Candy canes and cathedrals: Visita to Sevilla and Córdoba

Last weekend, we went on our last program trip (SAD!) to Sevilla and Córdoba. Like our trip to Valencia, it was amazing, but in a very different sort of way. Sevilla and Córdoba are both located in southern Spain. The weather was beautiful. It must have been over 70 degrees and sunny the whole time. Some people were wearing shorts. Very confusing for November. I took the most pictures this weekend than I have probably taken in the rest of my life (over 500 pictures in 3 days), so be prepared for a very foto-filled post.

Day 1: Friday

We left Madrid early Friday morning to take the Ave to Sevilla. The Ave is a high-speed train that goes up to 300 mph. (or maybe 300 kph? Either way…REALLY fast.) It was the smoothest (and FASTEST!) train ride I’ve ever been on and it was very peaceful watching pretty Spanish landscapes zooming by. We crossed about half of Spain in under 3 hours. Very cool.

When we arrived in Sevilla, we checked into our hotel and then had a couple free hours to get our own lunch. Luckily my señora had packed me a bocadillo (sandwich) large enough to feed 3 of me, so I ate that but tagged along to hang out at lunch anyway. The main highlight from lunch according to the people who actually ordered food was the dessert: fried cookies. It was one of those things that sounds kind of revolting, but in reality is disgustingly delicious. Sevilla is a very cute city. The houses are all brightly painted yellows and pinks and there are palm trees everywhere. Typical of many of the Spanish cities we’ve been to, the streets are ridiculously narrow and we had to be ready to smush ourselves against buildings when cars were coming. Good thing we are pros at this by now.

This is more of an alley than a street.

After lunch, we began our tour of Sevilla with a visit to the cathedral (of course). Even after the zillions of cathedrals we’ve seen, this was EASILY one of the best. It is just MASSIVE. The cathedral of Sevilla is known as the third largest cathedral in the world, the biggest cathedral in Spain, and the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Absolutely incredible.

View from outside. The palm tree just makes it cooler.

Arched entryway.

Sevilla has a ton of religious history. Centuries and centuries ago, Muslims ruled southern Spain and built beautiful mosques everywhere. The Muslims kings encouraged religious tolerance, so there were also a lot of synagogues built in the south during the same time period. Later, the Christian kings, who had been hanging out in northern Spain slowly gaining more power, conquered the whole peninsula (except Granada, the last Muslim stronghold) and either destroyed all the mosques and synagogues or converted them (potential pun not intended?) into cathedrals. This is what happened to the Sevilla cathedral- it used to be a mosque, but was later transformed into a gigantic cathedral. The bell tower and some of the outer architecture were preserved from the original mosque, but most of it was built by the Catholics.  

Main altar. Each of those little figures is about 2 meters tall. Huge.

Some cathedral highlights:

-Christopher Columbus’s tomb: Columbus’s remains are allegedly in the Sevilla cathedral, even though the Dominican Republic claims to have them as well. Spain adamantly denies this and has built this awesome monument inside the cathedral to hold up Columbus’s coffin:

Each of the four guys holding up the coffin represents a region of Spain, which is symbolized by the crest of the front of their armor. The only region not represented is Granada because it was still under Muslim control when Columbus died and this monument was built. To recognize this, there is a granada (the Spanish word for pomegranate) under the guy on the right’s staff. So the tomb is a subtle insult to the Muslim kings, suggesting that the Christians would soon conquer Granada. I’m sure dear old Christopher Columbus would have approved.

-Bell tower. Like always, we got to climb the highest point of the cathedral. As I mentioned before, the bell tower was originally part of a mosque. The best part about it was that it didn’t have stairs, like all of the other ridiculously high things we have climbed. It was built with RAMPS instead, so that people could ride horses up it! So cool. Five times a day people rode horses up the tower to ring the bells as a call to prayer. I guess they were too lazy to walk and realized that it would be so much easier to go on horseback. We, unfortunately, did not get to go on horseback and had to walk up dozens of ramps to climb the 70-meter high tower. It was definitely worth it for the incredible view.

View from ground.

After our cathedral visit, we continued on a walking tour of Sevilla to experience the city. That night we got good Mexican food for dinner and went back to the hotel early with a bunch of our friends to watch Zoolander because we never have the opportunity to watch movies together in Madrid, and Ben Stiller is really, really ridiculously good looking.

Day 2: Saturday

We started Saturday morning with delicious breakfast at the hotel (THEY HAD TOAST! I WAS THRILLED!) and then headed out for a tour of a really old hospital with a beautiful chapel. Hilary was a little bit nervy that someone would catch the bubonic plague, but we all made it out okay.

Inside of chapel

Afterwards, we went to see an old fortress with a gorgeous garden. It had a bunch of peacocks, or “pavo real” in Spanish, which literally means royal turkey.

Very small part of the gardens.

Pretty Arabic architecture

For lunch, we had our program meal, which is really what we were most looking forward to all weekend. We had all kinds of delicious tapas, copious amounts of wine, and chocolate cake at the end. Amazing. Then a few of us went on an optional trip to an art museum.

I was clearly more impressed by the ceiling than the actual art in the museum.

Before heading back to the hotel, we went to the river that runs through Sevilla to catch the sunset. That night, we skipped dinner because we were still so full from lunch. We decided to be lazy bums and stay in the hotel watching Arrested Development. A bunch of our friends went to sleep before 9, and we stayed up a little while longer watching Tarzan in Spanish with our friend Ben. I think we all needed a weekend to be lazy old people and get a lot of sleep. We also love hanging out together in hotels and getting a break from host family awkwardness.

Day 3: Sunday. CÓRDOBA

We woke up at 7 am to take another train to Córdoba. When we arrived, we went to a ridiculously fancy hotel to drop our bags off for the day. Seriously…our director got a room in this hotel for our bags to hang out in all day while we walked around. Our bags had a nicer place to sleep than we did. After that, we began our walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was my favorite so far; she was very cool and very honest. Córdoba is kind of sad because it has amazing history like Sevilla, but now is a dying city with a 30% unemployment rate.

The clear highlight of Córdoba was its mosque. Like in Sevilla, this building was a little confused because parts of it were turned into a cathedral after the Christian takeover.

The entire mosque was FILLED with these candy cane arches. Endless arches.

Islamic architecture + Jesus

The arches did not stop

Christian altar part of the mosque

Sitting outside the mosque

So that was our awesome weekend visiting southern Spain, which was followed by a less than thrilling week at our not-so-beloved univeristy, Carlos III.

UPCOMING THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:

-London, this coming Thursday! Including Harry Potter in IMAX.

-Thanksgiving dinner with our program. It's going to be deliciously delightful.

-Half of our classes end in two weeks. That's insane.

Hasta la vista,

Rachel

If you made it to the end of this long and historical blog post, HOORAY!