back in the northern hemisphere -- aka Spain

After our wonderful trip to South Africa, we had a long flight (and plenty of time in the London airport) to Seville -- we were happy to be returning to the Northern Hemisphere. Although we knew it was summer in the N.H. we did not realize what we were missing until we started to experience the 30+ (Celsius) temps in Spain. In less than a week we experienced Seville, Granada, and a little town called Ronda -- all in the Andalusia region of Spain. All quite interesting! At first we found Seville a bit cramped as it feels somewhat like Florence -- a ton of tourists all crammed into the tiny streets of the historic section. We first stayed in a hotel dedicated to Mozart -- given he was Austrian we do not know why this hotel was in Seville -- but it was quaint with tons of mosaics and few pianos thrown in ... The Cathedral in Seville is the most ornate and dramatic church either of us have ever experienced. The wealth that was poured into this massive structure is truly amazing. We found wandering around the streets of Seville quite interesting -- it took a few tries but we, eventually, found a wonderful tapas bar there -- unfortunately we found it on our last night in Seville.

Granada is most famous for the Alhambra -- a series of medieval palaces set high above the city. If you go, you need to book your tickets in advance. Fortunately we had booked tickets for the early morning -- given the temps in Spain during our visit, this made the visit quite manageable. The structures are from the Moorish era, prior to the Crusades. The buildings were amazing in their detail ... the pics will be added at a later date. We found Granada to be a more relaxed atmosphere than Seville. There was definitely more of a family, Spanish feel to several of the areas we wandered (of course there were tourists but they were not as noticeable).

Ronda straddles an enormous gorge that divides the town into new and old. It is quite small -- and very hilly -- as we discovered as we searched high and low for a non-existant restaurant recommended by our guidebook. What we could not figure out, however, was why all of the high end hotels sat along this gorge. Although spectacular (and all of the houses are white, making the town quite dramatic), there was this extremely pungent odour hanging over the town ... we suspect the town's sewage is dumped into the river at the bottom of the gorge. We experienced this first hand by paying to climb down a series of steps into a "mine" (turns out it was a water mine -- too bad we did not know any Spanish).

We were quite shocked to discover that the sun does not set in this part of Spain until well after 10 p.m. -- we suspect the country had adopted a special form of daylight savings time ...