TR from our house in Spain, flamingos, a weekend in Seville

[linne]

As some of you know, we have had a house in Spain for many years. We normally spend our 3 weeks summer vacation there, and sometimes we also visit the place in other times of the year.

Our house is just a small house and a very simple one, but we like to live in another way than we do at home. We haven’t any TV or radio and don’t read newspapers. We couldn’t live in it permanently, but for vacations we enjoy it.

I have made a TR from previous vacations, but every time is different, so here is a TR for 2011:

3 weeks in Spain 2011
We arrived about 10.00 in the morning, collected the rented car in the airport and did all the shopping on the way to the house (we have a shopping list, which we use from year to year). From the airport there is about an hours drive to our home.

Our house seen from the town. It’s the little white spot on the mountaintop to the left:

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It’s always very exiting to see, how the house looks after a year, and as usual we could see that it needed to be painted and repaired. But some neighbours had cleaned the house, and when we leave, we always pack all our things in big plastic boxes. So it was easy to unpack all the things and put them on the right place. And in the evening, when we were finished, we as usual had some cold meat together with herrings, beer and snaps on the terrace enjoying the silence and the view.


The next day we worked again. Hubby began to repair the walls inside. It had been a wet winter and spring, which meant that a lot of the paint was flaked of. So first he has to remove the loose paint and next he has to paint again. We do that every year, sometimes on all the walls sometimes a fewer depending of how much rain there has been. And because it’s not always the same paint we use, you can see different colours of white in the house ! I began to cut some of the grass and bushes, which disturbed the view, found some flowers for the vases etc.. And the next day again the house was looking much better.

Here some pics (I have shown pics of the house before, but presume that people have forgot them):

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The view though the door:

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Because of the rain in the spring our almond trees and olive tree looked very healthy, and we could still see some flowers around us, so we enjoyed the surroundings too.



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Unfortunately one more agave had begun to set flowers. Now we have 5 from different years.


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There was a lot of fruit in the almond an olive tree, and actually we brought some of the almonds with us home.

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After some days we had our first visit to the beach. We have had a swim in our neighbour’s pool, but we love the beach. The water was crystal clear, we had our favourite meal in our favourite beach restaurant and with our favourite drink. And after that - deep relaxing (sleep) on our big neat sheet listening to the waves. Cannot be much better!

But there were more work to do and honestly, it’s not enough for us to relax on the beach every day especially not for hubby. So even though I sometimes think, we work too much, we also enjoy staying in our house trying to make it look better or going around outside looking at the vegetation and perhaps work a little there.

A big problem during the years has been termites. But for perhaps 10 years we haven’t had any problems. But last year we could see that they have begun to eat the doorframe around a kitchen closet. We sprayed it with poison, but it hadn’t helped.

That’s the way a doorframe with termites looks:


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So hubby had to remove the whole doorframe and make something else with cement etc..
Much work but the result was great.

He also painted a part of the house outside. It was six years since we have painted it, and at some places it looked awful. Don’t know if the goats had been there. They like to scratch themselves against the wall.

Hubby working:

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The house after painting:

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And we enjoy the mountains, which we can see from our roof terrace:

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Meanwhile I did some “garden” work. Some of our agaves were grown very much, and you could risk being stung, when you passed them. We have bought a small saw, which I found funny to use. So I began to remove the leaves with the saw and make the agaves look like pineapples. I also cut some branches of the almond trees, and finally we thought that it was a real garden, we had.

Ready to go for dinner after admiring my work:

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Of course it was not work all the time. We had dinner together with neighbours, visited Danish friends, went out for ourselves, one day we went to Malaga for shopping. I want new mattresses from Ikea, and hubby spent a lot of time in, what for him is like ToysR Us for children, a big store with tools. Most of his tools were stolen last year, and he hadn’t bought all he needed yet.

