Aquarium, Semana Senta Practise and Blogger's Lunch

Sunday and the marathon is on, about 9000 participants and it winds across the river four times and through the streets. We saw it last year also but this year they painted the roads with green lines and information of the kilometer count, 42 in total I think.

The Bodega San Lorenzo sign by Antonio is finished, mounted and celebrated. Isn't it beautiful!

It is getting a lot of attention in the neighbourhood, people stopping to look. The bodega is 150 years old and this was commissioned to celebrate.

Then we were at a restaurant and saw many men practising for Semana Senta, Holy Week. What that means is they have a large box for a large number of people, perhaps 30? I didn’t count, but looked it up 28 – 40 usually. There are others hanging about to take the place of someone who tires. The box has concrete bars on the top of it to estimated weight of the religious sculpture that will be carried during the ceremony through the streets. The box has wooden head “rests” and they wear hats to cushion themselves. The hats are hard to describe, I’ll look on the web. Didn’t take a picture because this is a religious rite of passage and didn’t think it appropriate. I’m sure people do, I just want to respect their traditions. Since we’ve been here we’ve heard about this practise and usually it happens at night, this was Sunday afternoon so was glad to witness it.

https://www.sevilla5.com/activities/seasonal/practice-run.html This is a website, one of many, that describes it in detail with pictures to show you, see someone does take pictures. This depiction was not the exact same as the one we saw, they used concrete bars, but then every church will have their own way of practising. The weight of the sculpture determines the amount of people needed to carry it, of course.

Finally, finally because I had the idea cooking for a long time, got it done. I got together eight expat bloggers, residing in Sevilla, Ivan and Pepe for a lunch at a restaurant called Yebra. http://www.yebrarestauracion.com

Food was excellent, service too. It was a congenial group and lasted all afternoon as large lunches do here. I really enjoyed meeting these folks and finding out more about them. Seating was a bit awkward for meeting with everyone, one long table so you were really only able to talk to the people next to you. I should have moved my butt and gone around but didn’t. Funny, these people do not socialize together regularly but suppose it’s not really, they are immersed in Sevilla life. Most have been here for years, speak fluent Spanish and work on their various projects within their communities.

We went to the Acurario de Sevilla, the aquarium. It is, as you would imagine, on the river. The display is “inspired by Magellan’s voyage around the world, finding an alternative route to the Portuguese sailors to arrive at the Spice Islands, using the Port of Seville as its starting point.” "Our aim is to teach, sensitize and raise the awareness of our visitors about the conservation and care for the environment.”

Coral, liked the colour

Crab, very tall I think.

These skates reminded me of bats and they were moving fast!

This little one was very hard to photo, but wanted to show off the beautiful design of him/her.

Turtle waving at us, just doing it's thing

It was wonderfully done, displays were on two floors with viewing tunnels. They certainly have a wide variety of species, no whales, seals, otters or above water critters.

I took many more pictures but turned out to be the back end or tail of the fish, they move pretty fast, must learn to anticipate rather than wait until it's in front of the lens. 

Lunch prior was Oriental food, nice outdoor seating on top of the aquarium so view across the river. 

Bruce said we'd come up in the world, the umbrellas advertised champagne instead of beer. We had sushi, and I had the best Pad Thai  ever.

Lunch out at another place I incorrectly named before, it’s called Voraz, yummy again. We did notice these little lemons on a few trees in the yard. 

Little lemons on the tree, hard to see they are little until you compare them to the size of the leaves.

Comparison to an ordinary lemon. 

They use them in their Gin and Tonic’s and they smell wonderful! 

Gin and Tonic is a popular cocktail here, maybe because it's refreshing, one restaurant had twenty one different kinds! There are almost as many types of tonic as gin, they sell gin and tonic kits, so you know it's an aficionado activity. The bloggers commented on this phenomenon, can't get just a plain old Gin and Tonic, have to name both the brand names of the ingredients and then add some sort of berries or seeds and such. Complicated, I don't remember noticing this last year, guess we don't get out to the posher places, which is okay by me, well we do, but for lunch.

It's warming up and we are waiting for those orange blossoms and smell once again.

Cheers, Bx2 and Lexi Cat