Sevilla, Andalucia - SPAIN
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 I smelt my last jet fumes this morning and we were happily on our way back into town by midday to savour a few more of Sevilla's delights.
We spent an hour strolling in the sun through the landscaped wonder of Parque
del Maria Luisa bustling with local weekend life. As we're "lovers of
everything free" we also found our way into the archaeology museum housed in a
lovely renaissance structure. Its most memorable exhibits were its Roman
mosaics, often including more pictures than just intertwining patterns. Most
of them were from the local Roman city of Italica (a mere 7km away) which was
next on our agenda.
Sadly the brown and barren plains continued outside Sevilla and the treeless sprawl was a bit of a shock to the system after spending time in the lush and fertile gardens in central Sevilla. Just before leaving we popped into the 1992 Expo site to view a replica of Magellan's ship and marvelled at how he spent three years in such a small vessel. The Roman city of Italica is located in a dusty town surrounded by the usual white-washed housing. It's a very large site complete with an antitheatro which once seated a whopping 25000. Although there is not much left of the surrounding town the theatre alone was worth a visit and some very intricate mosaics can still be found among the ruins of villas. The city was founded in the 2nd century AD for veterans of the Punic wars and thereafter became the birthplace of the emperor Trajan and Hadrian (he of the wall in Britain). In the searing sun of a somewhat unappealing town we had lunch of the salami and baguette variety and decided to make a beeline south to the most southerly European town of Tarifa. We watched the sunset over another set of "El Toro" billboards and drove through the dusty dunes of Andalucia towards Cadiz, then along the coast. From the lights on the N340 we could see that most of these barren and rocky plains ran right to the sea. Soon we sighted the Atlantic and on the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar found ourselves a campsite by the large dunes of the beach and settled down for the night (or what was left of it). Tomorrow it's off to look over the surrounding campsites to find a secure place to leave the car whilst we travel to Morocco. I can't believe the lights of Tangier loom so closely. |
