My Life as a Tour Guide

After we returned from Barcelona, I began my practice as a tour guide. I must confess it was slightly strange… normally on vacations my parents decide everything, but here I did all the planning of where to go, what to do, when to do it, what to eat, and things like translating and ordering since they couldn’t talk to anyone. So in addition to picture-taking, I am now qualified in travel-agenting and tour-guiding. But I think they really did experience some things that the majority of tourists don’t see here.

On Monday after our plane arrived, I took my parents to the office to meet Clarissa and Pepe and see more of the center of town. On Tuesday I had worked out for a girl I know (Belén) to take them on a tour of Triana, the part of the city on the other side of the river, and see several of the artisan’s shops that I had visited in April. Belén is my age and has recently started working for my boss in our tourism business to prepare tours of different parts of the city, so she gave a wonderful practice tour for us. We visited the sculptors who were working on huge wooden figures of men and angels for a church, and the heads of famous singers. We also saw the silversmith, whose apprentice demonstrated the whole process starting from the drawings they use to punch the outlines into the metal, to the elaborate finished poles, flowers, virgins, headpieces, and a more modern figures like dragons and ladies. Belén also showed us around the river, the market with roman ruins in the center, and some important structures like the bullring, the theater, an old palace, and the bridge my professor jumped off when he was a student here. In the evening, we went out for tapas and saw the view of La Giralda (the tower of the cathedral) from the rooftop of a nearby hotel.

Wednesday we took the train for a day trip to Córdoba, where we saw the old castle the Christian kings had lived in when they did some of the planning for the reconquest of Granada in their war against the muslims and Columbus’ voyage (before them the Romans had lived there and then the Arabs). We walked around the beautiful gardens and went inside to see some of the rooms and tours.
We also saw the Mezquita, the old mosque with red and white striped arches and a cathedral in the middle of it, and the synagogue and Jewish area of the city. Cordoba is a lot smaller than Sevilla is, and the historic part is very beautiful with lots of little patios decorated with plants and flowers. In fact, they just had a festival where they decorate the patios and streets with pots of brightly colored flowers. We came back to Sevilla in time for an Italian dinner and a walk around to see altars being set up in businesses and churches for Corpus Christi, another celebration on Thursday.
Corpus Christi is held 40 days after Easter to honor the body and blood of Christ. For this festival, they build altars showing Christ and the Virgin around the city, cover the streets with romero, and have processions with floats of the virgin, the host, and the city’s patron saints. The processions also consist of many groups of people walking: the brotherhoods holding candles, the city leaders, the police, the military, and the priests, bishops, and the Cardinal. We had a great view of the processions coming down one of the main streets, Calle Sierpes, from the balcony of the flat of Clarissa’s brother-in-law that she had invited us to. When the procession ended, we followed a herd of people into the Catedral, where we were in front of an aisle the floats came down as they entered. From there we were able to see the Cardinal give the mass. We’re not Catholic, but it was still pretty cool to see the Cardinal and hear the huge organ playing and the choir singing.

After that, we went to the Plaza de España again, walked through the park and the center, and ate at my dad's favorite restaurant that serves lots of little sandwhiches (100 Montaditos) one last time. This morning I took them to the airport at 5am, and I think we’re all exhausted from a long week. It was great to be able to show Sevilla to my parents, and they enjoyed seeing a couple other cities too. We love you all!