{"id":37548,"date":"2020-02-20T11:41:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T16:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=37548"},"modified":"2020-02-20T11:41:38","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T16:41:38","slug":"february-20-2020-weve-only-just-begun-thats-not-all-folks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=37548","title":{"rendered":"February 20, 2020 – We’ve Only Just Begun… That’s Not All, Folks!"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a maroon.<\/p>\n

Have you ever had an experience where you talk about something and then that something keeps coming up in other contexts, places, times… like a premonition of what’s to come or a hitchhiking reference that tags along to other parts of your life? It’s not deja vu but it’s… a cousin to it?<\/p>\n

The other day I was, as I do, chatting about Bugs Bunny. So maybe it’s not SO surprising that that wascally wabbit keeps coming up on this trip. Before leaving for Seville, I grabbed a copy of Bugs and Elmer Fudd in the short, “Rabbit of Seville<\/a>.” It’s not quite up to “What’s Opera, Doc?<\/a>” but it’s still hilariously good.<\/p>\n

Since then I wandered past the famed Sevilla bull fighting ring and flashed onto Bugs as a Matador (“Bully for Bugs<\/a>” if you’re interested).<\/p>\n

And just now I sat down to have lunch and was confronted with this sign.<\/p>\n

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I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(To be fair, the reason there’s an Avenida Kansas City<\/em> here is because KC and Sevilla are sister cities<\/a>… and the famed Sevillian Giralda Bell Tower is even copied in that Missouri town).<\/p>\n

Oh, look… there’s carrot cake on the menu!<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

There are times where I fear I\u2019ve fallen into a gamification of tourism.\u00a0 Actually, there\u2019s little doubt that I\u2019ve fallen into it but whether or not I should or should not fear that is another thing.\u00a0 We all have scribbled crib sheets of an area\u2019s \u201cmust sees\u201d or \u201cmust dos\u201d or \u201cmust eats.\u201d\u00a0 There\u2019s a cottage industry of click-bait lists and rankings of all things great and small vying for our attention\u2026 both online and in the real world.\u00a0 The best movies of all time.\u00a0 The best hamburgers east of the Mississippi.\u00a0 The top 5 world\u2019s largest tractors and\/or shovels, broken down by geographical region and date of manufacture (by the way, I\u2019ve seen probably three of those in my lifetime and expect to hit the bingo before this decade is out).<\/p>\n

So it was that I started the morning checking things off my sightseeing \u201cto do\u201ds.\u00a0 Per my recollection of later dining here in Spain, the opposite is true \u2013 it\u2019s a later start to the morning as well.\u00a0 Convenience and grocery stores near my AirBNB regularly posted \u201choras\u201d that didn\u2019t \u201cabierto\u201d until \u201c9h\u201d (9 AM).\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t ridiculously early out the door from my crashed jetlag induced coma \u2013 it was probably 8:30-ish \u2013 but it was still odd to wander to a Carrefour Express or Dia and walk into the glass door as if I was a myopic pigeon slamming into a freshly washed window.<\/p>\n

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Dia… come out and play!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am as guilty as the next tourist player in the game of sightsee \u2013 all too often my eyes were glued down at my phone trying to work out the GPS directional arrows leading me to my next checkpoint.\u00a0 And so after the third or fourth time of bumping into someone or having someone bump into me, I pulled a Luke Skywalker \u2013 I turned off my targeting computer — what was wrong?\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 I just needed to get my head in the moment, not looking down at my phone.\u00a0 While I didn\u2019t use the force and destroy the first of many planet killing Death Stars from the Galactic Empire, I did manage to see some cool Sevllian sights.<\/p>\n

Here for example is the Real Alcazar Palace, the Giralda Tower, and the Sevilla Cathedral (which I did briefly go inside… only the first part of it was open because a panhandler had opened a side door and was ushering tourists into it with a donation basket in front of him… I followed the crowd and felt like I was being sneaked into the big top at a traveling circus… which maybe I was).<\/p>\n

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As I was walking down the street, I looked at the cathedral’s carvings.\u00a0 As inside, I had my usual response to opulent religious buildings, namely “Man, they sure spent a lot of money on this place… was it Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where somebody asks Indy ‘do you seek the grail for your glory or for His?’\u00a0 But I also thought about the guys carved here — you think if they posed for the carvers any of these guys got residuals?\u00a0 Hashtag: JusticeForStarvingCarvingArtists.<\/p>\n

