How strange, an American who doesn't like ketchup

I have always enjoyed packing. It is a comfort to me to know that I can quickly narrow down the things I need in life and make them fit in a bag. On January 2nd I packed my passport, journals, camera, and clothes and Matt and I headed off for Andalucia.

Our flight came into the airport of Sevilla. It was about the size of the terminal in Juneau and was fittingly underwhelming. We caught the bus into the city and it was that part of the trip which first brought me to face the wonders of southern Spain. We quickly unpacked and cleaned up and prepared to meet the city outside our hotel door.

The old part of the city was wide, cobblestone streets with buildings, from all architectural influences, continuously lining the narrow horizon. A sleek tram system glided through the middle of it all on shiny tracks. It was striking to watch the trains running past the old buildings; it was such a contrast.

We arrived in the afternoon and so our first experience with the city was in evening light. We wandered past holiday shoppers at the vendor booths spilling over with scarves and paintings and trinkets and foods. We walked down an alley between main streets and the bell-tower of the cathedral reared up into the dark sky. It was a massive complex. Just looking at the base of the walls you could see the variety of the stones and materials used. The different textures of the rocks told of the different times and cultures from which they had come. This building had not only experienced, but defined, a grand array of people. Now I was getting to experience them all at once.
As the evening progressed the cold drove us to an indoor shopping center to hunt for food and evening activity.
It was called plaza de armas and looked like it could have once been an important train station. We caught a movie, dubbed into emasculating male-ish voices, and called it a night.

The next day we got to see every face of Sevilla, it rained warm and cold and was clear skies warm and cold. We saw rainbows and un-ripe mandarins. The city was certainly a different old beast in the sunlight.
Hip frenchies lounged on the outdoor patios, gesturing wildly with their cigarettes. Covens of beautiful young Spanish women gathered to replay and plan their lives and men. We toured the buildings of the city and caught one of the cheapest lunches I have ever encountered in Europe. The inside of the cathedral was just as impressive and intricately massive as the outside and the way up to the top of the tower was a ramp because the Muslims used to ride their horses up to the top when they were late to call prayer. Or when they had to defend their city or whatever...

The moment which probably struck me the most that morning was the Plaza de Espanya. Unlike most of the other plazas I have seen, this was a giant semicircle. The tall, red brick building curled around a walking space, boasting a tiled mural to each of the provinces of Spain. This lined a waterway which was gracefully hung with splendid bridges. Everything here was in circle and orb shapes. All the way in to the center of the circle where a fountain cast water mist into the sunlight. The edges of the entire thing were brought up tight by two towers at either end of the building. It was a magical, round space of arches and mosaics and sunlight. Yeah, I loved it.

Then we found our way to the castle complex and I came to a whole new level of fantasy world. There were networks of courtyards and fountains and walkways lined by winding, intricately designed tesselates, again from the Muslim influence. Although the castle had been made a place for Christian royalty, the styles were mixed into a hodge podge which a 21st person like myself could almost mistake for intentional. The once brilliant colors were fading but retained an enriching influence on the whole thing. It was difficult to capture with a camera but it was pleasant to experience in person.
We wandered through ever more intimate courtyards until we found ourselves in what had been the ladies's walking spaces. This led discreetly out into the one of the most magical garden sequences I have ever lost myself into.

Each garden had a different theme and reflected a different culture. Vegetation changed according to the colors and textures of the walls. The English gardens sported peacocks and were open and elegant and had tall, quiet, dark walls. Other gardens had reed plants whisping out of fountains in red stucco walls which drained around the feet of 30 ft tall palm trees. It even had a hedge maze but we found the mud off-putting. This was an adult trip and it is important to behave as such. We spent a fantastic afternoon playing in the trees, harassing pigeons and staring at things that were so much older than we could ever imagine being. So, I guess, maybe not THAT adult-y.

The next day we caught the Ava train to Cordoba. We smoothly swayed through the countryside and I was lulled to sleep. I woke up in a train station identical to the one we had just left. It was eerie. However, outside the building, Cordoba was very different from Sevilla. Our taxi drove through walls of middle-modern looking apartment complexes before dodging into a frantic network of half-streets, alleys, and amblers. The cabbie managed it like a pro and we were soon making a tight square around the outside of a huge wall. He unloaded our luggage, charged the extra 'trunk space' tax and left us standing right in front of the Mezquita/Cathedral. Our hotel opened out to the walls.
Again, we unloaded our things and headed straight out to explore. We circled/squared the outside and admired the many doors in the face of the building. We decided we should seek alimentation before breaching the walls. We enjoyed a lunch of tasty taps in a restaurant which exuded any of 5 different cultures. Greek, Spanish, British, Arabic, etc. It was delicious and, thus energized, we wandered into the walled courtyard in front of the church.

Now, I need to tell you a quick story. Some 5 years ago I was a college freshman and I was slumped in the back of my architectural history class. I had picked this class because I loved the subject and it fascinated me but I was delighted to find it administered by the most fascinating little Nordic lady named Nano Nore. In the haze of slides and explanations and terms I remember one particular picture in the text book. Red and white arches bounded off into the background atop a forest of pillars. The picture caught my eye and I spent an extra 5 seconds staring at that page, dreaming of seeing that place and absorbing the wisdom of the philosophers and mathematicians who had once wandered those halls.

We purchased the 8 euro tickets and walked into one of the most breathtaking indoor spaces I have ever enjoyed. There were few openings to the outside and what few windows there were, were so filtered by the colored glass, that they did not inject much light. The space was heavy and dim and cool. The marble of the arches was solid and chill to the touch. The double arches were crowns everywhere. Depending on where you stood and from what angle you looked, they were a different sequence. The man in the wheel chair or the toddler wandering around with his mom would take away a very different conception of this space. It was marvelous and seemed to go on forever. However, after a few times around I began to recognize different intricate walls and figured out which was the quibla and from there the rest of it fell into place.
And then there was good old King Ferdinand III the Saint. In the 1200s he raised a huge baroque/gothic dome chapel in the middle of it. The majority of the walls were littered with dozens of chapels to saints and the coordinating doors have their names on bricks outside the doors. It truly was a creation.
The evening took us out onto the Puenta Roma to watch the evening light crawl up the walls and across the river.
The next day we got caught up in Dia de los Reyes parade and pelted by candy and creepy little stuffed animals. Huge, strange creations wandered down the street, driven by people wearing leotards and tights. Virgin Marys and Santa Clauses and Oriental Kings threw handfuls of hard little candies into the hands and upside-down umbrellas of family hordes. Colorful parasailors whirred around overhead. It was a nice good bye.
For now at least.

*All the awesome pictures in the post are the work of the gifted Matt Jones.