Holiday adventures part 4 – Seville and Arcos

Lisbon was an unexpected delight, but we found Seville a bit disappointing. Seville is the heart of Spain, with bullfights and flamenco music and dancing. Our tour book touted the steamy ambience of Seville, and said that if there’s anywhere to linger in Spain, it’s Seville. My favorite opera is Bizet’s “Carmen,” which takes place in Seville, so I was looking forward to seeing the city. What I forgot is that Carmen smokes in the opera, and she works in a cigarette factory. “Steamy ambience” must mean cigarette smoke! While there was a lot of smoking throughout Spain, in Seville I felt like I couldn’t ever get the smoke smell out of my nostrils.

But, we had fun anyway! It’s not the season for bullfights, but we saw the bullring:
And the lovely cathedral:
As well as another Moorish palace (Alcazar):
The gardens in Seville were delightful, full of orange trees:
And with Moorish fountains and benches:
The best part of Seville was the flamenco show we saw in the evening. Flamenco music is sung with guitar accompaniment, very full of emotion. Flamenco dancing involves lots of intricate foot-stomping.
The next day we headed out and spent some time in Arcos de la Fronterra, one of the “white hill towns” of southern Spain. All the buildings are whitewashed to be cool in the summer.
Many of the roads are very narrow, sometimes with arches between buildings to keep them from falling over in earthquakes.
Like every other town, there is a beautiful old church:
And a couple nice vantage points where you can see the surrounding countryside:
Then we drove to Tarifa, a small town on the south coast of Spain. Tarifa is a good base for a day trip into Morocco!