Wednesday, May 24th 2023.
Seville – Day 2 of 2.
Today began with a relaxing morning and a bit of a sleep in as we planned the next few days of our bike trip. We backwards engineered our distances towards our destination of Malaga from Seville based on hills, distance between towns and a little bit of attention to the weather patterns starting to develop.
We’ll be leaving Seville early on Thursday, May 25th and pedalling @70 Km through to Moron de la Frontera for one night, two nights in Setenil, Andales for one, Alora for one, and finally ending in Malaga to drop off the rental bikes before 5:00 pm and to take a train that evening to meet our friends Carla and Roger in Grenada. We plan on staying there for a couple of days with the and then we’re all off to Rhonda for a few more, and then back to Malaga for our remaining time here in Spain.
Today however, is about visiting an enormous Catholic Church called the Seville Cathedral. The plaque at the front door says that clerics at the time said something along the lines of “Let’s build a church so beautiful and large that anyone who sees it will think we were mad”. After seeing it, I can assure you they were mad.
This Wikipedia article has more pictures and information to peruse if you’re interested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Cathedral
Seville Cathedral was built to demonstrate the city’s wealth, as it had become a major trading center in the years after the Reconquista in 1248. In July 1401, city leaders decided to build a new cathedral to replace the grand mosque that served as the cathedral until then. I think they might have gone a little over budget on this project.
Wandering through the narrow Jewish alleyways we came upon several parks and what is today trendy restaurants and cafes. Back in the day, Jews were forced into these confined areas to live and eventually rounded up and killed or forced to leave Seville. What we now see as a great place to visit and enjoy the moment with its ornate pillars, curvy narrow passageways and decorative doorways, has had a tumultuous history.
Tomorrow morning we leave Seville to bike south east to Moron de la Frontera. seville is a population of 701000 people and the trail system throughout the city is vast but well organized. We’ll ask Siri and the Goog to map our way out of here and hope for the best. We’ve been successful so far trusting the tech 🤞🏽