The river itself was beautiful, with people kayaking and boats sailing along. Before too long we came upon the Torre del Oro...a huge tower on the edge of the river. It was crazy to actually see it in person, because I had taught my 3rd, 4th and 5th graders all about the sights of Sevilla the previous year! Don't ask me about the history, because I can no longer remember...and the Tower itself is a museum, but Rachel and I decided to save our 3 euros for something else. But I'll be sure to go back!
About this time, my camera died. I know, I know. "Olivia! How could you go without a fully charged camera???" These things were going through my head as well, trust me. But, thank goodness for my handy dandy iPhone! What would I do without it? We continued to mosey along and finally made it to the food festival...and it was AWESOME. It was hard to choose just which countries we wanted to eat from, but we finally decided to share some from South Africa (a zebra sandwich) and Peru (aji de gallina) and then I got Mexican and Rachel got Indian. I had been craving Mexican for a while, because the Spanish do NOT like spicy things! Everything was delicious, of course.
(Costillas OBAMA = Obama ribs...ha!! Obviously the American booth)
Once we had gotten our fill and had done a little shopping at the various puestos (booths where they sell all sorts of things) we walked about 100 yards over to la Plaza España, which neither of us even knew existed. I don't know what it was used for in the past, but I can tell you that it was BEAUTIFUL. Needless to say I took about a hundred pictures here alone.
We tore ourselves away from la Plaza España and continued on in a circular route back to the river. On the way we went through lovely gardens and tiny winding streets, full of hidden treasures I might add, and ended up at the famous Catedral de Sevilla--the Seville Cathedral, which is the largest Gothic cathedral and the third largest church in the world. It was quite impressive...we got there right as a wedding was ending, so we saw un montón of people dressed to impress, which also meant that the cathedral was empty of tourists! We popped right in, took a look around, and then left again (you could only go so far into the church).
By this time, we were getting tired so we decided to walk back to the bus station. On the way, we happened to come across some sort of processional going on (no idea what) where people were carrying a big throne and a boys' choir was singing! We also passed a few flamenco street performers, which was pretty amazing.
We finally arrived back to the bus station, and after waiting about an hour for the last bus on a bench by the river (we were really tired...), we journeyed back to Huelva. It had been raining all day in Huelva, but not only did it not rain in Sevilla, the weather was PERFECT because of the cloud cover. It turned out to be a perfect day trip, and we definitely want to go back!
