Sevilla, Part II: Cathedral and the Alcazar

Did you know that the third largest cathedral in the world is in Seville?  Did you know that Game of Thrones filmed their Dorne scenes in Seville?  Equally fascinating facts.  ;-)

After our first, lovely night in Seville and sleeping in a bit in the morning (I loved how, to keep things cool, you could close solid wood shutters over every window and make the room completely dark.) we set off to see the cathedral.  THE CATHEDRAL.

It's gigantic and ornate and has roman columns all around the outside that are pretty much just traffic barriers (because that's how Europe works.  Roman columns are just lyin' around.)

 
It's also kind of a hodge-podge of architecture because, so the story goes, Seville started building their cathedral and then kept hearing about other cathedrals that were going to be bigger...so they just kept adding parts to it.  Hilarious.  And how you get things like these elaborate flying buttresses.

I also remember that Christopher Columbus is buried in there.  So...history.  And...not...nice...history.

But my favorite part was walking through the orange tree courtyard on the way out.  You had to be careful to not trip on one of those irrigation canals running gorgeously throughout the whole place, but it was a little piece of cool, shaded, Moorish loveliness.  And a fantastic intro to Andalusian history - the medieval Christian seamlessly integrated with the Islamic.    Love it.  LOVE IT.  Also those little geometric channels and those arches behind the fountain there reminded me of Topkapi Palace in Istabul.  I loved seeing how cultures interconnected over centuries in ways that we typically don't learn about in our European History classes here in the states.  We owe so much to those Moors.

Then we walked across the square to the royal palace aka the Alcazar - a place I didn't even know about before we went to Seville.  And it was amazing.  Look at this courtyard.  LOOK!  LOOOOOK!  Look at the Moorish first floor with the orange trees.  And then the Roman second floor!  It was so so beautiful.  And, here's my Game of Thrones moment: the Gardens there are the "Water Gardens of Dorne."  So it was funny to watch that episode with all those assassins runnin' around in the exact place I was runnin' around trying to find the bathroom.

And then we went to a Flamenco performance that evening.  Wow.  I "knew" what it was but I didn't know.  I think I could feel Hadrian jumping and dancing inside me everytime they started their stomping and castanets.  There was a lot of sweat flying.  There was a grown man playing the guitar and sobbing his eyeballs out.  There was a lot of passion in that room.  I'll never forget it.  Flamenco!

We went straight into a castanet store afterward and got a pair as our souvenir. I actually figured out how to use them for about ten seconds one time.  It was very exciting.  One of my life goals is to be able to castanet like a boss.

SEVILLE!

Sevilla, Part 1: The Long Journey

When we first moved to Europe, we made a prioritized list of places we wanted to see.  Most of them were shared, like Paris, London, Rome...you know, the big ones.  But there were a couple surprises.  Paul really wanted to go to Norway, which had not been on my radar at all.  And me?  I wanted to go to Andalucia in Spain.

It just sounded so romantic.  Andaluuuuuusia.  Or, AndaluSEEEEaaaah.  However you wanted to go with that.  Plus, I'd dreamt about seeing the Alhambra since 9th grade when I first really got into Moorish history and culture.  I wanted the orange trees, the fountains in the inner courtyard gardens, the intricate arches and arabic calligraphy.  The spices, the seafood, the heat, the olives.  Spain!   Right?

So Spain was where we spent our 6th anniversary and our last adventure together before Hadrian arrived.  And I should add, was a big reason why we named him Hadrian in the first place.  Andalucia was the historical Hadrian's homeland, so to speak, and learning about the Roman influence in the area was a fascinating surprise for me.  

Anyway!  I'm sure you're here to learn about Sevilla/Seville and not to hear me wax rhapsodic about my dreams of southern Spain.  On we go then!

My first impression of Spain was Madrid, actually.  It was much cheaper to fly from Copenhagen to Madrid and then take the bullet train down to Seville.  I remember seeing the dry, high-desert surrounding the city from the plane, worrying a little bit about catching our train since we had to take a bus through rush hour traffic.  I remember people on the bus acting very alarmed when I got on, seven months pregnant with a stuffed bright orange backpack and waving aside people's concerned pleas for me to just take their seat!  

Side note: it wasn't that I didn't want their seat or didn't appreciate it.  Honestly, I kept turning them down because I was having trouble processing why so many people were suddenly acting so extremely deferential.  I felt shy and embarrassed to be singled out, I guess?  (I'm healthy and young and strong!  I don't need your seat, Mr. 65 Year Old Man!)  I think this was because, surprisingly, in Denmark no one treated my massive pregnant self with much deference - as I commuted by bike, bus, and train almost every day to Copenhagen.  So I wasn't used to it?  Plus, I think the Danish attitude had made me think that I must not have looked very pregnant.  ha ha.  I looked at the Spain pictures when we got home and was like, "HOLY moly I was big!"  So...yep. Denial.  Anyway, the point is that people in Spain were waaaaay more conscientious about pregnant women than I'd ever seen in my life.  Kudos to Spain.)

