our home away from home-

 Our "home" for nearly seven weeks as we study Spanish in Sevilla. Our apartment has two bedrooms (only one has a closet so it's become the drying room, dressing room, storage room etc) Sharing a single bath has been a change for us!  The dining area serves as a desk for Phil and I have my computer in front of the couch. We use the doors to the bedrooms for the workouts with our trainer on ZOOM. The kitchen looks good but is pretty much useless as there is no storage space for anything. The dishes, including flatware, are all in the bookcase style cabinet in the living room. The one cabinet in the kitchen holds glasses. There IS a dishwasher in a tiny cabinet to the left of the sink and a washer in another tiny cabinet on the right hand side of the sink. But overall the place has been completely workable for the two of us. The staff is really nice! Exceptionally helpful!  But the place could use a lot of maintenance overall. Since we aren't renting long term - no big deal. The location is absolutely fabulous, right across the street from the art museum and its small park. 

so it was workable for us for the two months of school - we did wish we had an oven and a better frig (ours never got really cold) but we loved the staff at the place and found the location to be spot on for getting to and from school and into the historic center (which we were just skirting being one doorway north of Alfonso XII.....)

The Royal Palace of Alcazar!

We met the group near the Giralda and walked to the Palace entrance- we had an excellent guide for the palace who gave us many details about the history of the palace construction (many stages over many centuries in many styles)  

I think the photos will speak for themselves - the first group are outside the palace and then the remainder are all inside the palace and its gardens.

horse parking lot- LOL- in the summer I am sure it is great thing to be in the shade but it has been unusually cold here this past week - so I think the horses would have preferred to be in the sun today!

then on to the inside of the palace- 

So a really good tour of a fabulously beautiful palace. with a ton of history to give it all context for its time.  And since I had a chance to, I looked at my photos from the last time I visited the Alcazar in 1999 when my mother and I visited all of Andalusia staying in the paradors throughout the region. The city has changed but the Alcazar has not really changed in any appreciable way.

a later dinner at a place near the Setas - which had a line of more than 20 people- we were happy we had reserved - 

now all caught up except for the school work- tomorrow we are off to Italica (Roman ruins nearby) and then on Saturday to Cordoba.... never a dull moment!