31/05-02/06/2019: Seville
Km travelled today/sum: 227km / 5280km
Hot, mostly highway
Today we were aiming for Seville, which was just a 2 hour ride from Albufeira. So we had a slow start with a nice breakfast.
The border crossing went without any problems… well, there was no border crossing so that’s probably why there were no problems 😉 . After 100km, we had a petrol stop and thought we would give our host a call. As it turned out, he had to go to the hospital to have his dialysis done – which takes 3 hours – so he would be back home around 19:00. This was a bit of a surprise. Since it was really warm (~ 35 degrees), we decided to stay at the petrol stations restaurant a bit longer, which had good WiFi. After an hour we decided to ride to the accommodation and wait there. When we arrived we explored the area ’till close to 19:00 then our host turned up. We were able to park the bikes in his front yard, which was really convenient.
He also told us that this weekend there would be a military show and that the Spanish king comes to Seville on Saturday. So we planned to have a look at the army exhibition and maybe get a glimps of the king. Well, as usual we started the day slowly and when we arrived at the train station we realised that it was pretty packed. As we found out, that was nothing compared to how packed the train was. In the end, the carriage was so crowded that nobody could get in anymore. We got off the train one station earlier (we may have remembered the wrong station name…), but that was not bad, since we left the crowd behind for a short while.
A short walk later we had a look at the ‘Plaza de España’. This was huge place, there were even small channels with bridges and boats on them.The Palaza was in front of a nice park. When we strolled through the park, Sigrid found a orange tree with plenty of oranges. So Sigrid had a go at one, but it was really dry. I guess they don’t water the trees regularly.
When we left the park, we saw the crowd. We waited a bit and then we could hear some tanks coming. Unfortunately, this was the moment where we realised that we were waiting at the wrong spot. I tried to take some pictures above the crowd with very limited success.
A bit frustrated we tried reach the channel, but there was no way we could get there. So instead, we used a back road to get to the main street from there. That was when two young ladies approached us, asking if we would like to be part of a tasting group for olive oil and beer. This was organised from the University of Seville and it would be free… Cool! we’ll have that instead! A guy came to us and translated the proceedings from Portuguese to English. Now we could understand what it was all about. We learned that when tasting olive oil, you are looking for defects, and there were a couple of oils which were emphasising these defects so you could work out what it was all about. Anyway, the olive oil was ok. Now it was onto the beers – there however they tried a couple of new strange things. Some of them they shouldn’t waste the nice beer on (my opinion) but one other was quite nice, it was a mixture of Guinness with a hint of coffee. I liked it, Sigrid didn’t.
Anyway, when the tasting was finished, so was the parade. The streets were nearly empty. We walked along the river and it was really hot. Sigrid had some water from a nice fountain.
Our next idea was to hop on a boat and take a river cruise. The boats were leaving from the ‘Torre del Oro” (tower of gold), which was not far from us. So we walked there and hopped on the boat. On the left is the ‘Torre del Oro” and on the right the the building for the ‘Ministry of Education and Sport’.
The bridge on the left was built by the French architect Alexandre Gustave Eifel. It replaced a pontoon bridge build by the Moors in the 12th century – really-this floating bridge exists seven centuries! On the right, there is the Schindler tower, which is just an observation tower build for the Exposition of Seville 1992.
After the boat trip, we decided to have a look at the ‘Torre del Oro’, which is also a nautical museum. From the top of the tower, we had a great view over the ‘Canal de Alfonso XIII‘ one of the arms of the River Guadalquivir. We also had a glimpse of the ‘Catedral de Sevilla’, which we would visit tomorrow.
On our way back to the train station, we came across some nice arabic houses, and when we walked into the archway we found some beautiful tranquile court jards. In one court jard we found a reminance of the town wall and a water fountain.
This was enough for one day, so we caught the train back. This time the train was empty 😁
