Sightseeing Seville

Saturday morning, the sky is equally blue and sunny here in Seville. I made a plan yesterday on places I want to visit today since I missed out a bit on Friday.

I head towards the river Guadalquivir bank, first stopped at the Golden Tower (Torro del Oro), it was not open in the morning but it was not my interest to visit a Maritime museum anyway, so it is just a quick admire of the rather simple yet elegant tower, took some photo shots and walk along the river to the Bull ring (Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza).

Golden Tower (Torro del Oro) and along the Guadalquivir River bank

Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza – Museo Taurino

The Maestranza bullring of Seville is regarded, together with Las Ventas in Madrid, as one of the top venues for bullfighting in Spain, accommodating as many as 12,500 spectators.

The visit to the bull ring is interesting though the fact is there is an architecture defect that the ring is not round but oval. The tour took us to the arena itself and the guide explained the rule of games and so basically each show there are 6 bulls and 2 pairs of bull fighters. The audience seats are not very comfortable as you can see from the picture above.

After the bullring, I crossed the bridge to an area called 'Triana', it used to be an gypsy area but now is cleaned up.

Mercado de Triana is an indoor air conditioned food market in a converted castle called 'San Jorge'. Inside is very tidy, neat and clean but of a very small scale though. The one that we visited at Valencia last year was more interesting. I was in search for a bottle of good honey, but the stalls here mainly sell jambon (ham), cheese, vegetables, fruits and seafood. So no luck of good Spanish honey this trip. Strolling along the different stalls is a good way to observe the local daily life.

Just outside of Triana food market, there are a dozen of shops selling ceramic.

They are real ceramic shops as most of the stores have extensive collections and even workshop on ceramic painting. Most shops are overloaded with ceramic items, although jam packed but they are really colorful. Most merchandised items were like screaming 'take me home'. I got some small ceramic dishes here to complement my Japanese ceramic series.

Then I walked back to El Arena area, crossing the bridge and head towards Museum of the Fine Arts at El Centro area. It's now noon and siesta time again, most shops are closing for the afternoon. The heat of mid afternoon is also becoming unbearable. The best is to hide in the building such as museum.

Seville is still double standard when it comes to entrance fee to the museum or monuments. In most cases, EU citizens got to enter on a reduced rate or free. I got away as an EU citizen by using my Dutch driving license as a proof of identity. So I entered the museum free! There are quite extensive collections but the entire museum is not English signed. I stayed mainly at the 3 courtyards, visited some of the art works of Spanish painters.

In order not to make this into long post entry, I am skipping to the last part of the afternoon where I walked back to the historical center and actually wanting to have a spa at Aires de Seville - an Arab bath house (see www.airedesevilla.com). I got lost again in the winding and small alleys and when I finally got there, they are already fully booked, so no luck for Arab bath (there is always next time) and I retreat back to hotel for my siesta as well.

As you can probably already sensed that Seville is not really big, in fact I did the whole sightseeing by foot, some tiring walk under the heat but is really manageable so long as you plan everything around the Sevillian's siesta time which they take it really seriously here.