I remember us running (well, Paul running.  Me kind of sad-waddling after him) around the massive train station trying to find our track...or just the place where there were any tracks!  What was a bit disconcerting was seeing so many fully armed - we're talking armored vests and AK-47 - police just walking around (there was an echo of that when we went to Paris a few months before with my parents and sister.  Fully armed police all over the train stations...).  Plus the fact that we had to go through security and a metal detector to even get to our track!  Only in Spain did we come up against that.  It was actually the reason we were so lost in the train station - kept thinking, "Oh, well we don't want to go through that massive line to wherever!  We just want to find the tracks!"  

Let me just say here that the bullet train to southern Spain is posh.  Maybe the nicest train we've ever been on.  And a surreal experience to watch "Jack the Giant Killer" dubbed in Spanish.  Like...all the characters were named "Julio" and "Esparanza" or along those lines...but it was clearly set in England?  

Then we made it to Seville!

Aaaaaaaand had to take a taxi to get to the historic city center.  It's always strange for me when the train stations aren't just smack dab in the middle of the action, but that's the way it was in Seville.  Be prepared. You're going to pass a lot of mid-century apartment buildings before you see medieval streets.

Finally, we were dropped off next to the Cathedral and began our wander through some of the most interesting and get-lost-able streets and alleys we ever encountered in Europe.  I think Venice and maybe the Alfama in Lisbon could match or beat it.  Every now and then, the space would suddenly open up into lovely little squares with statues, fountains, and shaded by orange trees.

I was SO HUGE.  I am a travel ROCK STAR!

This was our "local square" just a couple turns away from our vacation apartment.  Our first night in Seville, we ate our first real paella at the seafood restaurant in the back there, with the white awning.  I remember a man sitting near the fountain, playing classical guitar and noticing the grey and white pebble patterns on the walkways as we ate.  I was so tired - it had been a long day with a lot of walking, but I was also jazzed to realize that I'd made it.  After dreaming about seeing this region of the world since I was 13 years old - here I was!  Eating legit chorizo in a gorgeous saffron paella, sitting across from a handsome man who actually married me, and seven months pregnant with my son.  Smelling roses and hearing that Spanish guitar, first night in Seville under the stars.

Norway: Surpriiiiiise!

One random Friday in August 2014, Paul came home from work expecting a nice weekend of grocery shopping, sleeping in, and streaming old episodes of The Amazing Race.

EXCEPT!

When he turned from the hallway to the living room, he saw me standing there with our travel backpacks and the most insane grin on my face that could possibly be created with my face muscles.  And I said,
    "Paul!  Pack your bag because we're goin' to NORWAY!"

And he just stood there...

And said, "....what?"

"Norway!  Right now!  We are going to Norway in literally ten minutes!"

Let me make this shorter than it could be and just sum up by saying that it didn't really seem to fully sink in for him until after we had actually landed in Bergen.   Which, you know, was pretty funny.  And also confusing.  Because I was like NORWAY NORWAY NORWAY! and he was like ::wide eye confusion silence shock::

The thing was that Paul had always told me about how he'd always wanted to see Norwegian fjords and that, since I was pretty pregnant by then, that we most likely would never get up there before we had to move away.

Well.  Challenge Accepted!

We went to Bergen for the weekend and pulled one long, all-day fjord tour on Saturday through Norway-In-A-Day (highly recommended).  And it was just a blast.  Even moreso for me because I love orchestrating surprises and I'd rank an international vacation pretty high for coolest possible surprise.

Our trip, because it was so short and dependent on a tour company was a bit more touristy than we were used to on our trips - Bergen, being a cruise port, meant there were a lot of older North Americans roaming the streets in camera'd packs but it had a lot going for it.  I especially loved staying so close to the harbor and walking around the old, wooden 19th century neighborhood, Bryggen.

The next day on the trains, ferries, and busses through the fjords was super great and exhausting and amazing and everything.  By that point, Paul was finally understanding that, yes, we were actually in real Norway and was really excited.  I feel like I'm writing too many words like "amazing" and "excited" and it doesn't say what I meant to say but I'm trying to write this really fast while Hadrian is asleep and I have a cold so my vocabulary isn't, shall we say, at its finest.  BUT I just wanted to say that it was all worth it.  It was so worth it.  It's always worth it to travel.

