Thursday, October 18, 2012

suddenly...seville

I only arrived in Seville a few hours ago but I like to hit the ground running. This was aided by the fact that the train from Cordoba had me at my hotel in the centre of Seville by 11am and I couldn't check in until 2pm. So I stored my backpack and set off.

I was delighted to see, from the local bus from the train station, the Seville Parasol - an architectural 'whimsy' that I had previously seen on several architecture blogs I follow. It is far more effective than the photos suggest. Here are 5 different pix:


(*panorama - click to enlarge)









After a quick look ( it is minutes from my hotel so plenty of time to see it again) I walked to the central bus station and pre purchased my bus to Faro in Portugal my next stop. Then, as I passed by the Museum of Fine Arts, I headed in for a gander. The building is spectacular and the art....well, there are an awful lot of dark, gloomy and repetitive paintings of Jesus et al plus a myriad of martyred men dying in inventive and gruesome ways. It pays not to dwell.


museum


museum ceiling


a rather fetching ceramic tile!


trompe l'oeil painting

Then I strolled past Sevilles vast cathedral. Now I have been in just about every major city cathedral across Europe as well as other parts of the world and never ben charged an entry fee. Here in Spain it costs! Perhaps falling parishioner numbers means the collection plate is lacking these days - but over 10 bucks was a bit steep - plus there was a serpentine queue which made up my mind to give it a miss. I can guess THAT book from its cover.


(*panorama - click to enlarge)


interesting corner building


i liked how this building slumped in the middle


a beautiful wrought iron gate onto a classic spanish interior


elaborate door

So it's been a busy few hours - and I still have 3 days to go!

1 comment:

Mike said...

I wish I'd had more time in Seville - especially the bits with more modern architecture.

Seville isn't the only place to charge to enter cathedrals in Spain. The only other place I've seen a charge levied was York. The Catholic Herald was very disgruntled about the Anglicans doing this: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/07/27/if-anybody-tries-to-make-you-pay-to-enter-an-anglican-cathedral-built-by-the-catholic-church-refuse-and-enter-anyway/