WhatsApp, and travelogue
Today we were scheduled for a guided tour of the major Seville sights. We were given a meeting place in email, but then they changed the meeting place and informed all the registered guests… by WhatsApp. Which, last I checked, was an optional product that not everybody has — I had certainly never used it until a few days ago. But in Spain, apparently, it’s the universal mode of text communication -- so universal that it didn’t occur to them to try SMS, which AFAIK comes with approximately every cell phone.
In this case, the "registered guest" (the one who made the reservation) was![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere, so I didn't get the message, and she didn't and still doesn't have WhatsApp on her phone, so she didn't get the message either. And apparently the sender didn't get a bounce message saying "there's no WhatsApp user with this phone number," so nobody at the tour company knew that we hadn't gotten the message. It was mostly by chance that we saw the tour guide standing on the other side of a rather large plaza.
Anyway, the tour (of the Sevilla Alcázar,Mosque Cathedral, and minaret bell tower) went well after that. And again, the weather was perfect: 20°C high, blue skies, a few puffy white clouds.
The Alcázar in Sevilla and the Nasrid Palace in Granada, which we toured less than 24 hours apart, were built at the same time in the 14th century by a Christian king and a Moslem king who were friendly rivals and shared a lot of artisans. Both buildings have a lot of traditionally-Moslem-looking ornament, but when the money comes from a Christian king, Christian symbolism and the king's heraldry take pride of place. And the Christian king in question, Pedro I elBajo Cruel Justo, had his artisans use the same textual formulas of praise for him that they would formerly have used for Allah, albeit in Spanish rather than Arabic. Pictures to follow.
The construction of the Seville Cathedral, unlike the one in Córdoba, started by completely flattening the previous mosque. They did re-use as many materials from the mosque as possible, which helped them finish building the then-largest (and today still third-largest) cathedral in the world in only sixty years, so it's in a consistent architectural style throughout. And they kept the minaret, the tower from which the muezzin used to deliver the call to prayer, adding only a cupola on top with about a dozen church bells. It still has the brick ramp all the way up for the muezzin's donkey. They also kept the patio where the Moslem faithful would do their ablutions before entering the mosque; it still works as an entryway to the cathedral.
Like most Christian churches, the Seville cathedral is cross-shaped, with the main altar in the eastern branch of the cross, but the gilded-wood "main altar" is almost never used -- only for high holy days and the Royal Family -- so most ordinary services use the silver "commoners' altar" in the north branch of the cross. The south branch has a sculpture representing the funeral procession for Cristobal Colón. The casket actually contains the partial remains of six different people, of which one finger has been DNA-matched to known descendants of Cristobal Colón, and nobody knows what other five people (men and women) contributed the remaining body parts. According to the tour guide, Colón's remains were originally buried in Valencia, then moved to Cuba, then to Puerto Rico, then to a couple of other places, and finally back to Sevilla, but every custodian along the way seems to have taken a piece of the original remains.
Anyway, as soon as we finished the tour, we returned to the hotel, ransomed our suitcases and rental car, and drove north. We were planning to visit a couple of Templar castles, but estimated that they would close about the time we got there, so we went straight to Mérida instead. Checked into our hotel, parked the car (in a residential neighborhood with very scanty street parking... feels just like NYC!), and had a delicious dinner at a tapas place inside the bullring two blocks away.
Mérida is best known not for medieval but for Roman ruins, and we plan to see some of those tomorrow morning.
In this case, the "registered guest" (the one who made the reservation) was
shalmestere, so I didn't get the message, and she didn't and still doesn't have WhatsApp on her phone, so she didn't get the message either. And apparently the sender didn't get a bounce message saying "there's no WhatsApp user with this phone number," so nobody at the tour company knew that we hadn't gotten the message. It was mostly by chance that we saw the tour guide standing on the other side of a rather large plaza.Anyway, the tour (of the Sevilla Alcázar,
The Alcázar in Sevilla and the Nasrid Palace in Granada, which we toured less than 24 hours apart, were built at the same time in the 14th century by a Christian king and a Moslem king who were friendly rivals and shared a lot of artisans. Both buildings have a lot of traditionally-Moslem-looking ornament, but when the money comes from a Christian king, Christian symbolism and the king's heraldry take pride of place. And the Christian king in question, Pedro I el
The construction of the Seville Cathedral, unlike the one in Córdoba, started by completely flattening the previous mosque. They did re-use as many materials from the mosque as possible, which helped them finish building the then-largest (and today still third-largest) cathedral in the world in only sixty years, so it's in a consistent architectural style throughout. And they kept the minaret, the tower from which the muezzin used to deliver the call to prayer, adding only a cupola on top with about a dozen church bells. It still has the brick ramp all the way up for the muezzin's donkey. They also kept the patio where the Moslem faithful would do their ablutions before entering the mosque; it still works as an entryway to the cathedral.
Like most Christian churches, the Seville cathedral is cross-shaped, with the main altar in the eastern branch of the cross, but the gilded-wood "main altar" is almost never used -- only for high holy days and the Royal Family -- so most ordinary services use the silver "commoners' altar" in the north branch of the cross. The south branch has a sculpture representing the funeral procession for Cristobal Colón. The casket actually contains the partial remains of six different people, of which one finger has been DNA-matched to known descendants of Cristobal Colón, and nobody knows what other five people (men and women) contributed the remaining body parts. According to the tour guide, Colón's remains were originally buried in Valencia, then moved to Cuba, then to Puerto Rico, then to a couple of other places, and finally back to Sevilla, but every custodian along the way seems to have taken a piece of the original remains.
Anyway, as soon as we finished the tour, we returned to the hotel, ransomed our suitcases and rental car, and drove north. We were planning to visit a couple of Templar castles, but estimated that they would close about the time we got there, so we went straight to Mérida instead. Checked into our hotel, parked the car (in a residential neighborhood with very scanty street parking... feels just like NYC!), and had a delicious dinner at a tapas place inside the bullring two blocks away.
Mérida is best known not for medieval but for Roman ruins, and we plan to see some of those tomorrow morning.