The Bathroom Dwellers

I debated whether I should call this blog Sevilla the Beautiful or the Bathroom-Dwellers and found the second one more catchy. We are in Sevilla and staying in another "triple" this one far more spacious than the one in Granada but a single room nevertheless. So it is back to the bathroom for Uli and I in the evenings. Fortunately, it is a large bathroom so I could darg one easy-chair in and the extra plankets provided make for good cushioning in the bathtub. All in all, not a bad situtaion - at least as evenings spend in bathrooms are concerned.
Sevilla is beautiful and of a beauty much easier to see, feel and appreciate then the rough and hidden beauty of Granada. There are wides Avenidas and small little streets, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, let alone get by the SVU that is coming at them. (When did the Spainards start driving those ridicoulos vehicles and how the hell can they afford the gas for them given the prices at the pump - but more about that later).
The moorish influence is seen clearly and adds a lot to the flair. The city so far has shown us the right combination of well maintained and restored and not being restored so overzealously that it looks fake. All in all it seem to be more of a big city than Granada, which really had too much of a student flavor for my taste. People, especially the older ones, are well-dressed, often outright dressy by US standards just to sit in the cafe and have a cup and a little torta. Yesterday, when we arrived, we just walked around and go a bit of an idea of the city, like where the big iglesia, which really is a cathedral (please don´t ask me what the difference is, it probably has to do with size and importance) is located, etc. In fact, as I read last night in the bathtub the cathedral here is the world´s biggest Gothic cathedral, according to the newest measurements it is larger even than St. Peter´s in Rome and I am blanking on the name of the church in London right now. Inside, we visited it this morning, it is like many of the Gothic "mega-churches" - sort of empty. It´s hard to fill all that space in all three dimensions. Having said that, there is remarkable piece of art after remarkable piece of art in this churche from the exquisit wood-carvings behind the altar to the many, many oil paintings by well-known artists and many sculptures. But there are only so many (like one) oil paintings that you can look at while your child uses his new toy Swiss army knife and pretend it´s a canon and firing sort of randomly. Normally he sort of behaves in churches but this is huge and filled with tourists most of whom never seemed to never have heard the first thing about common courtesy and appropriate behavior in a church but talk loudly, take pictures with flash (although there are signs all over telling people it´s forbidden, etc.) which makes it hard to enforce the strict "no running, only speaking in whispers" rules that normally apply to church visits.
The only thing left from the mosque, that originally stood there, is the Giralda, now serving as the bell tower. We made it up, even I with my vertigo. The saving grace was the fact that the tower doesn´t have any stairs, which freak me out, especially when they are new and made of one of those metall meshy things one can look through and see the void below. This is all done with an incline, a surprisingly gentle one and so it's basically like hiking up a mountain. The view of the top was great. I could have done without the three different large groups of children all at an age where, I have to say , they probably just shouldn´t be taken on art-history outings because they don´t listen to what the teachers have to say anyway, yell on the top of their lungs pretty much constantly and bully their way up and down the Giralda that I had to use my elllbows to keep them from banging into me. Max did well. He who hardly ever eats but still is very active is a pretty mean and lean little "boy-machine" by now. He just flew up that tower, not breaking a sweat, hardly noticing it all.
Now he and Uli are taking a beauty sleep while I sit in the lobby racing the clock of the computer here to finish that blog before my time runs out. We´ll be here until tomorrow and then leave heading towards the coast near Cadiz. No idea where we´ll stay tomorrow, I just hope it has a spaceous bathroom, and on Saturday we'll meet up with Sabine and Paco in a little town near Cadiz - and I am blanking even on that name right now, too. I hope there will be more opportunties to use hotel computers else I'll have to write a mega-blog on Sunday night and post it Monday.
Okay, I have got enough time to mention one curious fact we learned about the Spaniards from Sabine (coming back the SUV thing, which really was a bit of hyperbole) - they seem to be much more like the Americans than say the Germans or Austrians. All of Spain and coastal Andalucia in particular are in the middle of a real estate melt-down very similar to the one we have in the US. I kind of naively assumed that things wouldn´t be so bad as - surely - the Spaniards didn't pull every last cent of equity out of their appreciating houses a few years ago to invest in new cars and plasma TVs and other stuff that losses 50% of its value to day you take it home from the store and the rest over the next 18 months. But - who would have thunk - they did just that. Not only that, they also bought houses way larger (or at least way more expensive) than they can afford way too early in their lives because renting seems to be considered not appropriate for the up and coming young. Big is better, also seems to have become the motto of the Spaniards, although big here is still nowhere near as big as big in the US (nobody has 3000 sqf homes here, which seems to be the minimum acceptable size for a family of three or four) but bigger than ever before. Go figure. No idea why the Spaniards take so happily to these ideas and misconcenptions (at least in my mind they are misconceptions). Anyway, just wanted to add this as it surprised and puzzeled me to some extent and I thought provided a bit of background info on Spain.
Now they started playing really shmaltz music here, the one that goes like "mi amor, mi vida, mi corazon" the whole time - I better get out of here.