By mid-week the weather turned fine. On Wednesday the skies cleared completely and the temperature started to go up. On Thursday we were quite comfortable without our coats.
On both days we did a lot of walking and looking at places both familiar and new. On Wednesday we walked back to the knitting store for the second time to pick up more supplies.
Since we were close to the market in the Parasol ( the Mushroom) we took more pictures and bought a bag of olives (manzanillas finas, if you care) as part of our evening meal.
Both Wednesday and Thursday were laundry days. At this apartment there is no access to the roof so there is not a great place to dry clothes. It seems like a small thing to be concerned with while on vacation, but our planning assumes that we will be able to wash everything so that we cn travel lightly. We have a nice balcony area that overlooks the interior courtyard but at this time of year it doesn’t get much sun. For this trip I actually brought some stretchy clothes lines that had clips attached because clothes pegs have been hard to find in the past. With some ingenuity we were able to rig up a couple of drying lines that got the process started and we finished by setting a drying rack in a room with a space heater.
We skipped breakfast on Wednesday so we felt “entitled” to a large lunch. We went to a restaurant we have visited on previous trips and had a very good lunch (almuerzo) followed by some gelato as we walked around in the Santa Cruz district. Wednesday evening we dined in on bread (pan), cheese (queso), olives (acietunas), and wine (vino blanco seco).
We could tell that Thursday was going to be even warmer than Wednesday so we got out early. Patricia started some laundry early and we went out for breakfast while it finished. We are close to many shops and restaurants so it is usually easy to find what we need. We ate at Horno Artisano, a place with good café, smoothies, and, my favorite, good pastries.
We made another trip (3rd) to the knitting shop and then went on the well-known shopping street Calle Serpientes (Serpent Street), which, despite its name, is pretty straight. This street is one we have visited several times on our trips and we always find stores we haven’t seen before. This time we found a shop that specializes in deserts. I hope we find time to go back to that one.
In the afternoon we visited the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies) which “is the repository of extremely valuable archival documents illustrating the history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the Philippines.” This is not tourist exhibition, but it does have nice exhibits. Hundreds of years of documents are kept here and curated and made available for research. For example, we saw the original document that Columbus signed with Ferdinand and Isabella in April of 1492 that details what they would get if his trip was successful. We saw the original (1494) agreement between Spain and Portugal that essentially split the South America (not named that yet) between the two countries.
The most interesting thing we saw was perhaps the exhibit made of the illustrations from a book written in 1616 sent to King Phillip III from Peru, written by a Peruvian native that recounts the history of Spain in Peru and Spain’s misrule there.
The archives are housed in a very nice building that was once close to the Guadalquivir river, but is now at least a quarter of a mile from the river. We very much enjoyed our visit to the building and to the archives.
After a leisurely lunch—we always order too much—in the warm sun, we headed back to the apartment for a rest before heading out to see some flamenco in Triana.
We walked around in part of Triana, which is on the other side of the river, before our flamenco show. The part of Triana we visited was, to say the least, bustling. Streets were lined with restaurants and bars. We visited a couple of churches and had some gelato while we waited for Orillas de Triana to open. It is housed in a flamenco school called Flamenqueria Seville. The area for the show had about 25 chairs. When we got there we were the only people there. We were about 30 minutes early but we thought “oh,oh. We may be the only people here. The person who showed us to our seats said that it was “muy tranquilo esta noche” which I took to mean he did not expect many people either.
A tapa was included in out tickets ad it was pretty good: cheese and a couple of kinds of meat.
By the time the show started there were about 12 people in the audience. We were allowed to take pictures—no flash, of course—and the stage was well enough lighted that I was able to get some good ones. We saw quite a performance and enjoyed every moment.
We walked back from Triana to the apartment. It is a little more than a mile and every street on the way back was crowded with people.
I added 28 pictures to the Seville pictures page but I put all of today’s pictures at the front.