A curious thing today. Nobody seemed to want us!
We’d set out intendng to visit the beautiful Alcazar having failed to secure tickets online last night. That was an odd thing in itself. We had got quite a long way through the booking process when we were tripped up at the final hurdle. Despite selecting the English version of the Alcazar website there was one form on the final page that remained stubbornly in Spanish. It looked to be asking for our passport details but that couldn’t be right surely? A quick run through the form with Google Translate confirmed that, yes, it was asking for our passport details. Did this mean that we needed to take the document to gain entry? I never like carrying my passport around when it can be securly locked in the hotel safe. We abandoned that idea. The queue to get tickets was too long also so we give up for today.
Our next port of call was to be the Spain Square which sounds so much nicer in Spanish (Plaza de España). This was built for some exhibition and is a really rather grand affair but today the gates to it were locked and tightly shut. There were lots of tourists milling about and nobody seemed to know why it was shut and whether it would open again. We moved on and walked down towards the bull ring. Stopping off at a tourist information office we asked if he knew when it would be open. “It’s shut?” was his response and when we replied that it was he got up opened the shutters and looked out exclaiming “so it is”! Turns out that they were only trying to stop people going in to the adjacent park and that there was an entrance round the back of the square where you could still get access. Why nobody had thought to put up a sign to say so I do not know. Anyway, we walked back and this time did get access.
Christmas in Seville
The Christmas lights in Seville are some of the best I have ever seen. Thousands of tiny little led bulbs in multiple colours lit up the main shopping street and the squares at either end too. At one end was a high tech Christmas tree through which you could walk through the centre and see the lights from the inside. At the other end was a very grand affair which looked like a couple of crowns which, again, were covered in lights. These seemed to be displaying ads on them too which was slightly less Christmasy but I supposed they have to be paid for somehow.
There were also Christmas market stalls which included one set which seemed to have taken the words “Christmas market” literally as all they seemed to be selling was nativity dioramas. They were very nicely done, if you like that sort of thing, but once you have one set surely you don’t need any more? There were more stalls in a different area selling the more tradtional items you might expect to find in such places although it all seemed much more upmarket than the candles and flavours gins favoured here in the UK markets.
