Celebrate We Will, for Life is Short but Sweet for Certain

Last week Annie and I went and saw Dave Matthews at Brixton Academy! He was in town to open for Bruce Springstein in Hyde Park on Saturday night, but he had two smaller shows at Brixton Academy during the week. This is an awesome venue that is about the size of the Granada theatre in Dallas....it was so amazing to see Dave in a venue that small! I have seen him 4-5 times before, but only at Starplex (when it was Starplex back in the day) and at the old Dallas Cowboys stadium, so this was quite a treat! The show was amazing, he mostly played all new songs off of his new album that is a tribute to LeRoi..his saxophonist who passed away last year. He only played about 4 old songs, but the new ones were great! Forgot my camera, so no pics to make you jealous and show you how close we were to Dave :(

Sevilla - Palace - The Alcazar

The royal palace in Seville is called the Alcazar, it was originally a Moorish fort and Alcazar mears "palace" in Arabic...thank goodness for Wikipedia! The royal family of Spain actually still uses the palace when they are in Seville. For the most part it was an emtpy maze of building with lots of moorish arches, tiled patterns and dead ends!!! It also had some beautiful gardens, hard to appreciate in 110 degree weather though! Although we did appreciate the many fountains as we used them to cool ourselves off periodically. I'm sure the King and Queen would love to look out their window and see us practically bathing ourselves in their fountains!

Lily pad pond at the entrance

One of the ceilings
Courtyard

One of the many little courtyards...this one smelled amazing b/c of the Magnolia trees

Further confirmation of my theory that they number 3 is significant in Arabic culture...I should wikipedia that and see if I am right!

Another courtyard

Moorish architecture

Another courtyard...it was really hard to find your way out of this place!

They had tiling like this all over the walls and floors of the palace, each room was a different pattern

headed out to the main gardens

mossy fountain...we did not use this one to cool ourselves!

PEACOCK!!!

pretty flowers

Zeus...this is the fountain we cooled off with...his water was a little cleaner!

The baths....you have no idea how close I was to jumping in...instead Ana and I resisted and headed back to the hotel pool..

Sevilla - Cathedral

I am going to go ahead an apologize in advance for the amount of pictures...I have a love of gothic architecture and I loved this church! That aside, this cathedral is HUGE...third largest in Europe, so there was lots to take pictures of. Take note that ALL of these pictures below were taken in the same church, it had lots of little chapels lining its sides, so there was tons to see!

La Giralda Tower...the Bell Tower

Some of the many bells at the top of the tower...34 floor up!

A view from the top!

The nave of the church

love love love gothic architecture :)

This was the entrance to one of the small side chapels

the rose window

This was the amazing alter piece. it is carved from wood and coated in gold leaf. It has 45 scenes carved depicting the life of Christ starting with the nativity in the bottom right to the Crusifiction in the upper center continuing on with scenes from the Resurrection. It is the largest alterpiece in the world, pretty amazing, the picture doesn't do it justice.

The tomb of Christopher Columbus...sorry the pic is blurry but it is the only one I had of it from the front. This corner of the church was actually pretty dark so my hand wasn't steady enough to hold the camera still while the lens was open.

They love their Crusifiction scenes and their Virgin Mary's...

pretty ceilings

I forget what this is called but it is a huge piece built of silver, weighs over 100 pounds and they carry it through the streets during the festivel of Corpus Christi

I forget who this dude is...maybe a king...or explorer...

Not only do I love ceilings but also floors...

An oval dome

They also have an area of the cathedral called the Treasury...they have lots of pretty things with lots of gold and jewels.

Viva la Espana

This past weekend I flew to Spain to meet the Hernandez family in Seville. I was catching them on the tail end of their 10 day trip through Spain and was happy to find they were still in high spirits! I was also glad to find they weren't too sick of tapas and sangria yet! Either that, or they were very kind and humored me! I took a ton of pics of the two main attractions in Seville, the Cathedral and the Palace so I put those pics into two separate blogs.

I'll go through what all we did while we were there on this one. Before I left I did some research on getting from the airport to the city and I was set on taking the bus into the city center and then walking to the hotel instead of taking a cab. 2 Euros versus 30 Euros. Easy decision. Well as soon as I got to Seville and realized how HOT it was, I decided against public transportation! It reached 110 on Saturday and only cooled to about 90 at night, it was SO HOT! Anyways, when I first got there I met up with the Hernandez's at the hotel (after a very scary cab ride through the city..the streets are so narrow!) and we had a chance to catch up for a bit and then we headed down the street for some yummy tapas! I was a little worried after they had told me they had eaten pig ears with cartilage earlier in the week but I enjoyed everything I had and I am pretty sure there were no pig ears involved. It was nice being in Spain with people who spoke Spanish, although I could have been eating just about anything for all I knew! After dinner we went to La Carboneria for some Agua de Seville (the local cocktail) and some Spanish guitar and flamenco. It was so hot at the bar we thought we would take a dip in our hotel's rooftop pool when we got home at 2 AM. We changed into our suits and got up to the roof to find that apparently it turns into a nice restaurant at night...oops!

The next day we went to visit the Cathedral, which happens to be the third larges in Europe, I had no idea! It turns out that Christopher Columbus is also buried there. Check out the pics in a blog to follow! We also climbed the Giralda Tower, the bell tower. Which, by the way, is still in use...we were woken up every morning by the chiming bells! After the Cathedral we headed to the Royal Alcazares...the royal palace. It is still in use by the King and Queen of Spain whenever they visit Seville. The palace had a lot of Moorish influence which you can spot pretty easily in the pics and also had some beautiful gardens. All of this would have been a lot more pleasant had it not been 110 degrees! Ana and I opted out a little early to get back to the rooftop pool! We headed out for dinner along the river around 9 pm that night, we were WAY early for dinner..dinner starts about 10 pm in Spain! We went to a fish restaurant where the fish was served WHOLE, eyeballs and all...ick, they had some delicious young bull though...I am assuming it was veal.

The next day was both father's day (Happy fathers day Dad...you're the best!!) and Ana's birthday. We went to mass in the morning at the Cathedral. It was delivered in Latin and some Spanish so I was pretty much just looking around the whole time! After mass we went to the Archives, this is where they keep all of the information they collected while the explorers were off discovering the New World. The had letters from Christopher Columbus and many other explorers detailing what they had found. They also had many hand drawn maps on display. It was really cool to see all of that and think about how old it was. After that we did some shopping, wandering and then had some paella for my send off lunch! It was a short but fantastic trip! Oh, and don't think I didn't miss my connecting flight in Madrid b.c I was too busy shopping and eating to be paying attention to anything else! Luckily I got on the last flight home on Standby...but not with luggage of course...hopefully they will call soon and say they have it to deliver!!

View of Seville from the bell tower

View of the bull ring

They have orange trees growing all over town!

Agua de Seville...Whiskey, Vodka, Prosecco and Pineapple Juice

Me and Ana at La Carboneria

It didn't take me long to notice this sign!!

A Church...there were tons of these small churches throughout the city

Another small Church

All of the buildings were so cute, it is a very picturesque town

We stopped in to hear some Spanish guitar one day

more pretty buildings

PAELLA!!!

This was the only picture I got of us as I was leaving for the airport...Darcy, Guillermo, Ana and me....I didn't get a picture with Gabriela and Willie :(