The Castle of Sevilla

Containing four distinct sections from four different centuries, a massive garden with fountains and of course orange trees, and more history than a library at Cambridge, the Alcazar de los Reyes (the Palace of Kings) is one of the largest and most visited sites in Sevilla. It sits next to the university of Sevilla, another excessively daunting building where students in spain learn about spanish things I suppose.
The first section was gardens, there was of course the standard sea of green leaved orange trees punctuated with color as Orange trees tend to be in this season, but beyond that is a patio of stone with flowers creeping out of every wall and surface and covering others completely. It also contained a fountain with greedy ducks acting playful only to secure a bit of bread or cracker and a full hedge maze ("like in harry potter" says fernando, our professor and tour guide, named after a king and with all the presence of one) As we walk into the anteroom we are greeted by enormous paintings of rulers and an office that s still used to great dignitaries and royalty and other people born into importance. I touched the walls (not supposed to do that) and realized they were covered in plaster carvings in the style of arabic mosques. It was of course not made by arabs, only a cheap immitation, but still impressive and fragile and really shouldn't be touched thank you very much.
We walked into another courtyard and under an old and decaying wall. "This courtyard has four sides" bellows our guide and pointing to each in turn he says "19th century, 17th century, 16th century, 9th century, original arabic" So we looked around at 10 centuries of architecture which is a thousand years or over 3 times the age of our nation, twice as old as spain, and just about 50 times as old as the small group of invincible young people gawking at its age.
We walked into the main entrance of the palace and saw gold, on every wall and ceiling (people made some nice ceilings when they had unlimited money and enslaved other human beings) This was the room the king would greet ambassadors and was designed reflect light so that shone from behind and bounce of the gold to dazzle the foreigner and provide backlight for the king who was standing on a raised platform to give him the illusion of height and
god-like power.
We then saw the room of the god, hidden away behind doors and corridors which would be filled with slaves who were to protect the king and be killed first were their an invasion. The irony of a king that fancies himself a god hiding like a scared child was certainly obvious, but we live in a world of hypocrisies and perhaps thats what keep things interesting.
The last thing I will describe was my favorite part of the palace. Below the surface of the earth were cells for prisoners as the palace functioned as a courthouse as well, but at some point the queen decided she wanted a gift for herself so she made an enormous pool in the same underground space that could be filled with different kinds of water and scents and what not. But it was also designed to perfectly reflect all light giving it the appearance of an enormous mirror. So on some days the space was used to hold prisoners awaiting execution, on others the queen would use it to bathe and admire herself. Hypocrisy? No, just something else to keep things interesting.

Thanks again for the email grandma, I can't believe there were so many tornadoes! Kentucky should lend some of its tornadoes to states with nothing in them like north dakota in return for some pleasant days that are wasted on the few. Regardless I'm glad you are safe and well. If you find any of my mom's old writing I would be happy to post them on here as she would be terribly embarrassed by that and have no way to stop me since I'm thousands of miles away. In other news I just booked tickets to greece for april which should be wonderful. We are spending 7 days there and all the flights and places to stay are only about $400 which is pretty good for plane tickets and housing. I plan to go a beautiful town close to here with gorges and cliffs next weekend so Im sure you will here about that soon. As always stay well and i will post again soon, this time about the cathedral of spain, and as always here are some pictures.