Breakfast in Alameda de Hercules, quieter than I suspect it is at night, then it was high time for my trip to the top of the Las Setas (The Mushrooms), a wonderful construction of wood that opened in 2011, after the old site of the market in Plaza Encarnacion had been fenced off for 37(!) years. On the ground floor are shops and on the first floor is a large open space for events which is perfect for skateboarding. The basement is an archaeological museum, decided on when the site excavations unearthed Roman and Al-Andalus remains, thereby stymying the planned underground car park. And then there's the great views across Seville from the walkway around the top (extra). I walked round twice and watched a couple of men, clearly climbers in their spare time, attached with carabiners to rooftop ropes, cleaning the structure with a power hose. They were in their element, dangling their legs through the lattices and beaming.

When I visit new places I take note of what tourist offices and others say I should see but I don't read much in advance. I prefer my response to be unmediated. So I had no idea when I walked into the church of the Divine Salvador that I was about to be confronted by the hugest bit of rococo I had ever seen. I loathe rococo but the two reredoses (reredoi?) at right-angles to each other were so completely outrageous, that I was overawed and just had to stare. The one for the main altar has a bearded, red-cloaked god right up in the ceiling in front of rays of sun (gold, of course, like 95% of the rest of it). Below, Jesus stands on a billowing blue cloud surrounded by angels and prophets. Down another level are favoured disciples, then at the bottom, Mary at the moment of the immaculate conception. (How on earth did they identify that?)

The reredos to the right was all Mary's and deeply 3D with a window several metres behind showering her with heavenly light. Clever touch.

After that, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world - like a Gothic cathedral on steroids with vast pumped-up columns - was a bit of a let-down. Its hugely elaborate ceiling, right up there in heaven, was almost impossible to see. It had the best tower though - a ramp, not steps, all the way to the view which is way higher than the magic Setas. Like the colonising cathedral in Cordoba, it had trumped the mosque, built in 1198. In the mid thirteenth century the mosque was declared a cathedral then, in the fifteenth, it was almost completely destroyed to make space for the cathedral. The only remains were the base of the beautiful tower, a terrace with shady orange trees, and a small courtyard containing an elegant fountain. Seeing the plans of the two buildings overlaid adds just a little more perspective to crusades and jihads through the ages.

I'd intended to stop after that but I realised that Plaza de España was nearer than I'd thought so I went to see the extraordinary grandiosity that was built, complete with a 'Venetian' canal, to impress the world for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. 90 years on it's still doing it. Mad and delightful. Once there I decided I might as well walk through the Parque Maria Luisa to other 1929 pavilions, now museums, then back along the river to the Torre del Oro then over the bridge and round Triana. Where I was ignored yet again at a bar, this time by a young woman who took the orders of the later male arrivals and walked straight past me. When I tried to catch her eye but failed, an older woman at another table grabbed her pointed me out to her. What combination of female, grey, tourist and solo makes my money so unwelcome?

I found out earlier today that I have arrived in Seville at the same time as the circus festival. What luck! So I sat in the Setas this evening and watched three circus performances. The first started well but ran out of steam. The second was themed around Elvis and 1950s USA and started as dance, moving into acrobatics. Clever and entertaining. For the third I was sitting on the ground which was still radiating heat at 11.30pm (very welcome - it was a cold evening). It was a post-modern take on the essentials of human existence - bananas, nostalgia, death, trapezes...