Royal Alcazar of Seville

On February 16, we started our day by visiting the fine arts museum of Seville.  It's a small museum housing a lot of mostly religious art commissioned by local churches.

We bought tickets in advance with a noon admittance time for the Alcazar.  I'm glad we did because this allowed us to avoid the long queue waiting to buy tickets.  We spent a couple hours here walking through the palace and enjoying the beautiful gardens full of orange and lemon trees.

Wading pools under the palace

We went out for a late supper at a local taps bar.  Rather than getting a sit down table, we sat up at the bar where all the action is.  Its fun to watch the staff working to prepare the food.  Its much more intimate as you get to interact with them more, and get better service.  I do my best to get by with Spanish but am always amazed by people in the service industry in Seville and their ability when it comes to languages.  One guy behind the bar asked me, in Spanish, where we were from.  When I said Canada, he offered to converse in French or English.  I continued to order tapas while butchering Spanish and still managed to be understood.  Pointing at things helps and tends to work universally.

I should mention, that Ann and I went to a Vodafone shop to buy a SIM card for our iPhones.  The person we dealt with could barely speak English but we managed with our Spanish reading skills and limited verbal abilities to get some good phone plans and had him install and set up our phones as-well. 

Gazpacho...Best cold tomato based soup you'll ever eat.