Not easy to transport 2 thick mattresses:

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We were of course also on the beach again, but some days the waves were so high that I didn’t dare to go out in the sea. One day the wind was so strong that our sunshade was disappeared, when we returned from lunch. Another couple told us that it suddenly flew about 5 m out in the sea. Luckily our neat sheet was still there, we had stones placed in each corner. You can easily buy a new sunshade in Spain, but not a new neat sheet.

One evening we were together with 4 other couples on a nice restaurant with a good view.


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And I remembered to take pictures of some of the courses.

Appetizers:

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the roasted eggplants were really good:

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salmon and shrimps with a pepper sauce:

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duck breast:

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and hubby had bull tail, which was a speciality on this restaurant, very tasty he said:

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But the most interesting this year was perhaps our weekend trip to Seville. We were in Seville in 1992 only to see the world exhibition. We liked to go there again, but wouldn’t go in the summertime knowing it can be very hot there. But for a couple of days it hadn’t been so hot in Torrox, we even have had some rain, so we decided to visit Seville this year. The reason was also that we had read that the flamingos had returned to “La laguna de Fuente de Piedra”, which is a lake, where you can see the second largest population of flamingos in Europe. We had been there before, but at that time the lake was dried up, and the flamingos couldn’t live there. But caused to the heavy rain in Spain the latest two years, the lake and the flamingos were there again. And the place was on the way to Seville.

So Saturday morning we started our trip. It’s mostly superhighway to Seville, and we passed a lot of very big areas with olive trees and other big areas with sunflowers, until we reached our first destination “ La laguna de Fuente de Piedra”. A very peaceful place, not many people there and different routs around the lake, which was marked out. We didn’t go very far, only enjoyed the birds and the landscape.


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As you can see, we could come very close to the flamingos:

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We don’t know why, but on some of the plants there were a lot of small snails. Looked funny.

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It was beginning to be warmer, and when we reached Seville, it was like STJ in July. Not only hot, but very, very hot (up to 45 gr. celcius). We had a list with hotels in Seville and had chosen one, which sound good, cheap and in the centre of the town. We tried to find the hotel, but our GPS couldn’t find out that it was forbidden to drive into many of the narrow streets. As told, it was very hot, and we gave up and took the nearest hotel even though, it should be much more expensive according to the list. But it showed up that it was cheap. We only should pay 50 Euro for a nice double room and 14 Euro for parking in the cellar. Nice hotel and not too far from the interesting places. But now we were hungry and thirsty, so we went out to have a lunch- nothing special- and afterwards we went down to see the famous cathedral, which is the third largest Christian church in the world- next to St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London- and Alcazar, the royal palace. On our way we passed many of the narrow and charming roads in Seville.


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It was late afternoon now, so it showed up that it was too late to visit the cathedral and the palace. In stead we went down to the river to find the tour bus, we had bought tickets for on the hotel. Here we passed the famous Torre del Oro:

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“The Torre del Oro (Spanish: "Gold Tower") is a dodecagonal military watchtower in Seville, southern Spain, built by the Berbers during the Almohad dynasty in order to control access to Seville via the Guadalquivir river.
Constructed in the first third of the 13th century, the tower served as a prison during the Middle Ages and as a secure enclosure for the protection of precious metals periodically brought by the fleet of the Indies, another possible origin for the tower's name.
The tower is divided into three levels, with the third and uppermost being circular in shape and added in 1760. This tower has a lesser-known half sister: the Torre de la Plata, an octagonal tower.”



The tour bus was like in NY, the bus drove around to the most interesting places in the city, and you could choose to take a stop in different places and take the next bus. We got a headset telling us in English what we saw. It was OK, but I would have preferred a guide. And it was so hot, so I will not say that I really enjoyed the tour. But it was a good way to see a big city and some nice buildings and churches

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Afterwards we had something to eat and most important something to drink and then went to Marie Luisa Park

“In 1929 Seville hosted the Ibero-American Exposition World's Fair, located in the celebrated Maria Luisa Park (Parque de Maria Luisa). It was designed by Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier.[2] The entire southern end of the city was redeveloped into an expanse of gardens and grand boulevards. The centre of it is Parque de Maria Luisa, a 'Moorish paradisical style' with a half mile of: tiled fountains, pavilions, walls, ponds, benches, and exhedras; lush plantings of palms, orange trees, Mediterranean pines, and stylized flower beds; and with vine hidden bowers. Numerous buildings were constructed in it for the exhibition.”

