Oranges and Sunshine

Well it's been a while since our last post. We didn't get up to much in January to be honest, the weather wasn't great and we just spent a lot of time holed up up home not doing a lot! That doesn't make for an interesting blog post.

Then I had my wisdom tooth out last week, and I've been pretty indisposed since then. I'm eating a lot of yoghurt, ice cream and mashed potatoes, I actually found myself daydreaming about actual food yesterday!

Anyway, in the last weekend of January, before I had my tooth out, we spent a lovely long weekend in the South of Spain for my Birthday. It was our first time to Spain, we spent most of last year travelling Italy, so that's one country we won't be visiting this year! But I can definitely say we'll be seeing more of Spain.

We had yet another early flight out of Gatwick airport, that involved waking up at 4.00 a.m. to get the bus and then the train to the airport.

The waking up early is fine, it's always later in the day that I get super exhausted! It didn't help that I seemed to have picked up a tummy bug from somewhere, so I could barely stay out of the bathroom long enough to get on the plane. I had a very embarrassing experience trying to quietly explain my symptoms to the pharmacist only to have him blurt them out loudly in one of those horrendous movie moments. I even had to ask for sick bags on the flight, just in case. Thankfully I didn't need them in the end.

We arrived in Seville at lunchtime and were able to check into our hotel straight away, after the very fast and very scary taxi ride from the airport. Italian taxi drivers have nothing on Spanish taxi's!

I found it extremely hard to find accommodation in Seville, it's a very lively city, with bars everywhere, so I knew it would be hard to find somewhere where we could have a quiet night's sleep. We finally managed to find the Hotel Amadeus, tucked into a side street in the Santa Cruz district. Which while lively in the Summer, was relatively quiet in the Winter!

Our extremely huge bed

After dropping off our things, we decided to go for a walk around the city. Seville is quite small, and easily walkable. There are lots of tiny alley's and a lot of the streets don't allow cars, it reminded me quite a lot of Venice.

There are also Orange trees everywhere, they are in almost every single photo of Seville, because it is very hard to take a photo without a tree getting in the way! But they are an amazing colour, an extremely vibrant Orange, but the Orange's themselves are too bitter to eat. It would have been nice to eat fresh Orange's from the thousands of tree's though.

We had great weather the whole time we were in Spain, it was lovely and sunny, and nice and warm in the sun. We still had to wear our winter coats though, because as soon as we stepped into the shade, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees!

There were some amazing Mosaics all throughout Seville and Granada. They are so stunning, and we purchased a few for ourselves as souvenirs. They really brighten up the cities.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See (Seville Cathedral)

The first place we visited was Seville Cathedral. The Cathedral is very stunning and gothic looking from the outside, with a huge bell tower (La Giralda). It is extremely large on the inside, it actually has the biggest Nave in Spain, and the entire inside is decorated in gold.

The church was completed in 1511, but part of it had to be rebuilt in 1888 after an earthquake. The earthquake also destroyed a lot of precious artifacts inside.

I felt very sad for these horses, they were everywhere and had to stand in the hot sun all day. There just weren't enough tourists to justify having so many horse and carriages.

La Giralda

A lot of the architecture in Seville reminded us of Disneyland. Disneyland obviously has a lot of Spanish influence!

The entrance to the Cathedral

In the middle of the church there is a courtyard full of Orange trees. We enjoyed a rest in the sunshine under the bell tower. I was still feeling pretty hideous, so we needed to have a rest before attempting to climb the tower.

Random hanging tusk and crocodile

The walk up La Giralda wasn't too bad compared to other tower's we have climbed. Instead of stairs or an elevator, there was 36 flights of ramps. Just gradual slopes for 36 stories! It was very weird, and it still gave my calves a good workout, especially on the way down.

View over the courtyard

We were pretty starving by this point, since I hadn't eaten anything really since the night before. So we headed off in search of lunch.

We had some really delicious Paella at a restaurant down the road from our hotel, which was good because we could roll ourselves back there afterwards if we ate too much :)

Luckily I didn't feel too sick after eating but we went back to the hotel for a rest before heading out again later in the evening.

After relaxing for a while, we headed out to the Plaza de Espana, one of the most beautiful places to visit in Seville, if not all of Spain.

The Plaza de Espana was built in the 1920's when Seville hosted the Ibero-American Exposition World's Fair. It is a huge semi-circle of buildings, which now host Government offices, with a huge fountain and a river in the middle. On the walls of the buildings are amazing mosaics depicting all the different regions of Spain, we spent most of our late afternoon and evening here, just enjoying the sunshine and people watching.