Easter in Seville

Last year for Easter we were finally feeling settled in here and didn't do much, so this year we wanted to take a bigger trip for it and travel for the full four days we had off. We choose Seville in Spain, since it's a very Catholic country and we figured it'd be a sight to see. It did not disappoint.

One thing that Seville is known for is tile, and you can see it all over town. I was quite enchanted by it and have dozens of photos of entryways and floors which I will spare the internet. Nowhere is the tile more the focus than at the Plaza de Espana. This was the site of a worlds fair for Spanish-speaking nations years ago, and it has been maintained as a tourist site and park since. The main building has a series of alcoves with tiled displays of each of the regions of Spain. We saw many people getting their pictures taken near the alcove of the region they hailed from, which was a lot of fun.

A big part of Easter in Seville is the processions , which run all of Holy Week. In these, devout locals dress in robes and funny hats and take over the streets. The processions happen throughout the week, with the main focus being Thursday night through Saturday, and at their peak run from midday until two or three in the morning.

Each group starts at its home church and walks the city, passing the main cathedral at some point, and generally ending up back at the starting point. There can be up to sixteen hundred people in each group, and with narrow streets they stretch for miles.

Each group carries one or more floats, which are candlelit at night. These mostly are dioramas of Mary surrounded by flowers and candles and wearing a long cape, though you do run into the odd Jesus as well.

It's quite a delight to chance upon them enroute to some other destination. There is a brochure handed out which gives rough times and locations for each of the groups, but as it was in Spanish and used some local names for locations, we mostly winged it when on the hunt. Once coming home from dinner we managed to get to a three-block area surrounded on all sides by parades. A bit disconcerting, but still a cool experience.

We also, as we do, visited (and climbed) the main cathedral in town. The tower of the cathedral actually dates from a mosque that used to be on the site. The climb has almost no stairs, but rather thirty five or so connected ramps spiraling up the tower which allowed the Oman to ride his horse up to could sing the call to prayer. So cool. Of all the climbs we have done, this was the least cramped and most brightly lit thanks to windows the entire way up.

Within the cathedral were a number of cool sights. This one is the tomb of Christopher Columbus, who hailed from the region. We read that they had done DNA testing to verify it was him, and Mary and I immediately asked each other "Who did they compare it to?" It turns out that he has surviving heirs all these years later, living in Puerto Rico and Spain. Who knew?

Another major site in town is the royal palace, the Alcazar. This palace was designed for Christian kings, but in a Moorish (Islamic) style. And what style! I've really only recently encountered much Islamic art, but I find it completely enchanting. One of the tenets is a representation of God's infiniteness in complex geometric patterns, which I find both aesteticly and intellectually pleasing. It is both a gorgeous pattern to the eye and a representation of God as math and order. The entire public space of the palace is decorated elaborately, and I have literally hundreds of pictures of its floors walls and ceilings.

Outside are extensive gardens which also delight. Closer in to the palace there are more structured gardens and as you get further from it they get more rambling. Thankfully they are full of cover to shelter one from rain, should they be unlucky enough to vacation at the same time as us.

Seville is a city of soul. It's a city of flamenco. Flamenco comes from a blend of Andalusian and gypsy folk music and dancing, and Seville is a center for it. In Vienna you can't swing a Sacher Torte without having a man dressed as Mozart offer to sell you tickets to a classical concert; in Seville it's a flamenco show. Our guidebook had a few suggestions for slightly more authentic shows, so we went for it. It's a very cool thing to see, very soulful and at turns mournful and aggressive. We quite enjoyed it. Our book also suggested a few bars we could go to late at night to see spontaneous flamenco break out, but we really don't think that's a thing.

Oh, bullfighting. Bullfighting is in many ways an integral part of the area's culture, if a controversial one. I actually feel somewhat ambivalent about it -- I can see how it's cruel and unfair to the animals, but on the other hand I know full well where my steak comes from and have no problem with that. Is bullfighting that much more cruel than raising cattle for food? We didn't go to a match, but we did go to the museum at the arena. While the event sprung from a similar tradition to jousting, the arena reminded us a lot of the Colosseum in Rome. The museum was informative and well laid out, but I don't think it resolved my feelings on the sport.

The food in Seville was great, though we did struggle a bit to acclimate to the hours. Lunch is from one to four with kitchens opening at eight for dinner, but we kept finding ourselves in need of a snack at 5. Very frustrating. Thankfully, most of the pastry shops stay open all day. We tried many local specialties, including cookies made with "hair of the angels" and a special bread pudding with honey they only make during Holy Week -- all were great. We also enjoyed the tapas again, especially a place we went on the last night. It was a bit dauntingly filled with people who actually knew Spanish, but we managed to order and consume some great food. We also witnessed the waitress and a patron singing together, which made us think that we may have been wrong about that spontaneous Flamenco thing.

