"Artistica Tour" of Seville May 20th, 2012

Some cities have more monuments than one can reasonably hope to visit.  Such is the case of Seville.  Besides its rich historic heritage, its vital magic also exerts a powerful attraction on the visitor.  Seville is a cosmopolitan, international city, but one which is also reticent towards change, rightly proud of its glorious past!  The people of Seville are open, cheerful, somewhat extroverted, charming in their way of speaking and doing things, with a relaxed, pleasure-seeking approach to life, a love of the night life and a religious observance of the siesta!

Fountain in the Jerez Gate, and the Hotel Alfonso XIII
The Jerez Gate formerly gave passage through the walls to the vineyards.
 Demolished in 1864, the site is now occupied by a fine fountain, built in the early 20th century.

Gate entrance to the beautiful gardens.

Gate entrance to the hotel.

Staircase to classrooms on upper level.

Courtyard of the Seville University.

Fountain in the open courtyard of the Seville University

The old University of Seville still being used today.

Some of the old remains of aquaducts

Decided to have dinner on Sunday evening at a nice restaurant - San Marco's.

 Now let's see what we will have!

Ken - Salmon with Vegetable
Bev - Tenderloin Marsala with Potatoes
Cheese Toast

Dessert:

Ken - Lemon Cake
 Bev - Tirimisu

Saturday, May 19th, 2012 Carriage Tour Seville

Took the Tram  from our hotel to the center of the  Historic Old Town of Seville
 to be enjoy a scenic tour by horse and carriage.  It was awesome!

Stately Horse & Carriage

I agree!  This is awesome!

Apartment Buildings and Shops in the Background.  After the carriage ride we will certainly have to go shopping!

 Marie de Louisa Park

Marie de Louisa Park

Plaza de Espana with a beautiful fountain in the middle.

Plaza de Espana

Plaza de Espana consists of a 200-meter diameter semicircle
 culminating in two high, stylized towers at either end. 

PASTRY SHOPS EVERYWHERE - BEWARE!

Lots of mini delights - just my size!

 All you little girls just take a look at the "Little Girls Shoe Shoppe"

More shoes and more shoes!

Ken's Day Five at Work

Ken made the first assignments to his new employees and continued to work with them to help them understand how the company does things in Canada.  He helped achieve better integration between Seville and Calgary.

I worked on a digital story book of our trip to Seville, chatted with grandchildren via Skype which was awesome.  It is fun to watch Mylee and Alena wake up in the morning and get ready for school. Little Jens Peter making funny faces at Grandma was priceless.  Isn't technology wonderful!

After Ken got here after work we took the Tram down to the Historical Center of Seville.  Wow!  You could spend a couple of weeks seeing everything.  Spent about 4 hours and walked up and down a few streets, took a one hour boat cruise on the Guadalaquivir River.  That was awesome!  Were able to go inside the Cathedral of  St. Mary of the Sea (normally just called the Seville Cathedral).  Breathtaking to say the least.  It is enormous.  Then we had something to eat and took the Tram back to our hotel.

Here are a few photos as we are anxious to leave this fine Saturday morning and go back and spend the day down there.  This afternoon we are taking a horse and carriage ride around the old Historic part of the city.

Ken's Day Four at Work

Ken had a great day at work.  He is enjoying working with the Spanish people.  Most on his team are very young University graduates in Computer Science and are very enthusiastic.  The office here in Spain is trying hard to get Ken's work visa through.  Personnel has requested a letter of explanation from one of his co-workers in the Spain office so Maria sent off a nice message.
 
Good morning Henry,
The person I mean is Ken Rees. He is an expert in one of the products developed by Telvent Canada. Was recently established in Seville a group of developers who are working on this product. Given the time difference (and language) the transfer of knowledge from Canada is not as smooth as desired. Ken's experience in both product development and the methods of work of the team Telvent Canada is important to us and he is happy to offer help here.


