One thing that never ceases to amaze me when visiting Mediterranean countries is the odd opening hours kept by the shops here. To be honest I still haven’t worked out exactly when, or in some cases, even if they DO open. There is, of course, the loooooonnnnnng siesta that is taken from about 11 AM to 5 PM but not many seem to be open that early in the morning. Nor do they seem to be open that late in the evening to compensate for the lack of being open any time in the afternoon. How do the places make any money?
The shops here also seem to be very individualistic unlike the incessant chain stores that are to be found in the UK. A small haberdashers, a butchers, bag shop etc. That’s not to say that there aren’t chain stores here, including the ubiquitous Costa, but it is mainly small stores that never seem to open.
By this stage we had pretty much “done” all that we wanted to do in Seville with the exception of going into the cathedral. So we went over at opening time (11 AM, it seems the Catholic Church isn’t keen on early starts either) to get a head start but there was already a sizeable queue there. After dithering a bit and having a coffee we finally joined the queue and eventually got inside.
As I hinted at yesterday I am not a huge fan of the over-blown style of Catholic churches and the Seville cathedral very much fitted into this category. The adjoining tower, however, was interesting and would have been perfect were it not for the rude tourists that we had to share it with. They all seemed to be from the same country which I won’t name lest I slight the wrong one but they weren’t a great advert for whichever country it was.
The afternoon was spent pottering before taking an open top bus ride around the city. While the weather has been very pleasant for a January it was probably still a bit too chilly for an open top bus. We did, however, get to see parts of the city we had not previously explored. This included the areas built for Expo ’92 and the cantilevered Alamillo Bridge. Like every country the highlights were bigged up as the biggest, best, first etc. but there was a bout of honesty when describing the bridge. There was, it seems, supposed to be a twin bridge but due to “economic difficulties” it was never built. The architect was said to be “extremely disappointed”!
So that’s Seville done. I can imagine coming back here again and revisiting the Alkazar and other sights. It was also very pleasant to get some vitamin D so early in the year. It’s going to be a struggle returning to the UK where it is currently snowing.