Sevilla, Tuesday 18th May 2010

Seville is a wonderful cycling city. There are green cycle paths all along the avenues and some minor roads, as well as the riverfront. You do take your life in your hands on the narrow cobbled lanes however! We cycled down to the Torre del Oro - it is now a Naval museum, lots about the Santa Maria and the Pinta as well as Armadas etc. Tuesday was a "Free" day, so our entry fee was waived!

On to the Cathedral, and that was stunning. It is just so big and so ornate it is impossible to describe and even worse to photograph. We climbed to the top of the Giralda, the spire and belfy, where the views across the whole of the city put the whole into perspective. You could see the round bull ring, the Alcazar, hundreds of churches and monasteries and ardens, as well as the narrow lanes. On top of it all there were people sunning themselves by roof top pools.

After that we crossed the river to the Triana district to find a cafe recommended to us by Clive and Jane for their good tapas. It was just closing as we arrived (3pm for a late lunch) so we carried on down to find another with equally good and inexpensive snacky bits. Then on to another Church - San Salvador (our 8 Euro Cathedral ticket gave us free entry to this also). More manageable in scale but if anything even more ornate. By now we are hot and sight-seeing-ed out, so back to the boat. We have invited Anhinga (fellow HR34) over for pre dinner drinks at 7, so got the olives and nibbles out and had a good couple of hours with Frank, Jennifer and Margaret comparing travel notes and tips.

Wednesday, 19th May 2010

Our last day in Seville and it has been great. Each day it has got hotter, today was 38 deg C (R had to take a picture to prove it)! We found a cafe restaurant which had sun umbrellas over its pavement tables that emitted a fine, cooling mist - we have never seen anything like it. It was so hot you never got actually wet.

A few jobs to start, I winched Richard part way up the mast to replace a deck light and to re-tape our spreaders to prevent chafe. Lunch on the boat - best Seville cured ham and salad.Then a lazy cycle out around the perimeter of the town and down to a small privately owned palace, the Pilatos Palace. Our luck was holding, quite by chance, Wednesday was the free entry day for the palace. This little palace was a gem, a bit like a mini Alcazar with early Roman bits also. It had mudejar architecture and lots of azulejos, tiles and mosaics, arches and courtyards with cool little inner gardens that made you forget this was in the middle of a hot, noisy city.

A bit more wandering around the interesting old narrow quarters to find another little palace, that of the Countess of Lebrija - looked equally interesting, but time was now getting on and we needed to get back here to prepare ourselves and the boat for leaving.

Tonight we go at 21.55. The bridge will open for us and for Anhinga at 22:00. We then go very slowly towards the lock which will open for us at 23:00. Once through the lock and into the river proper, we will find someplace out of the strong stream to anchor until morning and the right time to do the 50 miles back down to the mouth. So until the next wifi signal - hopefully Cadiz, Adios.