Sevilla Sights

Today was a lazy day to sleep in, enjoy a cappuccino, walk around Sevilla, and try more food.

Plastered with vibrantly colored azulejos (tiles) and encircled by a 1/3-mile canal, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more remarkable city square than Sevilla's monumental Plaza de España.

We were pretty impressed with the Plaza de España.  It is a relaxing, open, photographic space - with the ambiance of Spain.

Built for the 1929 expo, the Plaza de España is the size of 5 football fields, and is decorated with benches, period style street lamps, and beautifully ornate bridges.

The plaza is lined with evocative tiled alcoves representing the 48 provinces of Spain

10 points to Jeremy for instantly recognizing it as Naboo from Star Wars 1 & 2

According to our guide Marina from yesterday, the Golden Tower along the river is where a couple of Christopher Columbus's voyages departed

Greg just loves when I take a million pictures

For lunch we tried a freiduria for fried fish. Umm, yum, for all the fish eaters of the family.

People in Spain like to say they "live in the streets" in reference to their tendency to spend a lot of time outside of the home. It's nice having a variety of things to do and feeling like you have all the time to do it. In the afternoon we strolled the streets, passing continuous cafés, bars, and promenades.

A popular sight in Sevilla is the Metropol Parasol. Built in 2011, it is the world's largest wooden structure and dominates the landscape around the city center. The entrance fee of 3 euros includes a free drink at street level or a discounted drink from the top.

Sevilla's Metropol Parasol is popularly known as the Mushroom

View from the top of the Metropol Parasol

After dinner at a popular Moroccan restaurant, Jeremy didn't want to leave Sevilla without tasting its must-try food: oxtail (cola de toro).  The bars around Sevilla's historic bullring are the best places to try this traditional dish; we chose Bar Baratillo. It seemed fitting to try oxtail next to the bullring in a bar surrounded by walls plastered with bullfighting paraphernalia and mounted bull's heads.

We decided oxtail tastes like pot roast in a very flavorful sauce

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