Our last day in Ronda is again spent visiting another nearby city. This time we follow the same road west, but after 50 km hang a right and head towards Seville, or Sevilla if you’re embracing the lingo. It’s a beautiful drive, the roads are quiet, smooth, flowing ... if only it was like this in Britain?
Our carefully crafted document has a car park pinpointed near the university, which in turn is close by the Plaza de España, the perfect place to get into architecture mode, the theme of today’s visit. This beautiful horse-shoe building is government offices, but also carries the history of its original build for the 1929 expo. It has 48 alcoves, one for each region, where in the tiled seating can be found guide books for said region. It has a moat with boats pedalling round, and wonderful tiled staircases and corridors.
We head into town passing by theatre and more university buildings, until we hit the famous balcony of Rosina in that operatic masterpiece, the Hairdresser of Seville (of something similar?) We continue battling the incredible narrow alleyways that crisscross whole area, it’s exhilarating to navigate them successfully, especially overhearing other voices - “we’ve been here twice already” and other comments! Continuing north we check out a church preparing for a festival full of flowers, and silver, then many beautiful buildings until we’re suddenly at the old city wall. The northern gate is know as the Macerana Gate, and the basilica next door would have been our destination, but there’s a wedding taking place so we can’t visit.
Next stop is a supermercado to purchase the trappings of lunch, and then we head south again to find suitable place to eat, which turns out to be a futuristic shopping complex, or it’s roof to be specific. After lunch we continue in our architectural tour, visiting so many building it’s a bit hard to keep track, I’ve annotated the photos as much as possible.
Noteworthy visits include the largest gothic cathedral in the world, which is pretty impressive. Have to say it’s a difficult design, there is no obvious flow through the building and the choir and alter are separated by a void which is a bit weird. Nevertheless it’s a spectacular building despite the hefty entrance fee. Cristobal Colon, a name we’re all extremely familiar with under his Anglicised version Christopher Columbus, is entombed here, a fitting resting place for the great Italian.
After further fabulous buildings like the town hall, the ancient baths, and some roman columns which have survived despite, or maybe because of, being buried at the old street level some 4.5m lower than it currently is, we cross the river to explore the other bank for a while, returning to the university area to retrieve the Bug.
It’s a delightful journey home, quiet roads and sweeping countryside, and the Bug behaving really well. We’re back in time to sit on our veranda with a cool bottle of Chardonnay before we change and head downstairs for our third and final dinner in the Montelino Hotel.
Comments
Post a Comment