Sevilla, part dos

As you´ll note from the title, our spanish is improving. Just having a wee break from Granada´s free Tapas (free with every drink bought) to try and catch up. We´re off to Valencia tomorrow, for some serious America´s Cup action. I´m looking forward to it, Joanna seems quite accepting...

But Sevilla. We drove into town and parked in a spot near where we´d parked the previous day. But possibly not so much pedestrian traffic. Which we now know is important. We set off to the Cathedral. Amazing. Still has some of the original mosque (as this was all Moorish country, so when re-conquered they converted the Mezquitas to Cathedrales), including the big tower for calls to prayer, which is now part of the bell tower. Everything had to be bigger and more impressive of course... But the cathedral is seriously amazing. Massive, with tons of chapels all around the side.
Serious gold in places. Fantastic architecture. And great to go up the bell tower. We then went for some lunch - Granada, tapas free; Sevilla, no. Sevilla very expensive. Then we set off for a pension. In theory very expensive like the rest of Sevilla, but we found a small room with no bano (bathroom) or windows for 32€. Lovely other than lack of facilities, so: brilliant. Had to be in by 3 though (these early to bed spanish types!). With that sorted we headed to the Alcazar. A 14th century palace built by King Pedro I. Pedro was apparently called The Cruel by his aristocrats, but got on better with the common people. All very Mudejar style: christian-arabic mix. Carlos V, Holy Roman Emperor did a bit of remodelling work in the 16th century, as you do. Lovely gardens too. The current monarch pops in from time to time and has the upper floors, which we didn´t get to visit for some reason.
So afer a nice ol´ time there we headed back to the car to drive it near the pension before heading out for some grub. And that´s when we found the window smashed, and the laptop missing from its hiding place (and indeed those things hiding it moved elsewhere). Nothing else taken, except for useful wires in laptop bag. So headed to police station. First (very big) station told us to go to another one, and on our way out of there a man on a moped offered to get us our laptop back. Tres dodgy. Kept him talking and once he discovered we weren´t "helped" to park by anyone he wasn´t interested. There was a parking "helper" (beggars who generally point out parking spaces) not a million miles from where we parked though...
Anyway had a bit of a wait at the police station, but eventually got our report in. Nice policemen once again. Made a cardboard window and parked in the a nice secure parking place near our pension. Dinner expensive again. Sevilla may be very pretty, but it doesn´t half cost...