Más churros, por favor...

Alright, to prove I have been doing things other than planning trips and taking siestas here are some photos.

These are from Itálica, the over 2000 year old Roman ruins we saw a couple of weeks ago. The mosiacs were the floors of houses. It's hard to see but the second one is of the Roman gods that the days of the week are named after. Also, the amphitheatre which was the 3rd largest in the empire, seating about 25,000.

Next, here are some of my favorites from la Catedral. The box being carried by the 4 statues supposedly contains Christopher Columbus's remains. If I understood our guide correctly, his remains were first buried somewhere else in Sevilla, the moved to Santo Domingo in what was a Spanish colony but is now the Dominican Republic. When the Dominican Republic was no longer under Spanish control, they were moved to Cuba. When Spain lost control of Cuba, they were returned to Sevilla to the cathedral. Not surprisingly, there is speculation that somewhere in the shuffle, Colombus's real remains were lost or stolen and replaced. Still, it's a cool display--the four statues represent the kings of Castilla, Aragon, Navarra and León who formed the united Spanish kingdom after the Reconquista. Bored yet?

This is La Giralda, the cathedral's bell tower. We climbed up it after our tour and interestingly...there are no stairs. There are 34 (rather steep!) ramps, and no other way to get to the top. Apparently, it's because back in it's earliest days as a mosque, the Arab armies would ride their horses to the top to use the tower as a look-out point. Unfortunately it was pretty cloudy, but the views were still worth sore quads.

This last one is from Carmona; another small city with Roman ruins. We saw a pretty cool Necropolis but if I'm being honest, the highlight of the excursion was definitely walking through the cute modern part of the city and eating their famous churros with hot chocolate for dipping. The program bought a TON and each table got a whole big plate of them...but I think I could have gone on eating them for hours. Really, it's a miracle we made it to the top of this building.

Well that's enough for now. We finish our orientation courses tomorrow and start our regular classes next week. I'll let you all know what I'm taking as soon as I do. On Saturday we're going to Jerez and Cadiz for the day to visit a bodega and I'm not sure what else. Supposed to be very pretty though.

Hasta luego, queridos!