More wistful – Seville

I woke this morning and my first thought was Seville. Immediately I was walking down the narrow alleyways of the Jewish quarter in the city of Seville, Spain, late in the afternoon when the light was fading and the distinctive white walls characterising this part of the city were chased with lengthening shadows. The red geraniums were sturdily gay in their window boxes but the houses were secreted behind high whitewashed fences and closed doors. When I find my hostel, I enter through a large door into a multi tiled courtyard where people sit under large porticoes, drinking wine. There are plants in containers all around the space. My room has a single bed with sagging springs, a hand basin and like most accommodations I have experienced in Europe, is tiny. It has however a lovely quality of light and foliage makes patterns on the walls as the evening draws in.

Almost twenty years later as I lie in my bed in my Central Victorian home, remembering that first walk to find my accommodation, I re experience the excitement and nervousness that has always accompanied me as I walk in a new place, to an unknown destination. I find it exhilarating and nerve wracking in equal measure. It is why I find travel alluring. The powerful impact of that first acquaintance with a city, the finding of that first room, the exhalation of arrival, has never waned.

As I take up my day, Seville stays with me and I think it has something to do with the low, heavy and very black clouds which are rolling in from the south. I remember the day I visited the Plaza de Espana, which is a huge "plaza built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. It is a landmark example of the Regionalism Architecture, mixing elements of the Baroque Revival, Renaissance Revival and Moorish Revival styles of Spanish architecture "( with thanks to Wikipedia ).

I was, it is best described as gobsmacked, by the aforementioned mixed elements of Spanish architecture and the grandeur of this building which just presented itself as I was walking down a road with a thought to find the celebrated bull ring. So absorbed did I become in exploring the tiles associated with different districts , marvelling at their gaudy beauty, that I failed to notice the darkening sky. It was a sudden chill, followed by an immense raindrop, which startled me into the moment. Looking up, the facade of the plaza stood in majestic relief against an almost black sky. Huge clouds, thick and heavy with water had amassed overhead as I had heedlessly taken the sultry summer of Spain for granted. Hailstones and thunder chased me past the Giralda and through the narrow back streets to my hostel. Its courtyard was flooded and after I had changed my soaked clothes, I spent the rest of the day laying on my sagging bed, reading. I wish I remembered the book because I do remember the contentment.

Remembering sends me to find another book which I discovered in recent years whilst researching the making of personalised perfumes. In The Perfume Lover, Denyse Beaulieu describes her personal history of scent, inspired by a night of sensuality spent in Seville. It is a book which describes the making of a perfume she wants to captures her essence of this city and her experience of it. That perfume, on the market as Séville à l'aube , is described as "an orange blossom oriental with zesty, green and balsamic effects, with notes of petitgrain, petitgrain citronnier, orange blossom, beeswax, incense, and lavender "( Good Reads )

I was a little seduced by this book and its description of both perfume and Seville. I was also a little seduced by Seville. I went one evening to a flamenco bar where the dancing was spirited, fierce, seductive and strong, and I loved the equality of the dance form. I loved the male and female energies and the power of their confrontation. I was cascaded into thoughts of the bull fight, and Picasso and the inherent machismo of Spain juxtaposed with the scents, the sultriness and the celebration of woman which is also Spain. Most accurately perhaps, it is Moorish Spain and Moorish Spain, ah Moorish Spain is something else again.

Have I written of Granada ?