Extreme Worship. Or, How To Hurt Your Neck.
We have come up with a new travel rule today. Whenever arriving in a new city, it’s best to take a cab to your place of lodging. Traveling on public transportation is certainly cheaper but trying to figure out a brand new cities transportation intricacies each week while carrying your luggage around just aint worth it. Plus, ridding a bus or subway with your luggage makes you prime picking for pick pockets. So we now cab it to the hotel/hostel and then figure out the transportation sans bulky bags.
We arrived in Sevilla this afternoon without any difficulties due to the fact that we planned ahead yesterday. We caught an 11 o’clock high speed train which put us in Sevilla at around 1pm 13:00. Outside the station, we hopped in a cab and we were off to Corral Del Rey for a couple nights at Cajellon del Aqua. Turns out, Corral Del Rey is impassable by car. Only scooters and pedestrians can make it down this narrow “street.” Oh, and of course a Segway would work too. The cabbie dropped us of at the beginning of the sidewalk-sized road and we footed it the rest of the way. We checked into our room, cranked the AC, and then left to find the tourist office for a map of the city and to explore Sevilla.
The lady at the hotel pointed us towards the tourist office by telling us to take a left and then a right after the cathedral. She said you couldn’t miss it. Boy was she right. Now normally in Europe you will be walking down a street, turn a corner and then BAM a plaza and a church appear out of nowhere. But not this one. This sucker towers over the city (literally), and you can see it coming from blocks away.
This is the cathedral to end all cathedrals. It’s an X-TREME Cathedral for only the most X-TREME worshipers.
Just how X-TREME is it?
126 meters in length.
83 meters in width.
37 meters in height.
23,500 square meters.
And the tower is 98 meters tall!
This thing could have it’s own zip code!
And you better believe that the outside…
… is just as impressive as the inside.
Would ya get a load of this organ!? I had to take this photo in 3 pieces and digitally stitch it together to capture it all.
You would think an organ this big would be more than sufficient. But no, not for these people. They need TWO monsterous music makers.
And this alter! My goodness, you could baptize all of Iceland at once in here!
If you can’t repent all of your sins at this place, then I’m sorry, there is just no hope. You might as well go ahead and quit life (or change religions).
Despite the scorching mid-day sun, we climbed up the 35 levels to the top of the bell tower…
…to see some amazing views of the city below.
From one side of the tower, off in the distance you can see the bull fighting arena Plaza De Toros.
Back down on the ground floor, in other parts of the colossal cathedral are rooms and rooms of treasures and gifts given to the church.
One of the things I absolutely love about these places are the ceilings. The amount of detail that goes into thr ceilings is uber-impressive and an art form all its own.
After staring upwards at the ceilings high above us, we not only got pretty dizzy, but also developed a fairly stiff neck. So for the rest of the day all I could do was look down at my feet.
I hate to nit pick, but 23:00 is 11 PM. Did the high speed train ride really take 12 hours?
— kag
September 12, 2008 5:16 pm.