An anniversary of sorts

It was June 11, 2018 when we drove out of Walla Walla. A lot has happened in that year. It's gone fast and slow at the same time.

***

Today we went to the Royal Alcázar with John, Jo-Anne, Katie Jo and Luke. The weather was lovely--relatively cool and breezy.This was my 4th or 5th visit and there's always something new to see. For example, I never thought a peacock with full plumage could perch outside a 2nd story window, but here's one:

I never get tired of the Moorish penchant for geometric ornamentation. The prohibition against images of animals or people forced artisans of the time to turn to geometry for artistic expression. This wrought iron door/gate is just one example:

This was the first time I visited the royal "swimming pool" beneath the palace. Quiet and cool, it must have been a great escape from the Sevillian heat in July and August:

This side passage along the pool was beautifully lit too:

The palace gardens under a cool, clear blue sky:

After the Royal Alcázar, we had lunch at the little fast-food Italian place around the corner from our flat. Then we split up. Laura went to class, I went to the gym and did a little work on my revision, Jo-Anne, Luke and Katie Jo went downtown and John took a bit of a breather at the AirBnb.

We got back together and the Gruchots tried some sangria at Volapie, another restaurant around the corner from us. The sangria seemed to be universally enjoyed. Laura returned from class and made us chicken fajitas for dinner. All cleaned up and heading to bed now. We have to rise early to catch the tour bus to Gibraltar tomorrow.

Inner ceramacist

We had a pretty busy day today. It started around 10am as we made our way to the Cathedral for the rooftop tour. I find the roof of the Cathdral and learning about its history and construction much more interesting than the inside. The views up there are awesome:

Here's a group shot after we finished with the Cathedral:

After the Cathedral, we walked to the Alameda and had tapas at Arte & Sabor. So much better than Cafe y Tapas (which we regrettably patronized yesterday evening). At that point, Laura headed off to class and we took the bus home. After a couple hours' break, we went to the ceramic studio across the street and had a 2.5 hour lesson in painting tiles. We had a lot of fun and our host was a fun and articulate woman from the UK who has lived in Spain for several years. I struggled with the painting, but eventually managed to get this design:

onto my tile. The rest of the group did pretty well with their projects. We pick up the fired pieces on Thursday.

***

After the lesson, we returned to our flat where Laura had returned from class and made us an excellent pasta dinner.

Gruchots come calling

My sister Jo-Anne, her husband, John, and their children, Luke and Katie Jo, came to Sevilla today for a visit from their home in St. Joseph, MI. After a long flight out of Chicago via Madrid, they arrived in Sevilla around 1pm local time. I went out on the bus to meet them and get them back to downtown to their AirBnB down the street from us. This is the courtyard of their building:

It never ceases to amaze me the variety of beautiful courtyards hidden within the buildings all around us. Though they were pretty tired, we gathered at our place for a light lunch and caught up. We walked around the neighborhood a bit too:

This evening, we went to a flamenco show at a place we really like:

The show was great, as usual:

Now we're back in our respective flats. Hopefully, they'll be able to sleep well and get adjusted to the new timezone quickly.

Home for the weekend

This is the first weekend in what seems like a long time that we've stayed in Sevilla.  We had to plan the grocery shopping carefully because, as usual, everything's closed tomorrow and Jo-Anne, John, Luke and Katie Jo arrive tomorrow. We wanted to make sure they had a few things to stock their AirBnB for Sunday.

***

I went to the gym while Laura got her steps. This evening, I took the trash out and watched a tourist boat go down the river:


I also noticed a wedding party with fancy Rolls Royce limos doing some photos down by the river:

You can see the bride up on the steps. Not sure why these drivers were peering "under the bonnet" as a proper Rolls owner would say:

Beautiful vehicles.

***

I spent some time solving some technical issues with a figure for the revision. It's mostly worked out now. I also finished an on-line one-dimensional cellular automata visualizer. I think I'm going to use this to paint my tile next week in our ceramics workshop:

This is a 13x13 part of Rule 110. It's chaotic.

Revisions

I spent most of the day doing revisions on the paper. I made a figure:

I also put together a jupyter notebook that uses plotly and mapbox to show a GPS recording on a map. Here's a recording of me walking Laura to her class this afternoon and then continuing on to the gym:

At this scale, it looks like a continuous path, but if you zoom in you can see the individual locations that the phone records at a rate of one mark per second:

Zoomed in, you really begin to see the noise in the GPS data. Notice the big scattering of points in the lower-right. That's the very beginning of the recording as I exited our building. It takes a while for the GPS receiver in the phone to settle down. I find it fascinating to see the GPS activity at this level of detail. This is what can happen whenever you do mapping or directions with your phone.

Progress was good today. I finished the first pass of revisions. Now it's a matter of revising/polishing the revisions for a few days and re-submitting.

***

The toaster in the flat has been broken for a while. Since we never use it, we never really mentioned it to Mario. However, as our time here comes to a close, we felt like we should let him know so that the next occupants aren't surprised by a dysfunctional toaster. I let him know yesterday and, in classic Mario style, he brought us a new toaster today--even though I stressed that we didn't need it and that there was no hurry:

***

We noticed a little stage set up down by the river this evening:

It seemed oddly positioned to be an open concert. On closer inspection, we noticed a lot of cameras and spotlights and realized that it was actually a video shoot. There was even a gaggle of extras posing as an "audience". There's always something going on down there by the river, haha. No idea who the particular artist was.