Bulls, Buses, and Bonapartes

I left my last day in Sevilla intentionally open so I could either do a daytrip to Cadiz or stay in the city, depending on what I had left to see and how lazy I was feeling. I had some left to see still and was feeling too lazy to battle the Spanish train system two days in a row, so I decided to take a slow day in town.

First things first I wanted to see a bit more about bullfighting before leaving the city, so I headed back to the Plaza de Toros to get the tour of the ring and museum. I'd considered going to see a bullfight, but ultimately decided against it. I still wanted to learn more about it though, so I hopped on the 6 euro guided tour. It was in both Spanish and English, so the tour guide kept flipping between the two. It was funny to hear all in the same breath "Spanish spanish spanish spanish the royal box up there is the..." Everytime she'd switch, you'd see people jump and start listening again.She walked us through the ring, down into a gallery with paintings of the history of bullfighting, then through the museum, where she explained how the whole process of the fight works. Basically, it goes like this:

1. A mounted caballero rides around the ring poking and prodding the bull with a spear to get it angry and start tiring it out.
2. Quick picadores dart around the bull and stick it in the back with decorated hooked sticks that further weaken it and tire it out.
3. The matador finally comes out and uses his cape to keep the bull moving and attacking for another ten minutes or so. After that, he has three attempts with his sword to try and kill the bull, and is awarded 0-2 points based on how he does it. If he stabs the bull through the head, it dies instantly and he is awarded 1 point. If he stabs it through the spine (an equally instantly deadly spot, though harder to hit), he is given 2 points. Anywhere else, and the bull takes longer to die and he doesn't get any points. 
4. If it takes more than 3 attempts to kill the bull, the bull wins. Bulls aren't allowed to fight more than once in their life (otherwise they'd know the pattern of the fight and would be more likely to hurt someone) and is allowed to retire to a farm, where it's used to sire more bulls which can be sold for a higher price based on their pedigree.
5. If the matador wins and has done an excellent job, the umpire of the fight can award him one ear, two ears, or two ears and the bull's tail as trophies based on how stylish of a fight he put on. The bull's head is then generally mounted, and the rest of him is given as stew meat to soup kitchens and food banks.

Plaza del Toros. (pardon the scowl; staring into the sun while trying to grin is difficult :) )

All around, a pretty bloody process, though the tour guide made what I thought was a good point. To get to full fighting weight, it takes a bull 5-6 years wandering in the grasslands, as opposed to the year or so it takes a beef bull to get to slaughter weight on a farm (the older it is, the tougher and more gristly the meat is). So while his end is a bit more bloody, he lives a much longer life than his hamburger-bound cousins.

Bovine business complete, I went to the bus station at Plaza de Armas to make sure I'd be able to find it the next day. Pretty simple to get to, so I got my ticket from Granada to Cordoba from one of the ticket kiosks there and wandered back. On the way to the station I'd passed a market that reminded me of Mercado San Miguel in Madrid (think like a food court on steroids) near the river, so on the way back I stopped there to get some pastries for lunch. I didn't have any other plans until a walking tour that night, so I grabbed some coffee at a cafe near the hostel and read and people-watched for an hour or two.

That night I hopped on the other walking tour the hostel offered and got Mehdy as a tour guide again. He said he had seen me walking into Plaza de Toros, but that I was too far away to say hello. We met up in Plaza Nueva, and he ran us through the Moorish and Jewish history of the city. He took us to the (now closed) catheral's entrance and ran us through it's history of construction, partial destruction, reconstruction, and additions, as well as the Giralda, it's minaret-turned-belltower-turned-weather vane. He explained that the cathedral had expanded so much that it had swallowed a smaller nearby church. Apparently thrifty tourists seeking to avoid the 9 euro entry fee to the cathedral sneak in, thinking they've found a back endtrance, only to find that despite being a part of the cathedral's building, it's an entirely separate entity. 

He then took us to the Alcazar palace and explained that despite it's Muslim and Moorish decor, and despite there previously being over 15 Moorish palaces in its vicinity in the past, there's only a very small amount of actual Moorish construction in the compound. Almost all of it was built by Muslim workers in the area for Christian kings who just happened to like the look. He then ran us through Santa Cruz, the former Jewish quarter, as well as the history of the city's Jewish population, the plague, and the Inquisition, which took a strong hold in Sevilla. He also explained how the neighborhood's name is layered in irony. 'Santa Cruz' just means 'Holy Cross' in Spanish, so the Jewish quarter is named after the cross. Apparently this name came from the Church of Santa Cruz, which was built in the neighborhood after the Inquisition drove many of the Jews out. When Napoleon put his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne during his conquest of Europe however, his palace was built across from the church. Joseph didn't like how the church and surrounding buildings impinged on his view, so he had them demolished and rebuilt outside the neighborhood. So Santa Cruz is a Jewish quarter, named after the Church of the Holy Cross, which isn't even *in* the neighborhood.

Tour finished, Mehdy walked us back to the main part of town, and I found out that he used to be a software engineer and has a Master's in Artificial Intelligence. He said that when the market tanked a few years ago, most programming jobs barely paid a living wage so he started doing this instead. He's working on a business venture in Morocco with a former research adviser to use machine learning to better organize the administration operations of the government there, though it's currently entirely unpaid unless they sell the idea. It was weird for me to hear, since in the States, a master's in CS is basically a guarantee of a well-paying job. Goes to show that prospects aren't the same everywhere, I suppose. He seemed upbeat about it though; when we parted ways, he shook my hand and said, "When next we meet in Sevilla, may we meet as billionaires!"

After that, I grabbed dinner at a place he recommended called Azotea, an upscale tapas place with a bit of a hipstery fusiony vibe. Everything was pretty traditional, though had a bit of an Asain twist on it. I got Spanish almond soup topped with fish roe, and seared cod with in a squid ink and garlic sauce, served on top of Japanese soba noodles. Thoroughly full, I wandered home, checked everything was ready for the trip to Granada, then went to sleep.

It was really pretty before I started eating it. Then the black sauce
started smearing everyhere and it looked like a nightmarish finger painting.