So, I guess, if you're a person who thinks all the time about how they wish they could go somewhere but "I can't right now" then...well, maybe that's true.  But first make sure about that.  Is it absolutely true?  Could you do it?  Are you just saying you can't because it seems like it would take too much preparation or time or you don't know if spending your money is the right choice?  Well...I can't really say what your experience would be, but we're pretty conservative people - financially, time-wise, prep-wise.  And we have never regretted any of our adventures for a second.  Money is just money, but what's most important are memories.

That's why we went to Norway for a weekend.  Because we could.  (And for the SURPRISE!)

 

Leaving Skye and Scotland

The next two days we saw a bunch of amazing things on Skye.  The Quirang (above), the cliffs at Kilt Rock, the Fairy Pools, the harbor at Portree, and the McCleod clan castle.  On one drive we stopped into a rebuilt Hebridean village at the north of the island, looking out across to the Isle of Harris.

It was all too much.  Too much to try and talk about everything.  Just to say that it was beautiful and we finally found a McArthur scarf on our very last day on the island and practically in Scotland in a tiny shop in Portree.  Woohoo!

The day we left Skye, we took the long road back toward the east and center of Scotland where we had not been before, making a loop past Loch Ness (you just have to) and down to Pitlochry where we stayed for one last night before driving back to Edinburgh in the morning to catch our plane.

It wasn't until our last night in Pitlochry that we actually. and finally, tried haggis.  And I have to say, I was impressed.

As I was with pretty much all of Scotland.  We'll be back.

Hiking Skye

Do you see me?  I'm tiny and juuuuust to the left of center in my purple coat.

Perhaps the best memory I have of our trip to Scotland would be the morning we spent hiking The Storr on the Isle of Sky(p)e.

We almost didn't even try as we pulled into the muddy parking lot and looked at the thick fog rolling in.  We could see the Old Man of Storr volcanic formations appear suddenly every now and then as the clouds moved by.  We couldn't even see the mountain range behind it.

But, being the young bucks we were, we decided to give it a go.  At least get up to the Old Man of Storr and check it out, figuring we'd gauge the weather after that point.  It probably took a good 40 minutes just to get to the formation at the base of the mountain since a lot of the area had been clear-cut in the early stages of an invasive tree species eradication program - I guess the area around the parking lot used to be a man-made forest, but when we were there it was just gnarly mud and rocks.  It was rough goin'.

BUT!  BUT!!  When we got to the Storr, everything changed.  Sure the clouds were still moving in and out, but suddenly everything became beautiful and mysterious and adventurous (and not as muddy).  So we decided to just keep going up.

The further we went, the fewer hikers we saw and the more beautiful and quiet things got.  At one point it was just Paul and I hiking around the edge of what was clearly a glacial cirque and the fog was so thick around us we could only see maybe fifty feet up and down the slope around us.

We had no idea what was above or below or ahead, when suddenly a picture-window hole just appeared in the fog (it was so, so strange) and gave us a crystal clear, fog-framed view of the channel islands and sea, all bright green and gray and shimmering.  I really can't do the moment justice.  Both of our jaws just dropped and we stood there staring in silence until, just as quickly, the window closed and we were all in gray again.  It felt like magic, like the gray fog had become a crystal ball, showing us some mystical world for a second.  That's exactly what it was like - it wasn't a view from where we were, because we had been so disoriented in the fog for so long, we had no concept of our altitude or surroundings - it was just a floating vision.  I'll never forget it.

I don't know, I'm sure everyone will just skip right over that long paragraph there.  I just had to try and write down the memory at least.  For us, if anything.

We kept hiking up and up.  At one point the trail completely disappeared and we came across some Canadians who had turned around at that point, disappointed.  Well...we weren't going to turn around.  So we just off-roaded it straight up the mountainside until we reached a wide open flat.  It was us, some sheep, and more volcanic formations.  And now that we were on the ridge, we could sometimes see down the cut-steep valley on the other side.

And we kept going!

No trail, thick fog, we just kept going.  It was a grand adventure.

Finally, and a bit sadly, we found the summit marker at the edge of one final ridge slope and celebrated with some more sheep who kindly took our picture before we ate a little snack and began our hike back down.

Summiting the Storr has become one of my Life Memories.  You know the ones - those memories that rank way up there.  The ones that kind of feel like they defined an era for you?  That was Skye and the Storr for me - just Paul and I, wandering the wilds of the Scottish highlands together and completely on our own, colorful visions appearing in the sky, and just the sound of silence and sheep bells around us.  Heidi and Paul in Europe - the memory makers.