sevilla: land of the torero and callecitos

late monday night i returned from a weekend excursion to Sevilla. this city is quintessentially southern Spain. i shall explain...

• naranjos: orange trees! there are so many. everywhere. yet the fruit is a lemon-orange hybrid, so not so fun to eat.
• flamenco: a bunch of amigos and i went to this free flamenco show in this bar (there were a lot of tourists...but it seemed more authentic than the first show i saw). the vocalist looked like a sexy version of the guy from reno 911 (more stubble). the dancer was an intimidatingly tall amazon woman with a piercing stare. she had such a commanding Hush noise when she was trying to silence some disrespectful bar-goers (who, i am ashamed to say, were american ... and german).
• mudejar architecture: in the catedral and palacio de alcazar many of the seemingly moorish architecture and ornamentation (magnificent tiled walls and arches and such) was actually mudejar, or built under christian rule to look moorish
• the siesta counts here, more than in Madrid. everything shuts down, save for the chain restaurants and bars and tourist traps. there is an unmistakable lull from 2 until around 5 pm. a few old people linger in the parks.
• toreros: we went to the plaza de toros, which was grand and yellow and red and white. though eerily empty. while i am morally not going to see a bullfight, culturally it would be fascinating i think. at least to see the blingin´ outfits. in abril, or april, sevilla has a feria where its all about bullfighting and flamenco.
• hot and romantic: it was warm. and we had a lovely picnic by El Río Guadalquivir, which was a muddy sea green color and was teeming with fish and thrown out roses from el día de san valentín. also, the boys be mackin´.

We met up with Sasha, who is studying there, and she was our guide for the weekend. The city has a rent a bici(cleta) program, and there are bici racks EVERYWHERE. you can rent one for a week for 5 euros and can return it to any of the racks around the city. liveable streets, what what? although...the streets were pretty narrow and windy to bici on.

Friday night, we came across this procession of a bunch of red-uniformed youth who were playing a very melancolic piece on trumpets and drums. They wore these great red hats with tufts of white feathers, á la military guards or the Marx Bros. We followed them, without knowing where they would lead us. They ended at a church where it seemed there was some sort of late night mass or service. People were peeking out from their balconies above to see what was going on. It was quite fantastic and eery.

all in all, a marvelous weekend for the ages.