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So, yes, yes\u2026 there was a checklist that was buried in my shoulder bag.\u00a0 And I did after the fact make checks on the things I did see\u2026 but most things were seen by wandering about and following the occasionally \u201ci\u201d tourism signpost.\u00a0 Sure, sure.\u00a0 I\u2019d type something into my phone and get a rough idea of the direction I needed to go\u2026 and if I got really, really, ridiculously turned around, I\u2019d take a few seconds to get the coordinates from my navi-computer phone\u2026 but for the most part I just\u2026 let go.\u00a0 And wandered.<\/p>\n

That also meant I was disinclined to wait to go inside several places.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t so much the admission fees.\u00a0 It was more the people-ness of it all.\u00a0 Large groups lead by various upside down umbrella handles waving a different colored rag paraded about me and I just couldn\u2019t see myself waiting in line to wander about inside the gates of the Real Alcazar Palace or the Real Maestranza bull ring (which wasn\u2019t open yet when I went by).\u00a0 In my defense of the latter skip, something was going on at the bull ring and it wasn\u2019t a bull fight \u2013 I\u2019m not sure if you can see it in this surreptitiously framed photo but that\u2019s a local policia setting up a sniper position for security\u2026 there were A LOT of security forces armed to the teeth milling about the entryway to the bull ring, checking badges and IDs of well-heeled (figuratively and literally) official looking people going inside.\u00a0 Me in my Run Kevin Run jacket and sporting a Criterion Channel t-shirt apparently didn\u2019t past the snooty nose in the air smell test.\u00a0 So be it, Espana.\u00a0 So be it.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to see the inside of your crummy blood and sand bull ring anyway.\u00a0 Actually, I did\u2026 not to see a bull fight in action, but just to see\u2026 it.\u00a0 The room where it happened, ya know?<\/p>\n

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So instead, I kept a wanderin\u2019.\u00a0 I bounced over the bridge to Triana, the former Gypsy quarter, and now kinda funky French Seine-ian cultural and artsy and foodie vibe.\u00a0 I heard somebody describe this neighborhood on the west bank of the Guadalquivir River as \u201cthe soulful Sevilla.\u201d\u00a0 I didn\u2019t spend a lot of time there but I\u2019ll certainly swing back before leaving.<\/p>\n

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The reason I wandered back over a different bridge to the other side of the river was that I wanted to see the Torre De Oro (the Tower of Gold).\u00a0 I thought it\u2019d be more, ya know, yellow\u2026 goldish even.\u00a0 But as I was snapping this unimpressed faced selfie, I stole a tour guide\u2019s whispered explanation.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not because it\u2019s made of gold, although there are some gilded accents at the top,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s because of all the taxes and gold that was unloaded there from the New World.\u201d\u00a0 So, ya know, it\u2019s a monument to plundering.<\/p>\n

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I updated my mission goals for the tourism game and went on a quest to see a Rosita\u2019s Balcony, rumored to be the inspiration for the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.\u00a0 Albeit when I googled that probably apocryphal tidbit, it seems like this balcony is also according to legend, what inspired the The Barber of Seville.\u00a0 Whatever the truth\u2026 or the legend\u2026 it is a pretty sweet balcony.\u00a0 I chose to ham it up for an Instagram post about not being able to find it but I felt like a bit of melodramatic flair was befitting its guidebook anecdotal backstories.<\/p>\n

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I packed a lot into the day of sights but perhaps not a lot of depth.\u00a0 It was less about delving deep into the nitty gritty and more about the people-watching, building viewing, walkabout-ness of Sevilla.\u00a0 I will look into actually going INSIDE a few of these places in the next day or so, but in the meanwhile, I\u2019m trying to walk up an appetite for tonight\u2019s tapas tour.<\/p>\n

How much will I eat?\u00a0 Only time\u2026 and maybe this blog\u2026 will tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a maroon. Have you ever had an experience where you talk about something and then that something keeps coming up in other contexts, places, times… like a premonition of what’s to come or a hitchhiking reference that tags along to other parts of your life? It’s not deja vu but it’s… a cousin to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}