Well that was fast.. we got up this morning in Madrid, ate a quick breakfast, boarded a fast train and.. now we’re in Sevilla!

We didn’t stop to take pictures of our spectacular breakfast buffet, but I did get one of the dessert table and its wall of donuts! Also.. the green wall outside on the patio overlooking the train station. Here’s a 360 from outside the rooftop patio:

Speaking of the train station.. we took the iryo high-speed train and it was FAST. We were at 200kph for most of the trip, and smooth as silk. It took about two hours and felt like less than that.

We were in the first class car and had food served as well. Not “fancy”, but comfortable and the food was tasty. Highly recommended!

Once we got to our hotel (Hotel Kivir, very nice and well-located!) we headed out for get our first taste of the city (yes by that I obviously mean gelato). Just the short walk to the central landmark area passed all sorts of interesting architecture and curious sights.

Let the record show that Jen commented on how appropriate this sign was! Yes the record can also show that I jumped at the idea…

International success!! We found a highly rated gelato shop on our way. To be fair there are excellent gelato shops all over Sevilla. We suspect that this is because it gets so warm here during the summer, and even now is quite comfortable and sunny during the day. What better way to celebrate?!

Savitri and I shared very dark chocolate and caramel sea salt. Wow were they both good! Intense flavors, perfect texture, reasonable portions.. I’d say we’d be back but there are so many options that that would be irresponsible. So.. we may well be back.

We ducked into an alley nearby and.. the beautiful crescent shaped Plaza del Cabildo.

We continued through another narrow street and came out at Sevilla Cathedral.

The huge landmark facades are of course impressive, but many of the weird angles of them and of surrounding buildings stand out in their own unique ways.

I love the stainless steel bike lane markers embedded into the paving stones.

Streetlights are common in Sevilla and are really charming. Also common.. orange trees! They’re everywhere so no excuses no to have fresh-squeezed orange juice!

We’re still not sure how this works, but this tree is trimmed into a rectangular cylinder and PACKED with little song birds. Turn up the volume.

We went around the Sevilla Cathedral, turns out it’s pretty photogenic from the back too.

We also saw Giraldi, a tower on the edge of the cathedral. The sun was going down fast so we had all sorts of direct and reflected sunlight illuminating every scene.

We actually saw this restaurant on the way into town so I took a picture to remember it. We ended up coming back and eating here when it was dark.

It’s a busy interior, dominated by bull heads. This sort of makes sense given that it’s right around the corner from Plaza de Toros, but as far as we can tell they aren’t associated with bull fighting, just celebrating it.

We had a large variety of tapas, probably a few more than we should have but we got a real sampling.

We walked back to the hotel afterward. We checked out the night view from the rooftop terrace. It looks out on the canal that parallels the river (check it out in map view).