September 26 - The New Mall

After a pretty tranquil morning of laundry and Spanish, I headed out for school to participate in the pre-class "tour".  On my way there, I snapped this photo from the bridge - I am pretty sure this is the starting line for the 8.5 km night run that is scheduled for Friday night.  I am not signing up to run because I am pretty sure I couldn't finish before they closed the course... but I will certainly go down to the river and watch the 25,000 runners.

I arrived at school just in time for the 1:45 walking tour - it not so much a formal tour as a chance to practice listening to Spanish, walking a little, and seeing some interesting things that you may or may not otherwise notice.  Today, the regular tour guy was back, and we took a 90 minute walk around some of the neighborhoods near the school.  It was pretty hot, so we walked slow but still covered a couple of miles.

We saw the house that the artist Velazquez was born in - in June of 1599.  Albert and I saw a couple of Velazquez's paintings in the fine arts museum in Sevilla last weekend.  The Prado museum in Madrid also has a large collection of his work.

We also saw a number of churches of different styles - like this one that with the Mosque tower turned bell tower.

And we found the 0 km marker for the center of Sevilla.

After the tour, I went to class - up to four students.  Not much grammar today in class - mostly vocabulary.  

After class, I decided to walk over to the large tower that stands at the next bridge north of our bridge on our side of the river.  There is a new large shopping mall that just opened today with a large Grand Opening that is directly adjacent to the bridge.  It is 6 stories - with the bottom two serving as a parking garage and the top floor as a gym/sports space.  On one end is the tower, and on the other end is the CiaxaForum.  In reality, it is nothing special - just a large mall.  But it was interesting to see the HUGE crowd of people checking the place out.    And, of course, everything is new and clean.  There were balloons for the kids and cloth shopping bags or fans (we are in Sevilla after all) for the adults.  

But, my favorite part was the big "anchor" store - PRIMARK.  There were so many people that wanted to get in, they had barriers set up with lines like you would find in an amusement park with guards only letting in one person for each person who came out.  There was a DJ and a photo booth - it was nuts. I observed from the perimeter, I wasn't really feeling the "wait in a long line to get in to a department store" vibe today even with the rocking DJ. 

After checking out the spectacle of the grand opening, I was ready for the quiet walk home.  

Tomorrow, I am planning to attend the cultural event before class.