Tuesday in Sevilla: Alcazar and Cathedral

Woke up Tuesday and decided to go check out the three major sights in the city: the old Jewish Quarter, the Alcazar, and the cathedral. Turns out a new hostel friend, Shyam, had similar ideas for his day, so we joined forces.

Court of the Maidens (I think; got a little
turned around)

First stop was the Alcazar, a royal palace that was initially started by the Moors, then partially destroyed and rebuilt by the Christian reconquerors. That’s a common story in Andalucia, as most of the major sites in the area (Sevilla’s Alcazar and Cathedral, Granada’s Alhambra, Cordoba’s Mezquita) all have stories similar to that. The royal family apparently still officially live there on visits to Sevilla. It's an ENORMOUS palace compound, with gardens that cover a sizable chunk of the city's historic district. The decor and architecture are exactly what you'd picture a north african muslim palace to be, with lots of walls either covered in intricate geometric patterns or colorful
mosaics. Oddly enough, all of these were build for the Christian reconquerors, who just happened to like the style. They hired Moorish craftsmen who had stayed in the area to build it in Moorish style, with a dash of Christian imagery thrown in for good measure.

After that on to the cathedral! (With a short coffee and snack break and dodging some gypsies trying to pull the rosemary scam along the way).

Sevilla's cathedral is one of the largest churches in the world (only losing out to St. Peter's and St. Paul's), and while it's obviously huge on the outside, you don't really get a good grasp of the sense of scale until you get inside and see everyone looking like tiny little ants next to the columns. It’s another case of Christians and Moors repurposing each other’s stuff, as its bell tower is a former minaret and its front gate is decked out in Islamic script and leads to a court of orange trees initially built by the Moors. Shyam and I wandered around a bit in the cathedral, then climbed the belltower’s 34 sets of ramps to see the view from the top.

The orange grove of the cathedral with the Giralda (the bell tower) in the
background. I'm the dot in the bottom left.

After the cathedral we started heading back to the hostel, keeping an eye out for lunch spots. We bumped into Gemma, a girl who works at the hostel, on the way, and she pointed us to a good tapas place down the street. Now both full and tired, we headed back to the hostel where I crashed for a nap.

That night was another night of drinks and hanging out with everyone on the roof. La Banda also cooks a giant meal for everyone every night, so I decided to join for that and get some much-needed vegetation in my system (that night they had a pesto/tomato tart, rice with beets, and a salad, which was more vegetables than I’d seen combined up to that point.)