Doubleheader!

Four years ago, I took this photo in Granada.

It was featured on WhyGo.com today. Awesome, and thank you to the WhyGo folks!

sevilla: a week in images 7

iconic.

Calle Judería, Santa Cruz.

sevilla: a week in images 6

moroccan tea.
aire de sevilla arab baths and tea house, santa cruz

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trimmed shrubs, reales alcázares

True fact: some of these plants are not regular shrubs. Some of them have pomegranates hidden in them.

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with Ana, who was my host mom in Sevilla in 2007.

sevilla: a week in images 3

Best. Olives. Ever.
These little spheres of goodness come from Bar Manolo in Alfalfa.

sevilla: a week in images 2

rows and rows of tiny donkeys and camels at the Feria del Belen, or nativity scene expo/market.


I adore nativity scenes. Specifically, I enjoy the giant tacky plastic light-up ones that go in your front yard. The ones where Joseph is always wearing a snappy bright pink getup I'm pretty sure they didn't have back in old-time Galilee.

Spain, being a Catholic country, takes the nativity scene to another (tinier) level. First off, "nativity scene" does not really begin to describe the scope of the Spanish belen. In America, the nativity scene pretty much consists of the Holy Family, and if it's really involved might have a couple of barnyard animals, a little drummer boy and the three wise men.

Here, it's the entire town of Bethlehem in miniature. Townspeople, donkeys, chickens, houses, fruit shops. Tiny stews for Mary and Joseph to enjoy if they're hungry after all the labor and angelic visitations. Sheep, cats, trees, angels, fried eggs. You name it.

Obviously, the minute I settle down and live in one place for more than a year I will have two. One detailed, indoor Spanish-style diorama, and one giant glowing American-style one. Because you've gotta have that.

sevilla: a week in images 1

this is the incense I was telling you about. You smell it before you see it, and it's one of the best smells on the planet.

you can't eat the oranges, by the way.

I even got a little sunburn on my nose on Friday.

After a week of rain and at least three hail storms in Bilbao (we're enjoying a fourth right now, by the by), the clear, warm Andalucian sun was just too irresistible.

It was delightful. The incense on the streets (wipe away all memory of that gross, musty Nag Champa stuff - Sevillano incense is sweet and pleasant and somehow exotic and comforting all at once), the fried food, the crazy beautiful architecture, the old friends.

Delightful.

So I'm devoting a week to my old city. Instead of a long photo post, each day for the rest of the week will be a bit of "Sevilla: a week in images."

And the sunburn was gone by Sunday.

heading back to the south

No, not that south.

This south.



Possibly I have not mentioned it on this blog, but I studied abroad back in 2007 in Sevilla. Now my oldest stepsister is studying abroad in the same program in the same city and I'm off to visit her this weekend.

Sevilla, where oranges fall in the streets, cars run over them and the whole city smells like juice all winter, until the orange blossoms form in the spring (then the city just smells like heaven). Where bullfights and flamenco and machismo and all the things you think of when you think of Spain are a real part of life. Where you head to the old part of the city and are constantly clobbered over the head with how outlandishly beautiful everything is, as opposed to what I think of as the gentle lulling of the beauty here in the north.

I will go the baños árabes and eat 2000 Bar Manolo olives and relax in my favorite restaurants and maybe find Scottish Donald and see if he will do his "upper Michigan accent" for me again.