Today we did something different; rented bikes and toured about the city. Nothing screams tourist like wearing a helmet. Really! That and our pouring over the map at various street corners.
It was a blast of a day. We had no agenda, a bunch of snacks and a map with bike lane friendly roads marked on it. Our committment to each other was to go where things looked interesting. Our first discovery was the Christopher Columbus Egg.
My sister gave it the name. Fitting… he did crack open a “new world” (at least to the Spanish) and Easter IS a highly celebrated event in this country. Sidenote: According to the Guardian in 2011, Three-quarters of Spain’s population defined themselves as Catholics. This tempered by the fact that more than 60% of them never step inside a church.
But I digress…..
Our next discovery took us by surprise; what remains of the Seville Expo of 1992. It’s cool, it’s modern, it’s trippy! The Expo’s theme was “The Age of Discovery”, celebrating 500 years since Columbus sailed from the port in Seville. 112 countries participated and many built pavillions to show the best of thier industry, technology and culture. Some of these installations are WILD with a wide range of architecture to behold.
Mike and I have done a little reading on the Expo and some of the pavillion backstories are quite entertaining such as the Hungarian’s snub on the Vatican with it’s shamanistic owl face and the towers boasting symbols representing all major religions. Or the Chileans, housing an actual iceberg which they sawed up, transported to Spain and reassembled in thier pavillion! Today some of these creative and outlandish buildings house companies or university research, but many sit abandoned or moving into disrepair. It’s a bit of a ghost town which adds to the surrealism.
My favorite pavillion might be from Kuwait but I’m heavily influenced by Sting. The structure in it’s current state is nominal, wooden “fingers” laced together. but in it’s heyday the pieces moved creating an image of fingers being extended and interlacing. We saw this watching Sting’s video “When we Dance” which he filmed using the Kuwait pavillion as his background.
The last of my highlights is the French pavillion. It’s quite stunning. The face is mirror tiles which they explained, was to reflect the cutlure of Spain beacuse in 1992, “all of Europe wanted to be Spain” and have the success Spain was having. Creative!
It was fun to stumble across these fanciful pavillions. We felt like we stepped into another world…. from cathedrals and history to orbs and the future.
Our bike adventure ended on a sweet note, the setting sun by the river.
Home to lay our heads down and rest in preparation for another magical Spain day.
Mirczak's Magical Year 