Sisters in Seville (again)

Right after leaving the airport
During Holy Week here in the south of Spain my sister Chrissie came to visit us since both Jose and I had off work (the perks of living in a Catholic country). She has been here twice before (read about the first time here and our wedding here). We drove and picked her up on Monday and spent that day organizing her trip and allowing her to recover from her jet lag. 

On Tuesday we headed to Seville to see some of the Holy Week processions that are so famous here. I will spare you the details of what this all involves since I have discussed it before and I sense that this post is going to be long since we crammed so much into such a short amount of time. If you are interested you can check out my Semana Santa post here. In any case, we headed into the city center and while enjoying the beautiful weather and some beers we got to see a few of the pasos come by before heading home again. 

Holy Week
The following day we headed to Gibraltar since my sister has already seen a lot of Seville. We drove there in the morning, crossed the border (with Cooper even) and spent the day walking around. Jose and Chrissie rode the cable car to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar and we had a typical English lunch. Gibraltar is a curious place since you basically enter into the UK without really leaving Spain. People speak a very interesting mixture of English and Spanish, it´s how I imagine our kids might sound one day in that they switch back and forth between the languages with ease, mixing them up in the same sentence. We arrived on a day when there were a lot of cruises in the port and we met a really nice American couple who waited in line with us for the cable car and who experienced the monkey stealing another woman´s bag of magnets before flinging them about.

Phone booth
 The next day we headed to a small village in the Cadiz province called Vejer where we stayed two nights in a rural house so we could take advantage of its proximity to the beach. We wanted to go to the beach during the two days we were there but the second day didn´t cooperate too well. We did, however, sneak Cooper onto the beach when we went and he loved it. He traveled with us everywhere we went during this trip, lucky dog.

On our way back from the village we stopped in another touristic town, Arcos de la Frontera which is quite beautiful. It sits on top of a hill and has beautiful views. As you might imagine, it has a castle (like almost everywhere here in the south of Spain). We walked around this town, had lunch and Chrissie bought souveniers to take home.

Digging the beach
The next day we decided to take my sister to the Italica Roman ruins that are located just outside of Seville. I have been before but was again surprised at how big a complex there is and how much of this ancient city still remains buried. If you are ever in Seville it is worth it to drive the 15 minutes out of the city center to check out these ruins. We also visited a very nice, restored monastery which was close by.

As you might imagine with all this running around we were quite tired so the rest of my sister´s visit was spent relaxing though we did have time to see one of the processions in the suburb where we live. We had a great time hosting her and hope she enjoyed her trip. As you can see, we are good hosts (hint hint for people thinking of visiting in the future). I even made her some towel animals to welcome her. Cooper really misses her after she left since he got to sleep in the bed with someone almost every night. So spoiled. I leave you with a few more pictures of sisters in Seville.

Chrissie holding birds of prey in Arcos
Mosaic floor in Italica
View of Arcos de la Frontera
Pottery in Arcos
 

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