Seville - how many secrets and stories you keep!!

Last day in Sevilla!

The morning began with a walking tour provided by this awesome, super-knowledgeable guy named Raphael who took us all around the city, telling us tons of information about the history of the buildings as well as a few odd stories and legends. 

This is the Cathedral of Sevilla that used to be a Muslim mosque and that huge tower used to be a minaret where an imam would call out prayer 5 times a day - in other words he had to get up to the top of that thing 5 times a day! But did he climb stairs? No he did not! There are ramps all the way up and they used to ride a small donkey instead of walking! ...poor donkey :( 

...some of the ancient Roman walls left over from when the city was a major fortified Spanish stronghold for the Empire.

...some of the excavations still going on today! That round thing down there is a Roman well!

One of our favorite legends that Raphael told took placed just outside of this excavation site - in the Jewish quarter on a street called the 'Caile dela Muerte' - or Street of Death. It came from a legend about a young Jewish woman named Susona who was in love in with a Catholic fellow. Unfortunately, the Jews were being very oppressed by the ruling Catholics in the city and so, one night, Susona overheard her father and other Jewish men talking about rising up against their oppressors. Susona immediately ran and told her Catholic boyfriend who in turn said 'thank you very much', dumped her and warned the rest of the Catholics. Then they armed themselves and massacred all the Jews, but Susona escaped and tried to plead with the Catholic soldiers to take her in since she had warned them all in the first place. But of course the Catholics said no since she had betrayed her own flesh and blood. How could they trust she wouldn't do the same to them? Eventually, however, the Catholic's piety got the best of them and they allowed her to escape and live in a convent for the rest of her days. However, she never forgot her terrible deed and in her will asked that her head be placed beneath her childhood window after her death. Well, the people of Sevilla adhered to her last wish and indeed put her head on the street where it remained for 150 years. Then, one day someone finally buried the skull and replaced the area with a plaque - an eternal reminder to never betray your own!

...eerie.

Also, there was a story about this street:

...that literally revolved around a guy not being able to find any pepper in the city (with which to preserve his meat) and so he went back to his house, prayed so hard to all the saints that he fell asleep, and the next day awoke to so much pepper in his house that it spilled out of his windows and into the street below!!

 Then this window was called the 'Devil's Window' because if you look closely all the bars are interlocked and after generations had lost knowledge of how it was made, many just began to say it was the work of the Devil. lol!!

...this was the monument to Christopher Columbus and at the top is the lion - the symbol of Spain...but evidently it wasn't always the lion, but indeed a bunny rabbit....with fangs. Oh yes. And if you're thinking Monty Python, then you're on the right track. Supposedly the Spanish decided their vamp-bunny was too tame and when their armada was getting ready to set sail for England, they changed it to a lion. In Raphael's words, "Well, we have no lions in Spain, but what the hell!" ...unfortunately, as we all know, the mascot-change didn't help. And thus, Monty Python made great fun of it. 

And last but not least: the story of this cool-lookin' building...the Tobacco Factory! Turns out that this is the setting of the famous opera, Carmen! I'll let you look up the story if you don't know it, but Raphael told us that it definitely was a spot of romance - you see only women were allowed to work in the factory and so all the young bachelors would wait outside day after day to catch their eye. I would also like to note here that there is a trumpet inside the doorway and supposedly every time a virgin walked through, it would sound.....

What a place, eh?!!

Anyways, so there's a pretty good gist of what we learned whilst with Raphael and we were so impressed with his memory of facts and all his awesome little anecdotes! 

We ended the tour at the bull ring - another important building for Sevilla - and Raphael was very good at explaining some of the rules of the famous, but sad sport. 

Once our tour with Raphael ended, we tipped him and then headed back to our hostel to eat the rest of our pasta dish we had made the night before. Once our bellies were content, we headed back out to get a closer look at a few things that had looked interesting along our tour. Our first stop was the HUGE Plaza de España. 

Plaza de España is a huge park area in Sevilla that was initially built to be a part of the world expo in 1929. Well, with the economic crash in 1929, it never was used to it's full potential. So now it is just used partially as government offices and a university. It has also been the setting of three films, the coolest of which (In Kyla's and my opinion) is Star Wars!! ...Episode II: Attack of the Clones, to be specific...

After soaking in the wonders of the Plaza, we decided we wanted to go check out the inside of the Cathedral. So we meandered our way through the city streets, stopping along the way to try these delicious gofres! It's a waffle thingy with different toppings. Kyla got one with just powdered sugar, and mine had some sort of strawberry jam. They were delectable!

From there, it was only a few more steps until we reached the Cathedral. We walked into the first open door we could find and turns out we had actually walked into the baptistery! So we checked that out for a few moments, and then walked back out to find the entrance to the Cathedral. Unfortunately, we discovered that the Cathedral had in fact already closed up for the day.

Slightly bummed, we just began to stroll through the streets without any mind to where we were. We entered shops, took pictures, and tried to soak it all in. Eventually, we made our way to a grocery store where we bought a few things to make dinner with and then we went back to the hostel and did just that! By the way, groceries in Europe are SO cheap. Like, unbelievably cheap, even though the Euro is more expensive. It's pretty awesome. Makes traveling like this a bit easier. 

While we were cooking dinner, we tried to catch glimpses of the Opening Ceremonies in London on the TV, but eventually we had to clean up, grab our bags, and make our way to the bus station for our overnight bus to Lisboa (Lisbon)!!!