Another fine day in Seville. Our hotel is in barrio Santa Cruz which is the old Jewish ghetto, complete with white washed buildings and very narrow twisty streets. Pedestrians must duck into doorways when cars come down the street. Navigation is very challenging because the barrio is not laid out on a grid and you have no perspectives, so it is navigation by dead reckoning. Eventually you will pop out onto a square with a church that you can find on your map and ...

Seville is has a completely different vibe than Barcelona. This city is what I would describe as much more traditional, how ever we are in a different region of Spain and Seville is only a city of 700,000 people. Yesterday we toured the cathedral which is the largest in Europe. Very dramatic ( of course ) and ornate. This is the spot where Christopher Columbus is buried as well as his son. We climbed the Giralda (tower of the church ) to get a tremendous view of...

We caught the high speed train this morning at Barcelona Sants station. Spain's Renfe high speed trains are very modern and a luxurious way to travel. We were served an early morning coffee and pastry and later a hot breakfast. The train traveled at up to 300km/hr and was very smooth and quiet. Our trip took us south along the coast for a short distance to Tarragona and then we turned inland towards central Spain. We travelled over 1000 km thru the central part o...

Our last day in Barcelona consisted of shopping, sight seeing, more eating and drinking and an evening at the music hall, Palau de la Musica Catalana. The music hall is a modernist design that was built in 1905-08. The program was a combination of Spanish opera arias and several flamenco pieces complete with some very athletic dancing. This was a fantastic opportunity to see the interior of the building and take in some Spanish music and dance. After the performa...

Today we struggled with technology. Spain looks to be an early adopter of technology, it is everywhere, we look like we are in the Stone Age in North America. We started our "techno struggle" by attempting to purchase a guided tour of Segrata Familia at a ATM machine. We were doing this miraculous feat because the SF website was down and the concierge was unable to bridge the techno gap for us. We were able to navigate the numerous prompts on the ATM only to dis...