Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

We deliberately took it easy for our second day in Sevilla, but still ended up tired out. After a morning of getting pastries from the shop around the corner and catching up on the Internet, we visited the cathedral. The builders set out to build a structure that would convince the world that they were mad, and they did a good job of that. It's enormous and lavishly detailed. It contains Christopher Columbus's tomb (and perhaps his remains... he's been moved around a lot posthumously), held aloft by statues of four kings. The highlight of the cathedral visit was a climb up to the top of the bell tower. Originally the minaret of the mosque that stood on the same site, the bell tower gives great views of both the cathedral's exterior and the city. While we were climbing it, there was a thunderstorm and wind blowing the rain into the tower. Serious goth points. We were at the top of the tower when the clock struck five, but, sadly, it was just one bell chiming, not all of them at once.

We attended another flamenco performance this evening. The seating for this show was much better organized than at the one last night, so we could easily see the dancers' feet as well as their gestures. It was more flashy as well: more focused on quick, impressive moves, rather than the more graceful, expressive dancing we saw before.

We went back to our hotel after the dancing, to pack up to leave in the morning. After packing, Adrienne remembered that she wanted to see the Plaza de la Encarnación, which has a large abstract sculpture (the "Metropol Parasol") over it. It turned out to be about two blocks from where we'd gone to see the flamenco. Oops. After going over there to check it out, we walked over to a bar/flamenco venue and had some drinks while watching the end of another flamenco performance.