Casa Juan Marcos Visits Córdoba

Our flat in Madrid is our fifth different accommodation on this trip, and, like the other four, we have a Nespresso coffee maker. Kuerig and drip coffee makers are yet to be seen.

Day 10 begins the last leg of our Spanish journey. We will take the Ave (Spain’s high-speed train) from Sevilla to Madrid in a journey that should take us about 2 1/2 hours. Here are a few scenes from the journey. The yellow in the landscape picture is a field of sunflowers.

A place called Las Setas (The Mushrooms) is a very popular place to watch the sun set in Sevilla. Like hundreds of others, we paid our 15 euros to go to the viewing deck atop Las Setas.

Upon returning to our apartment, we enjoyed the crescent moon over the Giralda Bell tower. This view is one of the top selling point for this VRBO property.

After seeing the horse show at the Royal School of Andalusian Equestrian Arts, we toured the Tio Pepe Winery. In one area of the winery, the have barrels signed by famous people who have visited. Six generations of the Spanish Royal Family have visited dating back to Queen Isabel II who died in 1904.

Milton and Rose Friedman visited in 1990. In addition to his signature, he drew a supply-demand curve 😂

This street was our home for three nights in Sevilla. The location was great except that taxi’s struggled to get very close. We ended up just walking a quarter of a mile to a taxi stand by the cathedral. Oh, did I mention the Jim and Sharon’s bedroom was on the fourth floor?

Friday was a travel day (Train to Madrid), so Thursday night was leftovers On the living room table

Our day has unfolded in a fashion that illustrates the pace of Spanish life.

We arrived in Jerez de la Frontera at 1045 with tickets for the Andalusian Horse Show at noon. After a not-so-brief stop at the ticket window at the train station, we decided to have a coffee at a bar beside the train station. We had just under an hour of free time and the arena was a 10-minute cab ride away.

We paid our bill at about 1130 and walked 100 yards to the taxi stand. There were no taxis and we were seventh in line. By 1145, I was getting very nervous about missing the beginning of the show.

The taxi finally dropped us off at noon and we got to our seats about 1205. We were far from the last people seated and the first horse didn’t enter the arena until 1213. I guess I was stressed for nothing.

The legend say that the designers of the Sevilla Cathedral wanted to build a “church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad.” The result is the third largest church (and largest gothic cathedral) in the world. At 135 meters long and 100 meters wide, it is basically three football fields under roof. The scale is virtually impossible to capture in a photo but I tried.

In the picture above I was standing at one end of the cathedral. Just above the center of the picture, you can see the sculpture of Christ on the cross that sits atop the high altar. I’m guessing that it must me 80 to 100 yards away. The picture below is the high altar taken from the entry to the choir loft.

While the opulence of the place may offend my Presbyterian sensibilities, the scale of the place is impressive.

It’s a good thing that this group of French tourists were not being waited on by Bon Qui Qui. She would have called for security almost immediately

Kim’s only real complaint about our trip so far has been that we have had too many mornings with an alarm clock. She was excited about this morning because we had no where to be and that meant no alarm clock…or so she thought.

The Seville Cathedral is located only two blocks from our apartment and the Giralda Bell Tower is visible from our bedroom window. When we went to bed last night we were a little worried that the ringing of the hour would interfere with our sleep, but proved not be the case.

However, the nine o’clock hour proved to be different. On that hour the bells rang for a full minute which prompted me to tell Kim that the bell tower doubles as an alarm clock. When the minute-long bells rang again at 9:10 we realized that the bell tower also has a snooze alarm. 😂