Seville, Spain

Seville (Seh vee ah) is a beautiful city with a lot going on. We were there four nights, in a hotel, just a few blocks from the city square, which was huge.

We knew we had a fair amount of travel for this part of our trip so we rented a car. This time it was a little Mercedes and boy, was it fun. It was small and had some fun power under the hood. We were shocked at the cost. Rental cost for one day was 25 Euros, which is the same for one Uber ride. We were glad we had the car. But while in town, we walked everywhere, a lot! But walking could be dangerous….

… do you see this green lane? It's the bike, electric scooter, runner, roller skater lane and you don't walk in it. We watched a pedestrian crossing the lane somewhat slowly (reading her phone) and an electric scooter came screaching to a halt, sliding sideways so he didn't hit her. It was quite the spectical. And they are on every street, even the single lane streets.

To add an interesting side note, even the delivery trucks have an electric scooter. They park their trucks on the street, flashers on, load their boxes on the scooter and off they go. Very efficient and the delivery truck doesn't block the side streets.

Ok, let's move on to some fun. Our first event was to see a Flaminco Dance. This was so unique as the music and the beat, were all done with a guitar, voices, hand percussion, and clapping. The women were beautiful, the costumes were brilliant, extravagant, and the show was wildly entertaining. Check out a video in the Video Gallery.

Our second event was a trip out to the city of Jerez (her ez) for a much acclaimed Andalusian Horse Dance. This is an academy where they teach horse and riders how to dance and perform. They were absolutely beautiful and there are videos of them in the video gallery. All of the show was set to music so that made it even better, watching the horses keeping time with the music. We had perfect seats at the head of the arena, near the dignitary section. This was a highlight for sure.

Our second event was a trip out to the city of Jerez (her ez) for a much acclaimed Andalusian Horse Dance. This is an academy where they teach horse and riders how to dance and perform. They were absolutely beautiful and there are videos of them in the video gallery. All of the show was set to music so that made it even better, watching the horses keeping time with the music. We had perfect seats at the head of the arena, near the dignitary section. This was a highlight for sure.

With nothing else to do in Jerez following the horse show, we took off for the beach in Cadiz (Ca deez). It was only 45 minutes south of Jerez and we were ready for some warm sun beach time. The beach went on for miles, so we grabbed lunch, a palapa, took off our shoes, got our feet wet, and then took a nap. We didn't bring beach wear but that didn't stop us from relaxing.

The next day was a road trip into the mountains to see the “White Towns” and to visit the town of Ronda. This whole area has small little towns and villages where every building is white. We drove through a few of them and they were so quaint.

Ronda was built on the side of a deep gorge. The towns people of old didn't want to walk around the gorge, so they built a bridge to cross it. This picture is the narrow, steep gorge that had trails to hike. To coin a phrase, we didn't want to go down there if we had to come back up.

Here is the bridge and it was quite impressive. It's amazing to see what hands and hard labor can do. We do everything today with machines and it's just not the same when you see structures, built with rocks in the rocks.

On our way back, we took a detour so we could go through a mountain pass. The road was narrow so we had to be very careful around corners. We all wanted our lane out of the middle, even the tour buses. We found this beautiful town, literally nestled in the valley of these mountains.

As we had seen in other parts of the coutnry, every field is so well manicured. If you look closely at the bottom picture, you'll see red. They are red Poppy's and are everywhere along the roads. This flower is one of Keith's favorites so it was fun to see them. The middle picture is of the landscape along the way, and the top is the farmland outside of a small town. Everything was so beautiful, we just couldn't get enough of it. We were sad when we made it back to the freeway.

Last day was touring the Cathedral and the Royal Palace. This is the bell tower in the Cathedral and Keith hiked all the way to the top. It had to be quick because the tour continued on after 20 minutes. I decided I'd save my steps for something else.

Both of these places were rich in history and it took us three hours to get through both of them with a tour guide. There are so many beautiful places and stories, too many to share.

This is the crypt where Christopher Colombus was buried. Apparently, another location say they also have his body so the Spanish decided to do a DNA test with other remains from Colombus’ family that were authenticated. DNA proved it was he.

Last event of the day was a carriage ride through the town's park and around the palace grounds. It was a perfect close to a very long day. We know we made a lot of steps!

Next location, Barcelona, Spain!