Friday we left Seville for Madrid for a 3-day weekend.  Seville is a nice, relatively small city. Madrid on the other hand is very large and magnificent. Magnifico as they say. With a population of 3.4 million and a metropolitan area population of 6.7 million it is the second biggest city in the European Union […]

We spent this weekend in Seville. Among other things we made a quick trip to a neighborhood in Seville: Macarena. Because of the heat, we restricted our wandering around to the morning. To put it in perspective: at this moment, 11:00 AM local time, it is already 92° Fahrenheit. By this afternoon the temperature is […]

Since we are living in Spain for a while we went to a Bullfight. When in Rome… It was fascinating, not least because you get to see the whole spectacle, which is not exactly what you’d expect. There is a great deal of pageantry associated with bullfights. (I am sure the bulls are unimpressed by […]

Granada is an endlessly fascinating city. While we were there, in addition to visiting the Alhambra, we visited the Souk, an Arabic shopping area with silks and spices and various other goods. We saw a busker playing his violin outside on the street near the Cathedral of Granada. And last, but not least, we stayed […]

Last week we took some time to look at the architecture in Seville (and there is something for everyone when it comes to architecture here!).   One of our stops was the Metropol Parasol, popularly known as “Las Setas” (the “Mushrooms”), an enormous wooden (birch) structure opened 10 years ago.  Las Setas consists of six […]

We spent the weekend in Granada, Spain, visiting the City and its jewel, the Alhambra.  On the drive between Seville and Granada, we passed mile after mile of olive groves, sunflower fields, and beautiful flowers, while seeing the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance.   As far as the eye could see, every hill […]

We got a chance to visit Italica, the first Roman city built outside of Italy. It was founded in 206 BC by Publius Cornelius Scipio during the Second Carthaginian War. It is about a 30 minute drive outside of Seville.  Eventually Italica became a resort city of sorts where the Roman upper crust maintained estates. […]

We have been living in Spain for about 2 weeks now, and we have developed our sea legs, so to speak. It’s been a busy few days. On Thursday we had a culture presentation on Spanish foods; on Friday it was Spanish cooking lessons (see the video below). Later on Friday we went to a […]

The weekend arrived, marking the start of our second week in Spain. Since we didn’t have any classes, we took a train ride of about an hour out to Jerez de La Frontera.  Jerez is the famous for its Sherry as well as its flamenco dancers and musicians. The flamenco shows tend to start late—some […]