Day 32_Sevilla bike ride

We are all sunburned with the local daytime temp of 93 degrees.  Today we rented bikes to better explore the city.  I wanted to see the development of the riverfront as well  as Maria Luisa Park.  Trying to do anything with 13 people takes at least an hour, i.e., renting bikes, having lunch...whatever it is.  We had two more guests in our party as one of the student's parents have arrived in Spain.  Everyone will be traveling for an independent week starting Thursday before they meet my co-conspirator Prof. Bev Bass in Amsterdam next week.  The first 30 minutes of our ride we were together and saw the elegant Calatrava bridge (Puente del Alamillo) which I had wanted to see. Santiago Calatrava is an architect, but he designs terrific bridges.  Some of the students are interested in transportation design so we attempted to stay in bike lanes traveling through the city.  Unfortunately, half the group didn't wait for the caboose crowd who missed traffic lights and we quickly became two groups  (I waited for the caboose crowd).

My half spent the next five hours easily traversing the city.  We saw both old and new neighborhoods and stopped for lunch in a tiny corner plaza, ordering a couple of dishes (each) from the menu and lots of liquids.  I will miss such dishes translated as "pork with ham" (?).  Hmm...don't know how vegetarians, Muslims or Jewish people eat here as ALL food has some sort of ham in it.  Pig is the national food and must have its own food group designation here.

Plaza de Espana is under restoration, but is definitely still worth the trip.  Designed for the 1929 international fair which celebrated Spanish design (Barcelona's Mies van der Rohe was for the same event), this U-shaped structure highlights individual Spanish cities and is considered "world fair architecture."  I thought it was beautiful with Moorish tiles and a sort of minaret cap to the  end buildings.

My paper on Balboa Park includes a discussion about how the design of Maria Luisa Park (1911) was appropriated by the Olmsted Brothers for its landscape "feeling"as well as representing Mediterranean design (in their opinion) for California circa 1912.  Like the gardens in Barcelona, this park represents another fabulous example of Mediterranean park design.  Turf is little used except where people want to spread out or kick a ball, with the remainder of the park lush in trees, understory plants and vines.  Fountains are everywhere.  This was definitely the coolest (both design and temperature-wise) place we visited. 

A couple of other observations:  marble floors and trash.  Not only does my apartment have only marble floors (and no carpet) but so do two of the student apartments I saw yesterday.  The marble is very cooling on hot days and we all pad around barefoot to bring our body temperatures down.  The other interesting thing is how many people litter here.  Not big things, like a bag of trash, but little pieces of paper are constantly thrown on the ground.  At the same time, I have never seen no many people cleaning--from sweeping streets immediately after trash is dropped to mopping the marble floors found everywhere.  Perhaps if others are always picking up after you, it becomes habit to throw your trash on the ground.