).

There's one Taco Bell in Sevilla. Rachel is a fan (I like it too), so we went there for lunch. I'd been waiting for Rachel to come to Sevilla before I went. It was crowded, but we eventually got our food and found a table.

Overall, about the same as a US Taco Bell, but not quite on target. Rachel and I both agreed that we didn't need to come back. I'll hit a Taco Bell with her when I'm in Miami next month, haha.

***

We spent the afternoon inside. It was cold and drizzly outside. Rachel has been trying to beat me at Words With Friends. She's pretty good, so I think she'll get me soon.

***

Laura's Spanish teacher is also an artist and she did the set design for a performance art piece that ran this weekend. Laura and I went to see it. It was a dark and foggy night and we had to walk a fair bit from the metro stop to find this little theater tucked into an industrial park:

It was a small venue, perhaps 250 seats on 3 sides. The main set was an area of sand at floor level with some dolls tucked in front, hanging from above and a video projection screen at the rear:

The piece was about 90 mins and features a couple, seen here with the director dressed in black in the center:

There was some singing and dialog (in Spanish, of course) and some choreographed parts. There was even a part where the audience was invited to participate in actions that seemed to degrade the male character. In response to this degradation, several folks planted in the audience pretended to object and others objected to the objector. A bit of a fracas erupted (all staged). Things calmed and normal order was restored. It was interesting and thoughtful. Definitely not a traditional play or show.

We met Lucia (Laura's teacher) afterwards and congratulated her on the work and headed back home on the metro.

***

When we got home, Taylor and Rachel were watching a stream of the Seahawks v. 49'ers football game. I guess they needed to wash the taste of European football out of their mouths, haha.

The Hollywood of Andalucia

While roaming around the city these past few days, we have run up on filming locations for an, as yet, unnamed movie that is apparently set in Sevilla. This location on the Plaza de Pilatos seemed to be a scene with a young woman running from a larger, somewhat out of shape, man. You see the woman run by and then the out of shape man giving up the pursuit:


This morning the same film crew was set up on San Jacinto, the main street at the end of our street.

They were filming a scene in which a small blue car races down the street and nearly strikes a cafe waiter:


Moments later, an antique car, decked out in just married decor, races down the street after the blue car and nearly strikes the waiter again:


Over the past couple of days, with Rachel and Taylor, we've visited much higher profile filming locations in Sevilla too. For example, we visited the Real Alcázar. This garden:

and other sites in the palace were used in the Game of Thrones series:

Yesterday, we visited the Plaza de España:

This site was used extensively in Star Wars as Queen Amidala's Palace:

***

This afternoon Palma invited us to her sister's bar, Bulebar Cafe. It was the 23rd anniversary of its opening. It's a lovely little place and the only bar I've ever heard of that hosts a regular series of science lectures called "Ciencia en Bulebar". Because it was a big event for Palma's family, we were able to meet a lot of her friends and family. We met her parents, her sisters and even her daughter. Even though there were a lot of people there that she knew, Palma graciously spent a lot of time chatting with us.

Also, she promised to send Mario a picture of us under the 23rd anniversary sign (Mario was out of town and couldn't be there). She shared it with us too:

Plus, free beer!

Empty Fountains

Today we continued our walkabout with Rachel and Taylor. We had lunch at a Mexican tapas place in the Alameda called Mano de Santo. Excellent chicken tortilla soup by the way. Maybe the best all around Mexican food we've had here in Sevilla.

Afterwards, Laura went grocery shopping and home while Rachel, Taylor and I walked over to the Plaza de España. It's a fairly long walk and we went by the Cathedral and central tourist areas. We stopped and watched a flamenco group busking for a bit:

A couple of the big fountains around Sevilla were off, including this one at the Plaza. I thought it was interesting to see the guts of the thing, but was disappointed that Rachel and Taylor didn't get to see it. Maybe it's off because we're now in the coldest part of the year, I don't know:

We went up into one of the balconies at the Plaza and looked down at the "river" and the bridges:

We wandered back home and Laura made a charcuterie board, a common entree here in southern Spain:

We went out again in the evening with the intention of seeing the 3 kings Christmas display, but also to take some night pictures:

We made it to the 3 kings display just in time to see them flashing in time with a rendition of "Carol of the Bells":

Real Alcázar de Sevilla

While Laura was in class today, Taylor, Rachel and I went to Real Alcázar. Parts of this royal palace date back to the 12th century. It's the home of Spanish royalty when they are in Sevilla. The palace and the surrounding gardens are now open to public tours. You can see the age of the place in this wall juxtaposed with the well-manicured plants of the garden:

Following the rule of thumb to always look up when touring old buildings, I noticed this ceiling in one of the rooms around the throne room:

The weather was cool and breezy, but the sky was a brilliant blue. This is the courtyard outside of the throne room:

One of the rooms around the throne is known as the "doll room". Among all of the adornments in plaster, there are 4 discreet doll heads. We looked all over for them, but couldn't find them. Luckily, a couple of other folks in the room with us pointed them out:

The grounds are beautiful and really popped in the clear air. In the distance here is the water-powered organ:

We walked through maze:

You can see la Giralda over by the Cathedral peek up above the wall:

After the palace we walked over to Laura's school and headed to lunch. Laura wasn't quite ready to go with us, so we went on ahead. We saw this poor little dog shivering outside of a store waiting for their owner:

We walked out to Pizzería La Urbana for lunch. Taylor and I got adventurous and tried a local Sevillian beer. I thought it was OK, but oddly sweet. Taylor was not into it at all:

Try at your own risk. Here's Rachel and Taylor enjoying the meal:

***

In the afternoon, I did a little math. I found an interesting paper relating machine learning in speech recognition to that of weather prediction. This is a relatively new approach and I'm looking forward to reading a bit more about it.

Taylor, Rachel and Laura went out to the local mall. I went out for a run. It was kind of nice in the cool breeze. On the way home, the sunset across the bridge was lovely:

***

We ran through some leftovers this evening to which Laura added a nice salad. After clean up, we hit a local helado place for dessert. A busy day, yet also productive. Even did a load of laundry.

Rachel and Taylor

Rachel and Taylor arrived for a visit today. I took the bus out to the airport to meet them and get them back to the flat. Laura had spanish class at this time. The airport is on the eastern edge of the metro area. Everything ran on time, buses, planes etc. In the airport, as sort of a Christmas display, was a mock up of the cathedral with la Giralda (the noted bell tower of the cathedral). Here's a side-by-side of the mock up and the real thing. Can you spot the real one?

I know, the giant nativity humans on the left kind of give it away.

Rachel, Taylor and I rode the bus back downtown and walked the remaining couple of blocks to the flat. By that time, Laura was finished with class and met us at home. We grabbed lunch on San Jacinto and I went to my spanish class. Rachel has a bit of a sore throat that we hope doesn't turn into a cold:

During that time, Laura walked around town with them a bit, just to keep them moving instead of sleeping (jetlag). They wrapped up with a trip to the grocery store. Back home, Laura made soup for dinner (most excellent). We mostly hung out in the flat after that. Now R & T are enjoying long-awaited sleep.