A busy last day in Seville

Last day in Seville. I'm putting this picture here, even though it isn't in chronological order, because Blogger will use the first pic in the blog in the link - and the next one isn't very exciting.

Unrelated: our apartment had these weird hot and cold tap controls high up on the walls.

Back to the sightseeing. Today we had a big day planned, and the first thing on the list was a trip out to the Italia amphitheatre, an uncovered Roman ruin that gained fame in recent years after being used to film scenes from Game of Thrones.

It's about half an hour outside of Seville, in a town called Santiponce. After some confusion over where to catch the bus from - different sources told us different places - we worked out it was technically an intercity bus and therefore needed to be caught down in the bus station itself, rather than at a street stop. About half an hour after setting off, we reached our destination and went in.

Bonus: entry was free! We wandered around for a few hours.

A reconstruction of the communal latrine. Personally, I'm glad we live in more enlightened times.

They've unearthed rather a lot of mosaics.

We'd spent a fair bit of time wandering around but couldn't see where we could go up higher to look down over the amphitheatre; luckily, as we were about to leave we overheard someone else ask one of the staff and simply followed where they went.

Okay, now we're back in town for some more wandering.

Obviously, being the unserious people we are, we were hoping to find a barber shop so we could make the inevitable 'Barber of Seville' joke - but I swear there were very few around that we could see; perhaps the locals hate people taking photos outside of them. But today we finally came across one. Here's a picture of me in front of it.

We found the Pillars of Hercules.

We stopped for a quick empanada (not pictured) and set out again.

We made our way to the Triana district, since we knew there was a market there as well as other things to see.

There was an alley named for the Spanish Inquisition. I don't know about you, but I didn't expect that...

[That's a Monty Python joke if you're wondering.]

We made our way - via the Metro; we had decided to spare our feet a little - to Maria Luisa Park.

Rochelle was determined to hire bikes and ride around, but it was a busy day in the park and they were out of bikes. But they did have whatever this thing is called - I guess it's some kind of pedal buggy?

We hired one for half an hour and set out.

There was a lake with birds in it - a couple of white swans and some Muscovy and other ducks.

The cycle-thing tour over, we set out on foot to look some more at the Plaza de España, which we'd seen some of at the beginning of our walking tour the other day.

I didn't get any pictures but there were more people performing Flamenco in the middle section of the building; we stayed for a while to enjoy it - it seems very much a Seville thing, since we'd not seen it in any of the other Spanish cities we'd visited.

On the way out there was a guy selling photos - well, I suppose he was technically selling a kind of costume experience, since he took the photos on the customer's phone - and Rochelle decided she wanted us to get our pictures taken dressed as Spanish characters.

Sigh.

Now on the way to go on a river cruise.

We're now on the cruise. This is the Tower of Gold.

They build a lot of things in the city when Seville hosted the Expo in 1992. This weird-looking thing is the Schindler Tower.

There's an old-fashioned sailing ship moored on the river.

Off the boat - it was a bit underwhelming as boat rides go, but I think that's probably because there's not much of interest to see. 

We set out to have dinner; we'd spotted a likely place on our way to the river cruise - a place called Toby Eats the World. Toby, apparently, is a weiner dog. There's lots of weiner dog imagery around the place.

Fried camembert with raspberry jam and glasses of tinto de verano - a kind of a fruit-free sangria that's usually half red wine, half lemonade or some kind of soft drink. It's very refreshing, and we'd had it a bunch of times so far. 

Patatas bravas, done slightly differently from any of the ways we'd had it previously.

And beef sliders, since we were feeling like having wee burgers.

And from there we walked back to the cathedral to get some more pictures.

More buildings on the way home. I liked this one because of the black spiral balcony on the very top.

This place with the angry horsehead decoration was near our apartment. I'm not sure what's it for since it can't be a doorknocker. Maybe it's from when people tied up horses outside their houses?

And that was our last night in Seville. The rest of the evening was spent packing.