6 September 2019

Seville is beautiful! Wide main streets, big plazas, less graffiti, and beautiful buildings. My favourite so far??

We woke, having been watched over by our bull (?) skull, feeling refreshed and ready to face the heat!

The queue to get into the”must see” Cathedral was horrific. It was hot and I am impatient!!

There was another shorter queue forming across the way. We stood in it in the hope it was for something amazing. IT WAS!!

Grahame has actually done his research and being a Game of Thrones tragic, he knew exactly why we were in this queue.

We jagged an English speaking tour guide, jumped the queue and found ourselves in “the Kingdom of Dorne”. The Real Alcazar.

Breathtakingly, beautifully stunning!! Our guide made sure we knew this was “much better” than the Alhambra in Grenada and I think she may have been correct.

Grahame was in his element, humming the GOT theme as he wandered through the gardens and beautiful buildings.

Because it was stinking hot, we decided it was a good idea to walk back to Plaza de España, rather than sit in a cool shady spot sipping Sangria.

The sufferfest was worth it to see the Plaza in the daylight. Standing on a pile of tiles, with no shade and the sun beating down was insane!

I felt so sorry for the poor horses dragging the tourists around in the heat of the day.

We returned to the Cathedral precinct and walked straight in!! No queue!! It’s touted as the largest gothic cathedral in the world!

It was massively massive. And jam packed full of relics, icons, paintings, and gold and silver ornaments worth a small fortune. (Pity about the beggars sitting at the entry and exit asking for a few euro!)

Time to head towards Portugal.

Grahame closed his eyes, stuck his finger on the map, and an hour later we were in Aracena!

The countryside has changed and the back roads we travelled were more tree lined and the scenery more picturesque.

Now Aracena has a ruined castle on top of a steep hill. Of course it does! Fortunately it was closed so the climb was cut short.

But more importantly it has underground caves and …. a museum of ham!!!!! Guess what we are doing tomorrow?

We jagged yet another wonderful Airbnb hosted by Annette, a Dane, and her Scottish parter Stuart. Their Casa Annette was amazing!! Full of arty crafty stuff, crochet rugs and blankets in the brightest of colours and plants and fruit trees. And very rustic. A real gem.

We walked to the village pub where our hosts and half the village joined us for one or two cervezas!

Later we wandered down to the only open restaurant where we planned to have dinner. The barman rang his wife, who appeared shortly after so he could cook our piece of meat or jamon while the wife served the bar patrons. (The other half of the village)

They showed us the cut of meat before cooking. It was massive!! Could have fed an army. We settled for one half the size. And it was absolutely glorious!

Entrée was ham (prosciutto) , main course was pork and I’m sure if we had ordered dessert if would have been made of bacon.

With a full belly, we found our way home, fell into bed and slept deeply.