April 16-17
When planning out this road trip, we had originally planned on heading to Portugal first from Barcelona. But somehow we found out that Seville had a week long flamenco festival called Feria de Abril. Yes!! So we adjusted our trip to be in Southern Spain to coincide with the festival. On arrival into the city, I was incredibly excited by the horse drawn carriages heading down the highways.
Michael was less enthused as he attempted to drive while I was reaching over him to get pictures.
Almost immediately we saw our first woman in a flamenco dress. I was super excited but more excited when I realized in just a few minutes that they were EVERYWHERE.
There were a few main components of the festival. One is “Hell Street” which is the carnival built right next to the festival grounds that looks similar to a huge parish picnic that you’d see in St. Louis, which I’m now learning did not happen at parishes where Michael grew up. This has led to a great discussion on parish picnics and county fairs (which I’ve never been to). This was not like a county fair – perhaps similar to the carnival ride section of the Monroe county fair per Michael, but there was no livestock or art being judged that we saw or politicians campaigning.
Another component of the festival is the carriage parade. These carriages were traditionally used to show economic status and often competed with each other in garments and decorations to be the most beautiful. Apparently this happens every day of the week long festival.
My favorite part of the parade was this little girl riding side saddle in a traditionally male outfit complete with the cordobés hat. Typically, the women wear a flower and a comb on top of their heads as you’ll see in other pictures. Tell me she’s not awesome.
The next component is bull fighting. We saw the bull fighting arena from an aerial view the cathedral, but otherwise did not see any bull fighting in this trip. The tickets to see the bull fights sell out months in advance. We’re pretty sure it’s the stadium about halfway into the distance, center, in this picture.
The final component is the night time celebrations. There is drinking and dancing until 3am when the lights are turned off. Most of you know that Michael and I don’t stay out until 3am, but we did make it past midnight the second night. The interesting thing about the fair is that despite the fact that everyone is out in the street partying, it is very much for locals. One reason for that is the dress. Most of the local women wore traditional flamenco dresses or very sleek pantsuits. The men wore very well tailored expensive suits. Apparently few men wear the traditional clothing which consists of tight pants, high boots and the same wide brim hat the girl above is wearing. I’m not sure when they switched to suits, but in general, I like the decision as the men looked sharp and was a nice complement to the beautiful dresses the women wore.
Although I wore my nicest dress and Michael work navy pants and a collared shirt the first night, we were clearly outsiders. The tents are reserved by families, so you cannot enter a tent without an invitation. That meant we were not going into any tents. There were apparently a few public tents that would serve alcohol to anyone, but we never saw these tents. It wasn’t a big deal, being the classiest of classies, Michael and I brought two small water bottles filled with French wine along with us the first night. We knew there was drinking in the street, so there wasn’t a concern about getting in trouble for it. There was one moment where Michael was taking a drink out of the bottle when a very fancy woman and her very fancy 10 or so year old son dropped their jaws with shock and embarrassment that they happened to be standing so close to a man of such horrible character and breeding. But other than that, most of the crowd completely ignored us.
I did ask a few women if I could take their picture. It’s a little creepy, but more so if I just take their picture without asking, don’t you think? Everyone I asked seemed legitimately shocked that I asked. I just checked my Spanish on the google machine to make sure I was using the right words… I was close enough. “Puedo tomar tu foto” when it apparently should have been “Puedo tomar su foto”… my Spanish scholars can chime in. For the most part they just couldn’t believe I wanted their photo and almost all of them laughed and then pulled someone else into the photo with them – other girlfriends or a date. I was surprised at how almost shy or embarrassed they acted while wearing such bold and confident clothing.
There was some dancing in the street and some dancing in tents that we watched. Many of the tents had adult women dancing inside with partners while younger girls danced in their streets with their friends, practicing for when they get invited to dance with the adults.
Also, I liked this group of girls which included one girl dancing in the four without a flamenco dress on.
Also, the lights!!
Besides the festival, we also spent some time walking around the city. We got a run in and took a selfie on a bridge that our Airbnb host told us we HAD TO TAKE A SELFIE on. She told us that if we didn’t get the selfie, then we cannot say we really experienced Seville. We’re not totally sure why the selfie bridge was so important, but we did it, because heaven forbid we screw up an entire visit on something as easy as a bridge selfie after our run:
Also, we went on a tour of the Cathedral de Santa Maria de la Sede aka the Seville Cathedral, which is UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here’s what we learned:
The Seville Cathedral became the largest cathedral in the world in the 16th century, overtaking Hagia Sophia, another cathedral that Michael and I have visited in Istanbul and love. There are now two churches that are larger: Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida (which probably also holds the record for longest church name) and St. Peter’s Basilica. But since both of those churches are not the seats of bishops, Seville Cathedral is still the largest cathedral in the world per Wikipedia. Now I had to research a bit further, because I thought St. Peter’s was the seat of a super important bishop. But Wikipedia is telling me that the seat of the Pope is actually the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which I probably should have known from my visit to St. Peter’s Basilica a few years ago. When clicking on that link to make sure I was understanding correctly I found out that the full name of that cathedral is The Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in the Lateran, which disproves my above thoughts on record holder for longest name.
Now as I’m writing, Michael told me that per the audio tour the two bigger churches were St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Paul’s in London. But when I looked into this a bit further, St. Paul’s is an Anglican cathedral, not Catholic. So my info here probably ok. Take it all, as usual, with a grain of salt.
Now back to the cathedral at hand. It was obviously beautiful and ornate.
An altar dedicated to St. Teresa:
A few things that were cool or strange:
1. This was one of the pieces of art in the building. It’s John the Baptist’s decapitated head. This is not a rendition of John that I think I’ve seen before. Later on there was a second decapitated John the Baptist head, but I didn’t think you needed to see two.
2. This is a huge crown that is brought out once a year on the feast of Mary’s Assumption and put on a statue of Mary that is paraded through the streets. It also has the second largest pearl in the world.
3. This is the main altar. It tells the entire story of Jesus starting in the bottom left hand corner and working its way all the way up to the top right. This redefines the word elaborate.
I know what you’re thinking:
4. A bunch of bishops are buried here but apparently Christopher Columbus is also buried here. He’s here in this tomb being held up by these four people (Angels? Soldiers? Knights? I have no clue).
Now here’s the issue with the Christopher Columbus burial. Three issues actually. First that few of us actually consider him a hero anymore as we’ve evolved in our thinking of what the “discovery” of the Americas means since it involved slaughtering a ton of people and taking land from people who already lived there. Plus CC wasn’t a very good person. That said, he’s a hero in Spain. Second point is that it is in dispute if his body is actually in this cathedral or if it is in the Dominican Republic. My third issue is that the audio guide got very confusing at this point and I go distracted and so I didn’t realize what it was. I saw the huge ornate tomb, but didn’t hear the story of who was buried there. Later Michael told me that was his favorite part of the cathedral and I had no idea what he was talking about. Oops.
5. We were able to climb to the top of the bell tower which was formerly the minaret of the Almohad mosque which was built in the late 1100’s. The mosque was “Christianized” after Ferdinand III’s conquest of Seville. This converted bell tower is now the city’s most well-known structural symbol and is 104.5 meters high.
6. The mosque’s sahn, which is the ablutions courtyard where the Muslims did their ritual cleansing before entering for prayer was also maintained and turned into the Patio de los Naranjos because of all the orange trees.
I would say that the selfie bridge is probably less of a “have to visit” than this cathedral.
We loved Seville and I would definitely recommend it. It is added to the list of places that we’ll need to come back to in the future… maybe with some fancier clothes.