Seeing the park was perhaps the best experience this day. It was very beautiful and very interesting with different sorts of plants and trees, some of them old


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Plaza de Espana was very nice and interesting.

“The Plaza de España, designed by Aníbal González, was a principal building built on the Maria Luisa Park's edge to showcase Spain's industry and technology exhibits. González combined a mix of 1920s Art Deco and 'mock Mudejar', and Neo-Mudéjar styles. The Plaza de España complex is a huge half-circle with buildings continually running around the edge accessible over the moat by numerous beautiful bridges. In the centre is a large fountain. By the walls of the Plaza are many tiled alcoves, each representing a different province of Spain.[4]
The Plaza de España was used for location shooting some scenes in the films Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.”

Before we went to the building I had to rest a little and enjoyed to have some water near me, which gave a little coolness:

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Another nice place in the park was Plaza de America:


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It was still very hot late in the afternoon, we have walked a lot during the day, so after visiting the park I did not think, I was able to take one more step. So we looked after a taxi. But it wasn’t easy to find one. We walked and waited for perhaps half an hour, we were very thirsty and a little hungry, so when a taxi finally stopped, he came just at the right moment. He drove us to the jewish area- Santa Cruz- and it was a great place. A lot of restaurants and a lot of people. Unfortunately it was not so easy to find a table, and when we succeded and got contact with a waiter, we nearly screamed- BEER! A big one!

I had a sea food salad, and hubby had a roasted bread with anchovies. It was more expensive than in our beach restaurant and not so fresh and tasty. But the beer was good.


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The next morning the weather was better- a lower temperature-and we went to the Santa Cruz area again to have our breakfast. And again we enjoyed the cosy narrow streets:


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The next was to see the palace Alcazar.
“The Alcázar of Seville (Spanish "Reales Alcázares de Sevilla" or "Royal Alcazars of Seville") is a royal palace in Seville, Spain, originally a Moorish fort. The Almohades were the first to build a palace, which was called Al-Muwarak, on the site of the modern day Alcázar. The palace is one of the best remaining examples of mudéjar architecture. Subsequent monarchs have added their own additions to the Alcázar. The upper levels of the Alcázar are still used by the royal family as the official Seville residence”

The palace was so impressing. It was bigger and more beautiful, than we had expected. We could have used a whole day there just to go around and admire the buildings and the gardens, but we had only a couple of hours. It was also interesting to think of that Christopher Columbus’s third voyage started from Seville, and that he probably had walked around in the garden together with the queen Isabelle.


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The pics cannot show completely, how nice everything was.

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in the garden you could meat such a fellow here going around:

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After the palace it was time to see the cathedral. We have read that they were very strict about not having bare legs or arms in the church, so both days we have had spare clothes in a backpack with us. But we could have avoid to drag around with that. Even girls only wearing shorts and a tanktop were allowed to come in, which surprised us.

The cathedral was impressing too

“The cathedral was built to demonstrate Seville's wealth, as it had become a major trading center in the years after the Reconquista in 1248. In July 1401 it was decided to build a new temple, as the ancient Muslim mosque was in bad shape after a 1356 earthquake. According to the oral tradition of Seville, the decision of members of the chapter was: "Let a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad". According to the minutes of that day, the new church should be: "a work such as good, which like no other." Construction began in 1402; it continued until 1506. Church workers gave half their salaries to pay for architects, builders and other expenses.[3]

The interior has the longest nave in Spain. Its central nave rises to a height of 42 metres and is lavishly decorated, with a large quantity of gold evident. In the main body of the cathedral, only the great boxlike structure of the choir stands out, filling the central portion of the nave. It is also dominated by a vast Gothic retablo of carved scenes from the life of Christ. The altarpiece was the lifetime work of a single craftsman, Pierre Dancart.