In his own words, his intention is "To mentor, train and build a highly skilled, cohesive and efficient OASySDNA SCA software development team."
I hope this information is sufficient.
Thank you very much, Maria


I had a nice day as well.  I am getting some rest and relaxation and planning activities for us to do once Ken is off work.   Ken didn't get home from work this evening until 6:30 pm so we grabbed a quick fast food supper - salad for me and Ken had a hamburger.  He reports not nearly as good as our Alberta Beef!

The tour bus picked us up at the fast food restaurant 2 blocks from our hotel at 8:15 pm.  It took us on a night tour of Seville that showed us many of the places we would like to return to and take photos.  We were dropped of at the Palacio Andalus for an evening show of Flamenco Dancers.
 

 The blog site said I could upload a video but it wouldn't work.  There was always an error message.  We bought a tape of the show and I took some videos so you can watch those when we get home.

The show was over by 11:30 so we got home by bus to our hotel shortly after midnight.  It was an awesome evening! Adios!

 

Day Three at Work

9:30 AM   Ken reports to me via email:  I am here.  Everything worked well getting here - except that the bus driver took a different route this morning!  I was concerned that the bus would stop in some unknown place and he would tell me to get off.  In the event, he soon got onto familiar territory and we got here just fine.
I am finished with the meeting this morning about building our product.  It went well.  How are you doing?

1:30 PM  Bev reports to Ken via email:  As for my morning...well after you left for work I checked my computer for email, played a little on-line scrabble with family and  was able to do some work for my Ancestor Find clients.  Thanks to the very good high-speed internet here at the hotel I was also able to do a little family history research.  By 10:00 AM I was getting cold (from the air conditioning)  and a little sleepy so I thought I would lay down for a short nap.  Well, I suddenly woke up with a jerk and checked my watch and it was 1:00 PM.   I was astonished!!!!   I must have been way tired for some unknown reason.  Hope I can sleep tonight!  Maybe my body is still in jet lag mode, who knows!  Well I guess it is time for lunch, eh!

At the bottom of the photo note the rail tracks.  This is where the TRAM goes.  It stops right in front of the hotel and that is the end of the line.  I was looking for where the TRAM would turn around.  Well the driver just moves from the front of the train to the back and goes in the opposite direction.  Cool!  We will try and hop on for a ride on Saturday and see where we end up!   

This is the TRAM!

 After work we decided to take the bus to the Nervion Centre (a huge modern shopping centre) as I had to return a European curling iron I bought that didn't work.  The store would not refund the money but said we could purchase other product from the store.  So we got a few gifts instead.  Then we found a TGI Friday's restaurant which is one of our favorite places to go when we are in Salt Lake.  We had chicken fingers and chicken quesadias served with their original Jack Daniels Sauce and bleu cheese dip.  A Virgin Pina Colada cooled us off from the heat.

 After our supper we took the 4 km walk back to our apartment.
 Buenas Noches!

Ken's Second Day at Work

Ken reports to me when he left  to go to work that the bus never showed up so he had to take a taxi.  He didn't know if he was too early or too late but interestingly enough the taxi today only cost 11 Euros whereby the taxi yesterday cost him 25 Euros!  Guess they can charge whatever they want!  He had a good day but a very busy one.  He was very tired when he got home from work and it was too hot to go for our evening walk so we took a much needed nap for a couple of hours.  Everyone here eats late in the evening anyway so we decided to do things the Spanish way.

Decided to try another place with "tapas"for our evening meal - still not impressed!  Choose a small plate of Cod, Shrimp, and Ham/Cheese/BreadSticks!  Cod was as tough as shoe leather - any Cod I have had is flaky and soft.  Shrimp were OK but once again everything is cooked in Olive Oil and LOTS of it.  They were swimming in the dish!  The cured Ham was extremely salty and very greasy, cheese was OK and bread sticks were very oily.  Yes, oily bread sticks - just leave them plain please.  Perhaps we will have to ask that next time.

Viapol Center - where the local grocery store is located - just 2 blocks from our hotel.

Beautiful Patio at our Hotel