Day 6: Seville to Arcos de la Frontera (June 17)



Since we had fit so much of Sevilla’s attractions into yesterday’s marathon day, we only really wanted to see the bull ring before leaving town.  We walked our backpacks to the car and set out walking back down to the bull ring, stopping at an outdoor café for breakfast on our way.  While we would have no interest in seeing a bull fight, it seemed an important part of Spanish culture to learn more about, yet even after taking the 45-minute audio tour, we still didn’t really understand much about bull fighting.  On the way back to the car we looked for a bakery we had read about across from the Cathedral that sells goods baked by nuns.  We were disappointed when we did eventually find it that they were closed for a week-long vacation.

I had reserved our next night in Arcos de la Frontera, opting to explore the white hill towns rather than go down to the beach towns further south and travel along the coast.  Once city that I was ambivalent about was Jerez, famous for its sherry and horses.  Rachel and I are not particularly interested in either of those things, but we decided to stop there for lunch to see it. It was super hot and mostly closed down when we arrived, maybe because of the siesta but more likely just because it was Sunday.  We didn’t see much of it and instead headed to the first of the white hills towns – Arcos de la Frontera. 

This was another town of narrow roads and at one point on the way up I asked Rachel to get out of the car to guide me through from the front.  Once we made it through that narrow part there was a couple standing in the road – turns out they were waiting to see where I was headed and when I tried to go straight they stopped me and told me I had to go to the top of the hill and park on the main plaza (rather than to my hotel).  We were lucky to find a spot right on the plaza and as it was Sunday, parking was free.  

We walked to the hotel and the very nice owner showed us our lovely room and gave us a tour of the small hotel nestled between the two main churches in town (both of which ring bells several times an hour).  Then we set out on a walking tour of town. 
Notable were the “ears” cut out of walls next to windows so that women who weren’t allowed out had better views, the story of the bell tower keeper who kept a donkey in the tower who eventually grew too big to get out so he killed him and ate him, and the abbey were you could buy treats baked by nuns through a special mirrored turnstile.  The Sevilla nuns may have been on vacation but the Arcos nuns make delicious madeline cupcakes! 


 

The end of the walking tour

We went to dinner at the place that the hotel owner had recommended and then walked over to a different place next to the baking nuns that had pulled a TV out to watch the Brazil-Switzerland World Cup game – another upset tie! 


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