La ciudad

Its a cloudy day but warm enough for for a light sweater and fall jacket. The sidewalk of Puente San Telmo was full of people going for a Sunday stroll across the river. Oranges are overflowing off all the trees. Since they are used as landscaping trees along all the streets throughout the entire city, it´s a pretty awesome sight right now. Jasmine is in bloom. There are enormous trees of the sort I´ve only seen before in Nepal or Hong Kong; the kind with roots hanging down off the trunk, and thick, rubbery leaves. Noisy and exotic sounding birds seem to be hidden in them. The architecture in Sevilla is really stunning. I have not been a lot of places in the world but the only one that rivals it would be Katmandu for fascinating and ornate architecture. The trees, shrubs and vines are part of what makes Seville even more beautiful than Florence for me. The buildings are more colourful too.

It is so quiet here. Triana was especially so. I had to move from there today into a hostel steps from the cathedral, as they were closing the Triana one. But even here, in the very center of the city it is quiet. Partly due to there being a lot of pedestrian only areas, and all the rest are just too narrow to fit more than one or two cars down at a time. Anyways, people are busy just walking or sitting at restaurants.

Yesterday I sat in a square for a while after I did some errands. The scale here is human - small squares with benches and a central statue or whatever for focus, beside a church, perhaps, surrounded by small shops. Grandparents were crossing the square to the church, people were meeting in front of the pastry shop, and doing errands or buying a newspaper from the stand.

Sevilla image from the window to my left: horse (they are all stunning specimens) pulling a carriage with yellow wheels, with a backdrop of rich green leaves scattered through with oranges.
Both the hostels are casual but beautiful - and not quaint in that people still decorate like this - at least like the first place, which was smaller and originally a house. Couches the size of a bed, with cushions, under the skylight and on the rooftop, where I listened to Jose and Roberto before going to the peña last night. Hanging plants and more plants below, colourful patterned tiles. I just came down from the rooftop here, which has an unobstructed view of La Giralda. Sorry no pictures, as no USB port is readily apparent on the front of this computer and I do not feel like making the effort to look for it. I will not make the effort to do much else today; not even to go back to the peña for dinner and more music.

My challenge for the remainder of the day is trying to figure out how to eat something other than meat, cheese and bread. As I did last summer, I again found that the sweets are too sweet and will not tempt me since the amount of sugar literally makes me ill. I am not worried about going to live in Jerez, as it is pretty great here. In fact it seems difficult to worry here. It would be too much of an effort, and what for?