Our hotel was not too far from the neighborhood of Triana which the internet claims is known for its restaurants, bars, and ceramics shops. It sounded like a fine place to wander, so we headed in that direction one day. To get there, we had to cross the Isabel II bridge so we spent some time there admiring the view.
Then we crossed the bridge and entered Triana. The building with the lovely tiled towers in the pictures below is the Chapel of El Carmen, designed by Aníbal González Álverez-Ossorio who is best known for his work as the chief architect of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 in Sevilla and for designing the Plaza de España. This Chapel was built in 1927.
We searched and searched for ceramics shops, but they were quite elusive. Although it was a weekday afternoon, many shops were closed and it appeared that they had gone out of business. Eventually we did find two open shops where I parted with some euros, but it was a tough search. We did find a substantial number of outdoor cafes so we fortified ourselves with adult beverages before returning to the hotel.
Then suddenly, it was our last day in Sevilla. We had thought about taking a train to Córdoba, but we decided we would prefer to just hang around Sevilla one more day.
What to do? We fell back on our old standby - The Hop On Hop Off Bus. For some reason, their website would not sell us tickets, but Walt was undeterred. We had noticed a sign indicating the bus office in a nearby plaza, and he went inside to ask how we could buy tickets. Since this was a business office rather than a sales office, the receptionist was a bit surprised, but she was moved by his tale of frustration and produced two free passes for the day.
These pictures are taken mainly as the bus passed through the neighborhood around the Plaza de España. A lot of the buildings from that 1929 Exposition are still standing.
It was Wednesday, and our plane was scheduled to depart Barcelona on Saturday. We weren't too sure what happening there because we had no access to English speaking television stations and English websites weren't reporting very much about the situation. We did know that demonstrations were occurring nightly. The evening would begin peacefully with families and children participating, but later the mood would become more violent. A soccer game between Barcelona and Madrid (archrivals at the best of times) that had been scheduled for Saturday had been cancelled, but as far as we knew, the general strike planned for that day was still on. We just had to hope that the airport wouldn't shut down again.