Sunday 22 April 2007

Me and My Hip Flask do the tourist thing

Perhaps Seville is best for waiting around in and firstly because there is no coast for me to bum around on the beach and waste my time and also there are great historic places. Bianca is still leaving me hangin on and I had a shock of when today I went to Jerez and then quickly came back because I was confused by the Coach service and arriving back in Seville from peaceful Jerez at the ultra modern Estacion Santa Justa I was immediately conscious of arriving in a big city that is, to put no finer point on it, absolutely crawling with tourists resembling androids and ants, spiders earwigs and beetles, scorpions (some of them) and pick pockets. It’s all a bit daunting. Of course I like the Cathedral (1402-1506) and it is fine and dandy with all the Moorish influences, built on the site of the previously most rectangular of mosques, it is actually bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral at eleven and a half square metres. It is huge and gloomy, dripping with religious overtones, black mist descends upon me and I start to feel sick, and pretty empty really, good place to escape from the ants. There is a Christopher Columbus chapel, but for the I went today for the whole story, and to visited the old stock-exchange across the way, which now houses the archives of the Indies with some pretty fascinating stuff, including Columbus’s log. People march in, they march out, then they put thier left leg in and so on in a kind of moronic dance of the tourist - sorry for this rant but I have had to do something today while waiting for Bianca to join me on my adventure of a lifetime and I got bored of tourists pushing and barging me so I moved onto the the Alcazar, which is an astonishing Palace, genuinely spectacular. And so on - what a day - bored one minute then getting into it - and all the while my friendly little hip flask kept me company (fine French cognac this time) and plenty of nice aromatic Fortunas Cigarettes and a casual flick of the ash here and a cynical flick of the ash there and I guess I was OK. And apparently the Romans used this site and when the Arabs came it was infamous for a sexy palace that contained a harem of eight hundred women some of them possibly as big as Bianca. Pedro the Cruel lived here with his mistress Maria de Padilla who was lusted and dreamt of and chased after by all the upright men of the court - and quite right too. So by now I needed a beer so I ducked into teh black of a Seville Inn and had a couple and wiped the sweat off my brow - Jesus wept - another day in waiting - I am Binaca's man in waiting - I will do her hair and advise on gowns. Waht on earth will I do tomorrow - I may do a duck and get rat arsed for a week - why not I have the money and it might be fun - Watch This Space - If I can still write coherently.....

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