May 18-Day 8-Sevilla

Day 8 began with breakfast in our Granada hotel and then a 3 hour bus drive to the city of Sevilla. The first pic is the view down the boulevard as we entered the city limits. For of those of you that are familiar, it looks just like a boulevard in southern California. Many of the buildings in CA are based on Spanish architecture so this makes sense.

After a brief stop, we continued on to our venue for our fourth and final concert. This concert (my last as the DOB at Morningside) was held at the Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares de Seviilla. That is a long name for a fairly small building, with a beautiful courtyard. Pic 2 shows the band and I in the moment of making music together.

After the concert we checked into our hotel, had a brief siesta and then a guided panoramic city bus tour of Sevilla. We saw many of the sights around town including the tobacco factory made famous by the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet (ironically a French composer). Pics 3 and 4 show some of the sights we viewed during the tour.

We were all pretty tired after the tour so dinner was a welcome sight. Dinner began at 7:00pm which is a little early believe it or not. The typical day in Spain is structured differently than ours here in the U.S. They start at 8 or 9 in the morning like us and break for lunch around noon, but the similarities end there. At the noon hour begins siesta. Siesta usually contains two main parts, lunch (their large meal of the day) and then rest (I saw road crews sleeping under their equipment during siesta along side the highway). At about 4pm work would begin again until around 7pm (they have a shorter work hours than us). After 7pm, then dinner (which is typically a small light meal). That makes dinner time between 7-9pm. The night life then follows (the cities were full of life every night despite it being a work week and despite the economic crisis). The night life can then go pretty late (2-3 in the morning). Obviously this is generalizing, just like all U.S. citizens don't work 9-5, but you get the idea. Many of the tourist locals and shops did not take siesta in order to sell products to tourists, but otherwise the city sort of shuts down in the afternoon. I have to admit, that after a few days of adjustment, I became a big fan of the schedule. Sleep, work, sleep, work, fun. It divides up the day nicely and keeps you fresh for the second part of the work day. Not a bad idea.