Spanish Pipedream: Sevilla

Tuesday morning in Sevilla. Got on the bus at 10, met our tour guides, and stopped here at the Plaza de España. From the street, you'd have no idea that it looks like this on the inside. But you walk in, and it's basically a giant semi-circle with one of these towers on each end.

All along the middle are these squares representing the different cities in Spain.

There are many things to know about this plaza. Unfortunately, I really only remember one fact. It is the place where a scene in Episode One of Star Wars was filmed. Not sure when exactly, as I barely remember the movie. But it was some scene Natalie Portman was in. So, Natalie Portman was walking around these very halls. Brush with fame number one.

I also don't remember the facts about the plaza because we literally walked in and the tour guide started explaining things, but all we wanted to do was take pictures. Then, when she finished talking, we only had about 10 minutes to explore the whole thing! Absolutely not enough time.

There were a bunch of these little bridges crossing some water and leading into the center of the plaza.

Girl pic on the bridge.

Madrid's block. . . they were in alphabetic order. So we had to haul all the way to the end (in our 10 minute block) to find Valencia.

Freddie found a way up.

Found Valencia. Snapped some pictures. And literally had to run back to meet our group. Not even sure what the picture is under Valencia.

But Melissa and I also had to climb up to the second level like Freddie did. Then we kept running after the group.

Next in Sevilla, was the Palace. This palace is open to the public unless the royal family is in town.

The gardens were just as important for a Spanish palace as the actual building.

A royal wedding took place here...at some point. I really need to take notes as we go through these places. But then I'd be that dork taking notes in the corner and I wouldn't look as much at all the cool stuff we're seeing.

Ignacio explaining things

Artsy shots. Can't take credit for them though. Someone else posted them on facebook and I stole.

Palace ducks

I believe it was in this room that the king and queen made the deal with Christopher Columbus concerning his voyages to the new world.

The last stop of the day was the Cathedral in Sevilla. It is the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world, so taking pictures of the inside just seemed pointless. There's no way to show it's size adequately.

Christopher Columbus's grave... or is it?
Apparently, there is some dispute as to where Columbus's remains are. They could be in Cuba or in Santo Domingo or in Seville. Our tour guide says they did an official DNA test on the remains in Seville and proved that Columbus is in fact resting in peace in Spain. Santo Domingo has not done any such test.

Also, our guide said that no one really knows much about Columbus. All the paintings of him are just a best guess at what he looked like. No one knows what the man looked like! I would understand if no one knew what Christopher Columbus's half-brother's niece looked like but Christopher Columbus himself? He did some pretty big things in the world. You'd think there would be at least one accurate representation of the guy's face.