Sevilla, Spain

We spent the second half of our October vacation in Sevilla - what a beautiful Spanish city!  This is how I pictured Spain, so quaint and beautiful.

We stayed in a great apartment across the street from the Cathedral de Sevilla and Giralda Tower and in the center of everything.  We even had our own roofdeck, where we could see the beautiful views of the cathedral.  Every night as we went to bed, we heard the clip clop of the horses taking people on carriage rides.  The night we got back home to Switzerland, I almost expected to hear the clip clop again!

Cathedral de Sevilla is the world's largest Gothic church, and technically the largest church in Europe.  Christopher Columbus' tomb is housed in the cathedral.

We also went up to the top of the Giralda, the minaret which is all that remains of the mosque that used to be where the cathedral is now.  they usually have stairs to get the the top of domes or towers here in Europe, but the route here was a series of ramps (originally designed to allow those who went up to ring the bells access to the top on horseback).  For us, it worked great for Meredith in her stroller!

We toured the Alcazar palace and gardens and were amazed.  The Moorish architecture of this palace, like the Alhambra in Granada, was amazing.  And the gardens here were so beautiful.  We saw people painting the scenery, and found a fun maze that we all got lost in!

We ate a lot of tapas in Spain.  The funny thing is that the Spaniards don't even think about having dinner before 8:00pm.  The restaurants don't open until then.  By the way, all of the shops are closed from 2-5pm for siesta, but that means that most of them open up again from 5-8.  In any case, this made for some late evenings with our 4 kids!  But, we it was fun to try a lot of different types of tapas, and the kids liked some of them.  One thing we learned is that a "tortilla" in Spain is very different from a tortilla in South America.  In Spain, it is basically an omelet with eggs, potatoes and cheese.  Yum!

We went to a flamenco show, which was really fun.  It was complete with dinner (starting at 8pm, of course) and very serious flamenco.  Wow - flamenco dancing surely is a workout!

We did some shopping in Spain, including going to a beautiful ceramic shop and a nice artisan mall where many different local artists displayed their work.

On our last full day in Sevilla, we went to...an amusement park! The kids really do a great job traveling so much, and we always try to plan a mix of activities so we will all enjoy ourselves. And, Isla Magica was great! We had a lot of fun on the rides, and even saw a great flamenco performance with Andalucian horses in the evening.

We took the AVE high speed train from Sevilla to Madrid for our flight home.  We had a wonderful time in Spain (and the flight home was only 2 hours, and no time zone changes!)