Seville, southern Spain

We arrived in Seville on Holy Saturday: the first thing we did in our orientation walk was to find a church for Palm Sunday Mass the next day. No problem in Catholic Spain. So after Mass the next day we walked into the Parque de Maria Luisa and on its fringes, the first of the Semana Santa parades which we waited for along with the other thousands; we then followed the procession to the Cathedral - behind and alongside the penitents and the floats, one of the Virgin and the other of a scene from the Passion of Christ. There are nine of these processions every day starting from the Parishes in and around Seville, heading toward the Cathedral and back again. (Some will take up to twelve hours.)Every day, except the last, we watched various processions amongst visits to the Cathdral,(and the tomb of Christopher Colombus), Alcazar (the old walled city and where we were lost one night in trying to make our way back to our hotel without having to negotiate thousands of prpcession watchers); the bull fighting ring at El Arenal and the Plaza de Espana. We certainly clocked up lots of walking miles here (until we learned how cheap and easily accessible the buses are) and it was in Seville that we broadened our knowledge of Spanish to include 'Cafe con Lyche' 'dos' and 'tostadas'. In this way, with a bit of pointing and smiling we were able to order 'two toasts and coffee with milk' for breakfast (cost about 8 Euros cf the 28 Euros we were having to pay for hotel breakfasts!). We thoroughly enjoyed Seville - not so much the 'flamenco' we went to see, but the ambience and warmth and smells of this orange blossomed city.