When we left Cordoba, there were no olive trees, just pleasantly rolling fields ploughed golden brown on one side and filled with bright green crops on the other. Back on the A4, the oleander centre line started again and we did find more olive trees, but they seemed to be more laid out in patches amongst all the other crops. We have to say we have been mightily impressed with the roads in Spain, they may well be the best roads we’ve driven on anywhere in the world. The surfaces are smooth with no potholes, plenty of signage, and they never seem to be very crowded with traffic, on weekends or on weekdays. And apart from in Aranjuez, we never seem to see any road works, or men leaning on spades?!! About 30kms from Seville, we finally spotted fields of orange trees, ah ha they do grow oranges in Seville!
At Camping Villsom on the edge of Dos Hermanos, we parked Eileen in a good shady spot under casuarina and palm trees; we didn’t fancy parking under any orange trees, remembering the palaver under the apricot trees in St Remy de Provence back in 2012…….! The 5pm bus took half an hour to get us into Seville, where we wandered around orientating ourselves in preparation for thorough investigation the next day. Then we caught the 9pm, very busy bus, back to “Camping Stop!!!”, thank you Mr Bus driver. Most of the passengers got off and we followed everyone back to the campsite.
The next morning, we already had our red ‘Hop On Hop Off’ bus ticket, purchased the night before, and we didn’t have to wait long for a bus to come along. We sat up top and enjoyed the view from stop 2 to stop 8 then hopped off. We joined the crowd to ogle inside at the rather garish Basilica de Macarena and then ambled through the Macarena district to the roman columns beside stop 10.
We hopped off again on the Paseo de Cristobal Colón, strolled back along the banks of the Rio Guadalquivir to have a look at the Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza, the bullring, and then continued rambling through the Arenal district to the Alcazar Reales.
We spent two hours inside and I wish we could have lingered longer; it is a beautiful palace and apparently the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe. Peter The Cruel (great name, must come up with one like it for Rodney…..Rodney The Distracted….?) ordered the building of this royal residence back in the 1364. He may have been cruel, but he had good taste; some of the tile decorations are stunning and the gardens with terraces and fountains are lovely.
But we were starving and needed to find a restaurant for a late lunch. We both opted for paella, but it was nowhere near as good as Rosie’s. However, the entrée of mushrooms in a cream sauce topped with ham was very good and the ice cream dessert was good and chocolaty. Fuelled up, we continued our wanderings and after another red bus back to our bus stop we caught the 9pm blue bus back to Eileen. Tomorrow we’ll go up a mushroom……
On Friday morning the 10am bus was filled again with happy campers, and a couple of locals. This was going to be another long day of rambling around Seville, taking in the sights. A stroll through the Parque de Maria Louisa was first on the agenda and then we caught the red open top bus again, this time getting off in the Triana district. We didn’t see any gypsies, or any sailors as expected, but we did find some lovely ceramic shops.
We waited ages for the next red bus to take us to the Expo 92 site, where we wandered in to the Museum of Navigation. It turned out that we were the only visitors in the whole museum, which seems a shame as it was really quite interesting and creatively laid out. We then walked along to the Monastery of the Cartuga, which is supposed to be the Andalucían Centre for Contemporary Art. We saw a brilliant installation outside in a courtyard, but despite going to the ticket office, we didn’t seem to be able to buy a ticket to go inside, so we gave up and caught the next red bus…..to the mushroom!
As we turned a corner and got our first glimpse of the Metropol Parasol, we both went “wow”! It’s an amazing structure designed by a German architect and completed in 2011. It stands over the old Plaza Mayor and even if it is called ‘parasol’, it feels more like you are standing within a crop of giant mushrooms. A lift takes you through one of them to the top where we expected a viewing platform; but we both went “wow” again. A meandering walkway winds its way across the top of the mushrooms, or parasols, with marvellous views in all directions across Seville. We found it hard to believe that we hadn’t been able to glimpse it from anywhere before. We stayed for a drink in the café on top and soaked up the bright blue sky and the dazzling bell towers and domes on all the churches around us.
The next red bus took us back past the bullring, then we trooped over the Triana Bridge, quickly purchased a huge plate that we had spotted earlier in the day (I hope we can get it back to Sydney in one piece), returned over the bridge, caught the next bus to our final campsite bus, which we had missed by five minutes! All day we seemed to be out of sync with the buses and to while away some time we calculated that we had spent a total of two hours and ten minutes waiting for buses that day. We’ve both enjoyed Seville, but I think we’re ready to take a break from buses and pavement shuffling in cities; we’re ready to sit on a beach and enjoy some fresh sea air.
