Friday January 18

Today I went shopping near my apartment because of all the good sales that happen in January and February, called rebajas. EVERY store has them and some stores will give you 60% or 70% off the original price. Really good deals. I bought a zip-up sweatshirt for 11 Euros and a button down shirt for 8 Euros.

Later, class started at 5 at the cathedral. It’s hard to understand how humongous it actually is until you see it. It’s way bigger than Notre Dame, and has a total of 7 naves, making it the biggest gothic cathedral in the world. It’s a little unusual because it has this big thing in the middle called the coro, which is where members of the church administration pray. It really obstructs the view of the whole cathedral and makes it tough to see how big the space is.

The first photo just gives an idea of how huge the cathedral is, plus it's a cool shot of some vaulted ceilings. The second one is a photo of the tomb of Christopher Columbus. His final resting place is actually a big controversy, because he died in Valladolid, Spain 1506 and was buried at the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville. But in 1542 his body was taken to taken to Santo Domingo and in 1795 he was moved to Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became independent in 1898, the remains were brought back to Seville. Columbus is, in fact, in the cathedral, in this tomb. The bronze figures are huge, and the tomb shows a casket borne by four kings, representing the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Leon.

The third photo looks weird but it's really cool. If you look closely you can see that there are two very different arches in it. The one is a gothic arch and the larger one is a Muslim, horseshoe-shaped arch. These two types of architecture, mixed like this, are found all over ancient sites in Seville. This image demonstrates that the giant cathedral was once the central mosque of the city, back when Seville was under Muslim rule (8th through 13th centuries). The patio, or external area that you can't see in the picture, was left in the Muslim style and is still very pretty today, surrounded by Muslim arches. The mosque itself though was transformed into a cathdral with gothic architecture. The word for Muslim and Christian architecture mixed together is Mudejar, although our professor said this isn't really Mudejar because they're just thrown together, not really mixed. Anyway, bottom line: visit the cathedral. It's cool.