A full day of sightseeing

Today was Day One Tourist Day! Most of the old cool stuff is to the south of our hotel so we just meandered through a lot of cobbled, narrow and cute streets until we hit some Big Touristy Areas, mainly the Real Alcazar. This is a gigantic palace full of a combination of Christian, Moorish, and English influences, with what seems like separate sections and a menagerie of gardens for each. It is holy crap huge, with ‘summer bedchambers’ and a mind-boggling array of tiled, carved, sculpted, etc decoration. It also has a dedicated mourning dove chorus, which was kind of cool. It was really hot today – our fault in part, as we didn’t leave the hotel until 10 or 11am, oops – but there was enough shade in the palace sections and from the trees in the gardens, and it was definitely gorgeous and worth it. A bad day to have forgot my sunglasses in the states but I’m learning how to squint. Surprisingly, we didn’t even get sunburn, thanks perhaps to my little carryon bottle of spf 15. Of course, things that associate with full-on summer – like sunblock, ice cream, vending machine coke and sunglasses – all are very expensive. The ice cream is our biggest weakness. At least we found some cheap 2L waters instead of the expensive 0.5L ones that are more readily available (woo supermarkets!)

The Alcazar took up about four or five hours and we missed the hours for the Cathedral, so we’ll hit that tomorrow along with all the little churches, admission of which is apparently free with a Big Cathedral ticket. Hopefully we’ll hit some more huge palace gardens and a few more restaurant recommendations as well!

We did successfully find El Patio San Eloy, which was recommended by Rob With The Twins, after a little afternoon snooze. I was a little nervous about ordering since I didn’t recognize a lot of the food terminology (or, at first, the way one orders). We got a Manchego sandwich, which was excellent, and went back for some salami kind of things (salchichón, caña de lomo – pork loin rolls) and another kind of sandwich which, unbeknown to us, had smelly cheese that was not as delicious. But we tried, and it was nice, and cheap! We walked around a while after that in search for the Carboneria but we failed to find it – oops – and headed back to the hotel for a quick rehydrate and map consultation. Somewhat predictably, Peter then fell asleep, so I tried my hand at laundry in a sink instead. The sinks here are a really nice size but I could not get the hang of using the little degradable sheets I’d bought at all. I gave up and used Peter’s soap bar instead, and that seemed to work a bit better, but I’m still not sure I’m getting the clothes very clean. The instructions I found were to get the stuff into a lather, which I found difficult, but they should be okay. We’ll see when they dry.

Other observations – I forgot how well everyone in Europe dresses. Jeez. I told Peter early in the day that I had to observe what the females were wearing to make sure I had packed the right stuff. Good thing I didn’t take out the extra skirt I put in, because I saw very few locals wearing shorts. Guys, yes, but for girls it was pants, capris or skirts. Rar. Good thing my sandals are comfortable, because sneakers and a skirt would probably be even worse than wearing shorts. Crap, fashion! Haha. Peter - he is indeed on this trip and exists in states that are separate from being asleep – has said that he needs to wear more “crazy pants” as a guy. I’m not sure that’s true but it is funny watching everyone.

Well by now Peter has been asleep for a while now so I will head in. Lots of stuff on the agenda tomorrow!