Saturday, January 30, 2016
Today we explored Seville. Our first stop was the Archivo de Indies which Lonely Planet describes as
“The main archive on Spain’s American empire, with 80 million pages of documents dating from 1492 through to the end of the empire in the 19th century”
They had a fascinating exhibit about the Battle of Santa Maria and the sinking of the treasure ship Mercedes in 1804. An American company salvaged 17 tons of gold and silver from the Mercedes. They were sued by the Spanish government and the gold was returned to Spain.
There was a long line to buy tickets to go in the cathedral but the tourist office told us yesterday that you can buy tickets at the church at Plaza Salvador with no line and get into both places so we visited the Parroquia del Divino Salvador.
Next we went to the Metropol Parasol a giant recently built structure that is supposed to be the largest wooden building in the world. They have a long viewpoint walkway on top of the structure with great views of Seville in all directions.
Next a quick book store stop.
Then on to the Cathedral. It is enormous! We saw Columbus’ tomb.
Then we climbed up the former minaret, now a bell tower. To get to the top a ramp winds around the inside of the tower. A ramp was used so that guards could ride horses to the top
When we took a break in our hotel room Property Brothers dubbed in Spanish was on TV!
For dinner we had tapas with sangria. My favorite was the grilled peppers.
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