Overall it was a fantastic trip, full of experiences that felt very unique to the place. As always when visiting a locale like this I came away with a renewed desire to live in a place with casual attitude and indoor/outdoor living. And, as always happens, I immediately walked myself through all the impracticalities of that as a life for us. Oh well, we'll always have Seville.

Dinner in Vienna With the World's Most Huggable Man

Last weekend we headed out to Vienna. Most of what we know about Vienna comes for a series of books set before World War One in which a psychiatrist and a police detective solve crimes whilst eating lots and lots of pastries. Surprisingly it mostly met our expectations, minus the ritual murders. We were struck when we arrived by how super modern the airport and train station were and even had a sit-down dinner to try to embrace the cafe culture of the city. Unlike in Munich, we managed to find the hotel without any hi jinks, though we did have to walk around the block to find the entrance.

Out first day was planned for lots of walking and the weather played along beautifully. We started with a self guided city walk, taking us by the very striking war memorial. It turns out that Austria (and Vienna in particular) were mad for Nazism, so the reminder probably does them good. Having spent much of our travels this year in nations that were strongly on the wrong side of World War 2 has actually been pretty thought provoking. I know that there are darker times in American history as well, but the fact that the holocaust could happen continues to confound me.

We paused for coffee and a snack, then it was onward to a tower climb at the main church in the center of town, St Stephens. It was a nice climb and afforded good views of the city and of the cool tiles roof of the church (which, naturally, was bombed in World War II and then replaced later.)

Inside, the church was Gothic and cool, with the highlight being an ornately carved pulpit. They also had some amazing stained glass, though there was no chance of my photos of that coming out. All this sightseeing made us hungry, so it was time for another snack, this time pretzel bread rolls. So good.

Our next stop on our walk was the baroque church of St. Peter. We see very few baroque churches, so this one stood out to us quite a bit. It was very ornate, and had many small and large details that reminded us of ornately carved ships like you would see in a pirate movie. With all of the churches that we have seen in Europe and England, it always amazes us to see one that feels totally different and new to us.

We finished up the walk by passing through the grounds if the Habsburg palace, which we would visit on Sunday. This is a whole compound of palaces, government buildings, and museums built by a family that ruled the region for hundreds of years. Both the reign and the palace were quite impressive. Lunch was a fun adventure. The place had a display case full of open-face sandwiches consisting of bread rectangles spread with various fillings. You pick out the three or four that strike you and then shoulder your way to a table. We also got a pfif each, which was a small beer served in a cup-sized beer mug. Fun!

After lunch we took advantage of the weather with a long walk in the park which turned into a walk by a series of ever growing canals. The first was so small and had so little water that I expected to see T-birds racing hot rods down it. At one point I pointed out a duck struggling against the current, only to realized he was standing in ankle deep (to him) water. Stupid duck. We grabbed a refreshing and gigantic glass of wine in the evening, and were still tipsy for dinner, which was at a nice restaurant in the old greenhouse of the Habsburg palace. The highlight was the wine-induced people watching. A man walked in the door early in the meal and was hugged by no fewer than five employees and two patrons. Oh, the time we had, the worlds most hug-able (and second most rub-able!) man and I. At least in the stories I annoyed Mary with.

And now my Tripadvisor review of sitting in a hotel bathroom in Vienna trying to quietly fix a broken production job at two in the morning: Not recommended.

Day two found rain in the air, so we planned for two indoor activities: Museums and cafes. The entire morning was spent in the various museums of the Habsburg palace, and started with the treasury. Unlike the one in Munich, this one was as focused on volume as it was on historical significance. We generally aren't big ones for bling, but seeing so much of it laid out in one place is pretty striking. It's also the only museum where we could take pictures, sadly. From the treasury we went through an interesting and long exhibit on Sisi, the tragic wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I. That spilled out into the royal apartments, which were pretty standard-issue as those things go but still a nice display. They seemed to have more of the original furnishings than some others we had seen, so that was cool.

Having had a fair amount of history at this point, but still having some time before we needed to leave, I convinced Mary into hitting the museum of modern art with me. I am pretty convinced she only gave in because it was called 'MOMAK'. We had a nice time and I was incredibly taken with the building, which was very striking. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of it at the time so here is a collage of signs and pavement markings that amused us during our visit. Overall it was a great trip. The city was hugely walkable, we had great weather for our outdoor day, and the cafes delivered both great coffee and great pastries.