Ornament

It rained quite heavily overnight, but at least it had stopped by the morning. We implemented our Plan B for the Casa Pilatos, and set off immediately after breakfast. We arrived just before 10; there was no queue at all.

It’s well worth a visit; it is a large 15th century palace decorated in the Mudéjar style (think Alhambra and Alcázar). We had audio guides from which we learned that it was built on stolen land; the Inquisition swept the Jews out of Seville, demolished the Jewish quarter, and sold the land to the richest family in Seville since they felt their existing house was too small.

That said, it is a beautiful artwork. The ground floor was for public use as the family played a role in administration. It has beautiful gardens and lavishly decorated rooms. Tivoli, you would love it because the walls of most of them were decorated with dozens of patterns of geometric tiles, arranged to look like hanging rugs. I’ve put a few extras in — I may remove them later, once I’ve processed the photos for Flickr.

The upper floor can only be visited on a guided tour, which we duly did. It was the family’s private quarters and was lavishly decorated in 18th century style. The last duchess died in 2013, having accumulated a ridiculous 54 noble titles (Spanish nobility tend to do that; they must be very inbred). She collected model pigs, and every surface was covered with them, in addition to a display cabinet with hundreds of tiny ones.

We were pretty much touristed out after this; lots of walking and intense concentration following rapid Spanish. We revived ourselves over a coffee, and then decided to head towards our selected lunch spot via the flamenco museum. I think we would have found it more interesting if we hadn’t been tired before we started; most of the information was supplied by densely textual interactive screens (as well as videos). But on the top floor there was a very striking exhibition of toreador-style jackets for dancers, featuring stunning embroidery (see extras).

We really were exhausted now. So we hailed a taxi to go to Eslava, a very popular tapas bar that we failed to get into last time we were here. You can’t reserve tables, but we timed it perfectly, arriving just in time to get the last free table on the terrace. The food was excellent, every dish perfection of its type. Salmorejo, boquerones simply tossed in flour and fried, yummy pork ribs with honey, and a slow-cooked egg yolk with ceps and truffle. We found room for caramelised pineapple with ginger and a scoop of coconut sorbet to finish. I will try this at home.

We managed to walk slowly back to the hotel, where we both had to have a siesta. The evening was a bit of a damp squib … we fancied enjoying a drink on the roof terrace admiring the view of the cathedral, but the bar was closed. Not surprising really given how cold and damp it was. We ended up cracking open a tiny bottle of wine from the mini bar, with the remnants of yesterday’s picnic and some pasteis de nata from the shop across the road. Too exhausted to consider doing anything else.