Seville photodump

Dear Everyone:

I am sorry that it has taken me almost 3 weeks to upload these pictures. Blogspot is not very snappy with letting me upload photos and as a result I claim watching British television as a better use of my time. That is no excuse.

Anyway, our group went to Seville for a weekend trip. Seville is about 6 hours by bus west of Alicante. It is a beautiful city with lots of great Gothic architecture. As per usual, it was torture traveling with the American Brigade, the bacchic philistines. BUT I tried not to let their blatant disregard for art and culture rain on my weekend. So I tuned them out while taking pictures and listening to the tour guide. My favorite part was the Seville Cathedral, a behemoth of a holy house that began construction in the 15th century and was mostly completed by the 16th. Obviously, since it's Spain, it was built on top of a former mosque site. They kept one of the minarets, La Giralda, and use it as a bell tower now. The Cathedral is also the burial site of Christopher Columbus (after much arguing with Puerto Rico over who deserved the bones of Columbus, but I fail to understand why a Latin American country would even want to honor him in any way, but whatever, this isn't my liberal soap box blog [I have at least two]) and has EIGHTY chapels. It's like a supermarket of holiness. Baptism in Chapel 2! Communion in Chapel 23! Holy water spilled, clean up chapel 7!

Anyway, here are some pictures:

 The cathedral of Seville

I took many pictures of ceilings.

The organ, decorated with cherubim and such.

This is Christopher Columbus's tomb. It is very impressive, but Olivia is sad because in Spain they think Columbus was a pretty sweet dude/national hero and no one really cares that he decimated native cultures BUT OH WELL.

A pallbearer from León (I know because of the sweet lion smock) who has his stick on a pomegranate to give a heads up to Granada

Some sweet decorated chapel where people do praying things

All these little scenes are carved out of wood but painted over in gold leaf. They depict scenes of Christ's life, from the nativity to the passion

See? Nativity

 The Virgin standing on some heads of children, because she is so motherly

 View from the bell tower

 

The back of the cathedral

 Royal Gardens, from the Muslim era

 More pattern overload. I must stop wearing prints to mosques

 Wishing pool

 Big tapestries.

 This is a crypt. Also I think it was a bath at some point. Now the water is icky.

 I have developed a serious affinity for pomegranate trees

 Plaza de España, which was used by George Lucas as the set for Queen Amidala's palace on Naboo in the 2nd Star Wars

 The walls are decorated with scenes depicting the provinces of Spain

 I am adorable.

 This is a statue of Don Juan, also regarded as a national hero.

 

An original Goya painting that I thought was pretty cool. It depicts two saints and has a bunch of symbolism and stuff in it and makes me wish I were an art history major. 

hasta luego, te lo juro,

Maren