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We passed more baked dirt and cornfields on the way to Seville. Also, a massive amount of graffiti, far worse than anything in the U.S. It's on all the buildings and walls in every city, including statues and monuments (they skip the cathedrals, for some reason). Very little of it is the work of soccer hooligans, although it's not uncommon to see "AS Roma 2003 UEFA" scrawled in child-like fashion on train station walls. Most surprising was the wall in Venice: "2002 World Cup: Italy first-round, USA quarterfinals." We (Eric) have never seen Americans so bold as to stick pro-American soccer graffiti on a wall in Europe. We (Eric) were very proud, and we (Eric) think that just shows how far we've come as a people and a society.
Seville was hot and sticky. They had horses running around, like in New York, and the whole city smelled bad (related items). There were also flies everywhere and the sewer system was, at best, half effective. This, also, was not uncommon.
The cathedral, by area the largest in the world, was an interesting mixture of Moorish (Muslim) and Christian architecture, which gave it a sloppy, messy feeling despite its size. It claimed to have the bones of Christopher Columbus, who was glorified with four sepulchre-bearers and a huge tomb inside the door. It was funny to see, because Columbus is less and less popular in the U.S. for that whole looting and plundering the native peoples thing, but in Spain he's still a symbol of national pride and the most glorious time in the country's history. The cathedral also had a neat irrigation system cut into a courtyard out back, allowing trees to grow out of the cement in a maze of two-inch wide canals.
We also saw the Plaza de Espaņa, a huge red-brick plaza/structure that felt a lot like San Diego's Balboa Park, and seemed to have been built for no particular reason.
At night, we saw the tourist version of Flamenco in a guidebook-recommended club near the center of town. A flamenco dancer is like a coin placed on top of a washing machine. They move in stilted, wind-up toy steps and make tons of noise. It sounds like rain coming out of a rain gutter in a big storm. The dancers wore bright clothes and intense grimaces of concentration. Some of their faces looked truly awful, which is why you're supposed to look at their dresses or shoes. The back wall was painted with a farm scene, with roosters.
The club itself was small, and the stage was intimate. It had about enough room for three people singing and playing the guitar and one or two dancers, making things quite interesting when all the dancers came down at the end. The stage was bathed in red light that looked hot.
In Seville, we saw our first horrible traffic jam. Unfortunately, because it was hot and smelly as we were walking back from our day of sightseeing, we got into a taxi, which promptly sat like a sweltering greenhouse in a line of red brake lights. It cost us $5 and about 20 minutes for a ride that turned out to be one block. People walked passed us like we were standing still, mostly because we were.
This led to irritation at the heat, so we decided to stay close to our hotel for dinner. Our hotel was a little out of the way, so we had a choice between three restaurants bordering a plaza: a brewery, McDonald's and a Mexican restaurant called Cantina Mariachi. We chose, as the saying goes, poorly.
We both ordered enchiladas. Eric's was some form of chicken, with, we think, barbecue sauce. It bore very little resemblance to an enchilada, although it didn't really bear a resemblance to anything, so that's a bad comparison. Hari's looked more like Kraft macaroni and cheese, probably because it was bathed in an orange Kraft cheese sauce that was either the same or just like the sauce that comes with Kraft cheese products. We left half our food, and the waitress, who was quite nice, seemed to feel bad.
"You don't like it?" she asked.
We exchanged a look that said, "How do we lie our way out of this one?"
Our phrase book had several useful phrases on the subject, including, "Do any of your customers return?" Instead, we smiled meekly and said we were full. Hari might have said it was a bit too cheesy.
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Eric's Vignette in Verse About the Cantina Mariachi:
When in Seville the day is done
And tourists want to have some fun
And days of ham or Spanish lamb
Have them ready for a change;
Then is the time to go and see
The Cantina Mariachi
(The food it's true is never blue,
Although the cheese is orange).
The enchiladas come with chips
Canned guacamole is the dip
(I always say the service slips
When the food is actually good).
The cheese we had was orange and sad,
The barbecue was awfully bad
The sauce though really made us mad:
Most surely it was the worst.
And so to make our stomachs pleased
(And furthermore to leave that cheese!)
We headed out and found McD's
(Next time we'll just go their first).
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