The builders used some columns and elements from the mosque, and most famously the Giralda, a minaret converted into a bell tower. The Giralda is the city's most famous symbol. Its square base is 13.61 metres and a height of 105 metres. It was built as a minaret of the old mosque, although the bell tower and spire top, is Renaissance.”


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The tomb of Christopher Columbus: (somebody says that it isn’t him)
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Should be the biggest altarpiece in the world. Just gorgeus to see!

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Again we could have used more time. We were perhaps an hour there, but it was not enough to see everything. And we still missed to go up in the tower! And we were already tired again.

When hubby saw that there were 35 floors to the top, he gave up beforehand. But I took the camera in one pocket and a bottle of water in the other and decided just to reach some of the floors.

But it wasn’t so hard as expected, because there were no steps, it was only like a precipitous narrow street, and it was also windy. I took a pic on 10. floor, decided to try a little more, took a pic on 20. floor and finally I ended up on the last floor, where there was a fabulous view in all directions.


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As you perhaps can understand we found Seville worth seeing. We have been in Granada too, but we found Seville even better. But both places are really a sight.

The last day in our vacation we were on the beach again. Hubby had his favourite meal, sardines, and I had one of mine “filet lenguado” – sole. And of course we had a special salad and the best we can drink a warm day - cold red wine with La Cacera – a sort of Apollinaris.

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A very good ending of a fine vacation.
Linne

[Coden]

Thank you so much for the trip to Spain. I so enjoyed reading about your excursions and your stay at home there. And of course the lovely dishes you had.

[waterguy]

Thanks Linne
Looks like you had a great time. I have to make it to Spain one of these years

Tom

[Greenskeeper]

Thank you for sharing Linne! Looks like a wonderful trip.

[lark22]

Thanks for your trip report, Linne -- I love Sevilla! Such a pretty town. And the food photos made me hungry!

[SOonthebeach]

Great report! Several years ago we visited Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona. We were supposed to head south to Seville, but had to cut our trip short- we still need to get back! Looks beautiful. What a wonderful house you have there! Thanks for sharing.

[bevm]

Linne you have done so much work on your house in the last few years. (I remember earlier pictures) It's so lovely and cozy.
Thank you for the mini tour of Seville with the history. I love cathedrals. They are so peaceful and comforting to me. I now have another place to add to my bucket list.

[patr]

Thanks Linne for the lovely TR and great photos! Your house has a great view!

A funny note - a few years ago while touring Santo Domingo, the oldest city in the new world, we also saw Christopher Columbus' tomb, with the same disclaimer, "some dispute that his body is buried here".

[liamsaunt]

Thanks for the report, Linne! I always enjoy reading about your trips to Spain. John is in Barcelona right now, so it was nice for me to see some pictures of the country he is in.

[flip-flop]

I took a 10 day trip to Spain with some girlfriends in early June! Your pics of Sevilla took me right back there. Amazing buildings and food!!!

[PA Girl]

Thank you for taking the time to write about your time in Spain.

I really like the simplicity of your house, especially the open shelves in the kitchen. It must be so easy to keep it tidy.

Seville looks very beautiful.

[Tracy in WI]

Thank you Linne - That was really a wonderful report! Your house is just so quaint and the views are spectacular. Although it sounds like the work there keeps you busy, it must be a wonderful escape for you.

Seville looks beautiful - the churches and small roadways are amazing.

You took a lot of time to share that with us and I appreciate it!

[shoemak38]

And in the evening, when we were finished, we as usual had some cold meat together with herrings, beer and snaps on the terrace enjoying the silence and the view.

thanks for all the photo's love your house

[LysaC]

Thanks Linne! I really like your reports and seeing your vacation home evolve over time. What a splendid location and view from your hilltop spot!

[Maggy]

Thank you Linne for the great report and pictures. Love the view from your house and the house itself. So cosy and perfect for hygge.

I'm in Mallorca right now and it was a very long time since I was in Spain and now I wonder why . It's a lovely country, beautiful, nice people and good food.