A month in Sevilla
Charlie: I took the Sevilla Metro to catch the fast train to Madrid to meet Pat. First time on it. Just starting, only one line.
Note how it is designed like the trams in airports. The fixed doors at the station don’t open until the train is stopped. Much safer.
Except, of course, during siesta but that’s just common sense.
Charlie: You have probably seen city parks with water spouts for children to play in on summer days. This might be hard to see but it is the same thing but fine mist comes out of the spouts. Mist can be nicely cooling on a hot day. They use them a lot in Phoenix. So I guess this is for the adults, and the kids.
Sevilla, and all of Europe, had a very hot summer this year.
Charlie: we saw this out the window of the airport bus today. Not sure which government building it is, they are flying the Spanish flag, but I like the sentiment.
Charlie and Wynette: You have probably heard of Seville oranges, notoriously sour. They are the essential ingredient in the marmalade that is popular in England. (In 1995, when Wynette traveled to England, her friend Deborah asked her to bring back, in addition to PG Tips tea and McVitie’s wheat meal biscuits, “thick cut marmalade made from Seville oranges, has to be Seville oranges.”) Curiously it is very hard to find Seville orange marmalade in Seville. We finally found some, yesterday, in the fancy department store (El Corte Inglés) supermarket, but the marmalade was imported. (We noticed McVitie’s were available in El Corte Inglés as well. We’re sure they also had PG Tips.)
In the Rick Steves guide book for Spain, he says: “Orange trees abound — because they never lose their leaves, they provide constant shade. But forget about eating the oranges. They are bitter and used only to make vitamins, perfume, cat food and that marmalade you can’t avoid in British B&Bs.”
There certainly are orange trees everywhere plus the fruit on the ground. We brought two oranges back today and tasted them. Yep, very sour. Almost like a lemon. Twice now we’ve seen young children (both boys and girls) kicking the oranges like they are a soccer ball. These kids are pretty good at soccer.
When I tell Wynette “it’s up on that Virgen street”, it doesn’t help much.
Wynette: The Spanish, like the Italians, are serious about their olive oil. There were dozens (hundreds?) of choices for olive oil at El Corte Inglés. We have read that Spain and Italy import their low-quality olive oil to the US because “Americans cannot tell the difference.” So, we bought one of the more expensive brands to see if we could tell the difference. The oil we got does taste good but, to be honest, it doesn’t seem a whole lot different than what we buy back home at Costco. I guess we have something to learn about olive oil.
Charlie: Apologies to Stephen Sondheim.
The Spanish are more into keeping the Sabbath than the US. The grocery stores are closed, many bars are closed, the other bars close at 5 pm.
So we went for a walk in the famous Parque de Maria Luisa. Whoops, that was closed, too, chains on the gates.
But the park next door was open and it had a big outdoor market which specialized in international food and lots of other typical open-air market merchandise. Wynette looked around, I went over to the Universidad de Sevilla, also closed and locked up, but I walked around the fence.
It was supposed to rain all day. It rained a lot the night before and in the morning but the afternoon was fairly nice, a few sprinkles.
Closed on Sunday but it looks like you get in a harness and jump on the tilted trampoline and into the air sideways. Looks like fun.
Correction: Wynette pointed out that they probably just tipped the trampolines up to store them. I think she is right, my assumption was not correct. But you still bounce on the trampolines in a harness. And I still like my idea, a new way to jump on trampolines. I might patent it.