July 23, 2009, mid-morning

On the train to Madrid. I'm listening to Spanish folk (the lyrics are about Pamplona, and the voices sound dry, guttural,  earnest). We've stopped briefly in Cordoba, and I really want to get off the train and spend a night here.

I can't even begin to describe how beautiful the countryside is. I've seen the dry, sandy hills covered with rows of olive trees that are common in Granada and Sevilla (and I'm guessing much of Andalucia?), cornfields that are a bright yellow-green and seem topped with a fine blanket of golden threads, lush low-rolling hills, arrays of solar panels (WHAT?), old castles on mountains, hawks spiralling above unfortunate dead things on the ground, naked rock with little quartz slivers exposed and shining merrily, dry plains encircled by small sharp mountains and filled with thin white sheep or dark brown cattle or little black pigs. I think I am starting to distinguish types of olive trees: some are wide and bushy, with large silverish leaves (these make me think of The Twelve Dancing Princesses), while others are more scraggly, with dark thin leaves.   

Yesterday, we rented a scooter to see a bit of Sevilla's countryside. We came upon a little village called Valencina, which with its small size, architecture, scrawling form, and farming economy reminds me of Valod. Instead of mango trees and sugar cane stalks, there are olive trees and sunflower stalks. The latter are particularly striking -- when dead and drying, their heads all droop in the same cardinal direction, and they take on that brown-burgundy color that is so pleasing against the pale yellow of the dirt here.

Near this village, there are the ruins of Italica, a Roman town from the early second century. We wandered through the circular, arched tunnels of an amphitheater and looked at restored mosaics -- one of which had a little lion motif. We stopped for a bit and sat under cypress trees, in which an owl hooted and whooped and cicadas droned on, as they have for centuries. Something about the way the red-black ants jump and run about bothered us (the length and speed of their jumps was actually kind of freaky ... they were like little Spiderman-ants). 

The ruins, particularly the amphitheater, were interesting, but they only made me want to revisit the great ruins of Athens, Rome, Alexandria, Giza, Luxor, Aswan, Chichen Itza. I like ruins because they are reminders of the fates of empires, so far at least. I think that architecture can tell the complete stories of empires and economies.

Sevilla is just overflowing with gorgeous (and numerous) palaces and civic buildings and cathedrals, which I think are indicative of the trade that occurred between Sevilla and the New World. There is even a square somewhere called the Plaza of the Americas. I stopped taking pictures of the buildings when I realized that the city has hundreds and hundreds of completely unique and stunning structures. (What beauty! But at what cost, for those in the New World?)

The buildings seem Classical (I think), with facades that are painted in striking colors: burnt red, orange, bright yellow. The detailing -- trim and Classical columns and arches -- are usually in white. However, there are a few characteristics that I think set apart these Spanish buildings from their European contemporaries: there are subtle Islamic influences, sometimes in the arches. Further, there are these striking navy markings in the white detailing, that I don't think I've seen elsewhere in Europe. I will post some pictures, because I'm having trouble describing the architecture.  

[insert pics here]   

At night, the splendor of Sevilla's architecture seems magnified, because the buildings and monuments are
lit up from below. In the last two nights, we have wandered along Sevilla's riverfront, passed the Orro tower, admired the pretty blue ceramic tiles of the little bridges in the Plaza de Espana, admired sculptures of Ferdinand and Isabella, walked around the city's largest cathedral and its gorgeous belltower (when I first saw it, I thought its arches looked a bit Islamic; it turns out it was originally the minaret built next to the Alcazar palace, and it was gutted and converted into a
belltower by the Catholics), explored the narrow streets and restaurants of the little old city Santa Cruz, and wandered through the Jardins de Alcazar, through which sometimes course the faint scent of jasmine and orange blossoms. 

No one here speaks English, so we are extremely idiotic American tourists. After dense and multicultural Barcelona, this town seems empty and a bit conservative; as we passed by elderly residents slowly making their way down streets, I felt the need to cover up with a cardigan, even though it was 38 Centigrade. Late at night, some young students do come out, and I did notice some Chinese and African immigrants. As in Rome, I think the Africans have a really rough life here; we saw some peddling packages of bar soap at traffic intersections.

Still, though, Sevilla is charming and romantic -- I can understand why it was chosen as the setting for Carmen and The Barber of Seville (and many other works). When we were walking through the labyrinthine alleys and passages of the old city, Santa Cruz (I think we might have been in the old Jewish section), last night, we came into a little courtyard with benches and flowers arrayed around a fountain. There was a breeze, and the courtyard smelled strongly of sweet jasmine. I couldn't find any jasmine plants though, and I was puzzled. As we continued on through to the next narrow alley, I looked up and saw a row of jasmine plants, which had been planted high up on a stone wall and seemed to cascade into the dark alley. I looked around on the ground and found some white blossoms which had fallen onto the wet black cobblestones. As I picked them up, I noticed that they had not even been bent or crushed so as to brown, and that the blossoms were large, with five petals that all curved in the same direction, like little spiral galaxies. I smelled the pure white blossoms in my hands -- it was fresh delicate scent of jasmine at night, in July, in Sevilla.