Start the Project Already!

Hello again.  Short post today.

Well, I woke up and had my breakfast (cereal and jamon tostado) and we walked to the meeting place from a few days ago.  We met up with Rafaél again, and we headed off to Alcázar.

Alcázar is the castle/palace of Sevilla, where the King and Queen would stay if they came to Sevilla.  They'd stay on the second floor, where there are no tourists, but that gives some idea of the prettiness of this building.  However, the first floor is completely unfurnished, so you only have the architecture to marvel at.

A trend in Sevillian architecture is tiles.  As I might have mentioned with Plaza de España, there are very lovely tiles on almost all of the historical buildings.  There are several reasons for this.

One, it looks distinctively Sevillian.  Two, it is good for preserving the walls from the humidity.  In Alcázar, every wall has a different tile pattern.  I personally prefer the tiling of Plaza de España, but I will admit that these are wonderful, too.

 Another thing very distinctive about Alcázar is the carvings.  The old part of the building is Moorish, so the carvings follow that style.  There are many diamond patterns, leaves and foliage patterns (the Moors couldn't carve people or animals into decoration, but plants are fine) as well as scripture from the Qur'an.

There are arches, tiles, marble, and all sorts of things, but the main attraction is actually not the building.  It's in the gardens.

Fun Fact: Season Five of the TV show Game of Thrones (very popular in Spain, by the way) was filmed here in Sevilla because of Alcázar's gardens.
Anyway, we went outside and I was impressed.  I'm not much of a garden person, I know some people are, but these are pretty gardens.

There are fountains, a hedge maze (which was unfortunately closed for a few weeks) and patios for dining, sitting, and relaxing.  They are nice gardens.  There are also koi ponds and a really pretty raised walkway from where you can see most of the gardens.

From these gardens, you have access to one of the oldest parts of Sevilla.  The bathhouse!  This bathhouse is where the Moors would wash themselves, and I regrettably didn't take pictures.  But I do have some more flower pictures which I'll post.

From Alcázar, one of my roommates and I went to a heladoria, where I got some chocolate helado (gelato) and a cortado.  Chocolate and very very strong coffee taste amazing together, I have discovered :)

We went back to the home where we realized that we have an oral presentation in class tomorrow.  We've kinda been lacking in time, so we hurriedly began our project.  I am in charge of Spanish History and its economy, while she is doing modern (1975-present) Spanish government and its laws.   The other person in our trio went shopping and came home two hours later, and we stuck her in charge of the climate and geography of Spain.  Woo wee.

Anyway, señora came back and gave us pasta (it was pretty yummy) and we went to school early.  The third person in our group didn't bring her computer to Spain because she didn't think she'd need it for school, so we had to go to the computer lab in the school.

We worked on the project, and I learned some stuff about Spain and its history.  I'll fill you in later if the moment demands it, but basically first it was the Visigoths, then the Moors, then the Spanish Imperial age, then the Restoration after its territory in the Americas left, and then the Franco era.  Francisco Franco was a very very bad man.  Who looked a lot like Hitler.

We had class, where we continued what we started yesterday.  Then we worked some more in class on our presentation, and we came home.  Now I'm writing this a little early so I can get back to work.  Hoo boy.  Wish me luck!