Friday, June 13, 2008

Oranges in Seville

Seville was hot, burning hot. We arrived from Faro to temperatures in the high thirties and walked to our hotel near the cathedral in the old city centre.

This is a beautiful city and we were lucky to be in the heart of things near the town hall, Alcazar and cathedral. All wonderful places. The cathedral, the third largest in the world was impressive and we climbed to the top of the tower with its commanding views. This was the former minaret from when the building was a mosque. Instead of steps, it is a series of ramps from when the Moors rode their horses to the top. We also visited the Plaza del Torres - Bull Ring and the Golden Tower. This is an old Moorish structure built in the 13th century as part of the defence system and is now a naval museum.

Now for the oranges. (It is half time in the story). There are orange trees everywhere in Seville. We sat in a square full of orange trees to eat dinner and even the cathedral and Alcazar have squares full of orange trees.

I tried in vain to order orange juice for lunch. We had to settle for wine and marmalade for breakfast, again offered wine or beer but settled for coffee. We finally had oranges for lunch and orange juice for afternoon tea. Well actually Jean had orange juice, we had beer and wine.

Some say the oranges they grow in the public squares are so bitter that no-one will eat them. I think they exported some to Australia for marmalade.

3 comments:

theotherbear said...

If they are horrible and bitter I think I have one of those trees growing in my yard

Miss Di said...

Bitter like the ones we had in Fitzroy St? And send us some of that warm weather please. Winter has set in with a vengance here.

gailandrob said...

Just drank orange juice for breakfast from the sunny Costa del Sol - even better, it came as part of the hotel package and didn't costa a motza.