Snazzy Sevilla

The day we left for Sevilla was Friday the 13th and I learned (from yahoo homepage) that there are three Friday the 13th’s in 2009 and that this only happens every 11 years. Then when we got to out hotel Lyndsey and I were in room 113! I wasn’t at all bothered by any of this because I actually like the number 13, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. On our way to Sevilla thought we stopped at El Torcal for a hike. There were these huge rock structures everywhere and at the end of the hike we climbed up the highest rock. The view was AMAZING! We could see little towns and we were even higher than the clouds.
So there are all these discrepancies about who has the biggest church in the world. I had been told in Toledo and the Vatican that they had the biggest church in the world. Then we get to Sevilla and our guide tells me their cathedral is the biggest in the world. I was getting tired of people pulling my chain when the guide told me that they all measure it differently. Sevilla has the biggest cathedral in the world based on volume (she even showed us the Guinness world Record certificate posted inside the cathedral) and the Vatican has the largest area. Toledo claims to be the largest because they say that St. Peter’s is not technically a “cathedral.” I was glad to finally get the whole story. There were two huge organs inside the cathedral in Sevilla. They had a combined total of 7000 pipes! 2000 kg of gold was used to decorate the altar and to pay the people who worked on it. The style of the church was definitely gothic, but the Capilla Real was very different from the cathedral and was built in Plateresco style. This doesn’t translate to English because it is an exclusively Spanish style of architecture from the end of the 15th century. The cathedral only took 105 years to build which is record time compared to how long it usually took. This was due to continual financial support and lack of wars during the time of construction. Four bronze sculptures (representing the 4 kingdoms of Spain, historically) carry the remains of Christopher Columbus. Here we go with another dispute! His remains have been moved 5 times, but about a year and a half ago it was confirmed that his remains were actually inside the cathedral in Sevilla. They achieved this confirmation with DNA testing using the remains of his brother and an illegitimate child who is also buried inside the cathedral. Previously the Dominican Republic had argued that they had his remains, but after a 100% match I guess Sevilla wins! After our tour we decided to take a carriage ride through the city since there were so many pretty horses and carriages. It was so lovely! The weather was perfect and we saw a lot of beautiful architecture, the river, and we rode through Parque Maria Luisa which was breathtaking! We had been dreaming of Starbucks for weeks before we got to Sevilla because we don’t have one here in Granada. We also were on a mission to buy thermoses so that we could carry our coffee with us to school instead of having to inhale it all at once at 7:45 in the morning. During the course of the weekend we went in all five Starbucks that were in Sevilla looking for a certain Espana mug. Of course we enjoyed a few frappaccinos along the way as well ;), but we couldn’t find it until Lyndsey had resigned to buying some other random one when Kelley spotted two at checkout. SCORE! One of the coolest parts of the weekend was when we went on a bike ride through the city. We rode for like 3 hours, but it was SO fun! We had bells on our bike which we found every excuse to ring while enjoying the weather and the city. The last day that we were in Sevilla we went to the Alcazar which is a Moorish palace that reminded us a lot of a less impressive version of the Alhambra. While there our tour guide told us a super interesting fact. Apparently mythical legend says that Hercules pushed two pillars in order to separate Africa from Eurasia. The pillars with a blue ribbon (representing water) swirled around them is one of the Spanish coat of arms. She said that this is where our symbol for the dollar originated.

<3 Ashton