It was an occasion of religious festivity, and so the church’s courtyard was the center for the day’s gathering, and very pretty too.
A well on the inner wall of the church has rather a morbid story attached from the civil war, of a girl drowning and not being found for longer than one would hope. I suppose this explains the grate.
Here you see the olive tree growing within the walls of their church, one photograph from each side of the wall. Naturally it has a story attached as well; it’s survived periods of drought without ever coming off worse for it, and is a miracle.
And here one has the inside of the church, complete with testimonials of miracles and the detritus left by said gifts from God - crutches from cured cripples and so forth. I’m not entirely clear on why one needs so many chains in a church, but it is their way I suppose.
Another day, I made the journey to nearby Santiponce, and from there to Italica. Being as this is a hugely significant site historically speaking - the most important Roman city in the region, once upon a time - I believe it plausible that Willow might go there were she ever in a position to do so.
This might well have been the single most disturbing thing I have seen since awakening. Think of the waste.
At the end of the day, I finally got a word in with this chap, who was most kind and promised to pass the word along if he should happen to see Willow.
The following morning, something rather odd occurred - I awoke to find myself face to face with these odd books. As they are in Spanish, I can make nothing of them, and La Giralda refuses, whispily, to be of any help. Rather forbidding things they look, but ah well - ever onwards.
Another trip I have made was one to, at long last, the Cathedral of Seville, and this magnificent structure is quite simply beyond my power to capture. It is labyrinthine in its structure and humbling in its beauty.
I had a word with these gentlemen, who fortunately spoke a bit of the Queen’s English, and they promised to pass my message on. I also discovered that their task is to forever hold aloft the remains of Cristopher Columbus. In a cathedral. So that’s fun.
Within the cathedral are a great many treasures - paintings, statues, old confessionals, jewels, and the like; all of these I perused at my leisure, as they were a delight to the eye. Some of them were in fact the bones of dead saints and the like, but the people will have their little quirks.
There were a great many people buried in the Cathedral, in fact, in enclaves set all around the edifice. All in all, I can’t help thinking it’s a step above even those church-sized edifices in the graveyard.
I finally climbed La Giralda, as that was the purpose of my visit, and got several truly spectacular views on the way up and most especially when I’d reached the top.
And in fact one can see here the roof of the hotel in which I later ended up, but that’s another story.
At the end of the day, I did speak with the Lady Who Turns herself, after a fashion. She’s rather more disconnected from reality than even her small counterpart, I find, and speaks overmuch of ants, but I believe we understood each other. As useful as she may prove to my quest, seeing as she knows all that passes in the city, I was much fonder of her counterpart on the lower levels, with whom I passed some most time most satisfactorily.
