Alright, first things first. Huge apologies for this unprecedented ‘radio silence’, it was a surprise to me too. My writing life was faring on the stale side of interesting and I felt I had nothing of importance. I felt the complete opposite of invigorated. As soon as June rolled on by, I felt completely worn out trying to keep with posting at the most ‘optimum’ time, scheduling in Instagram posts. I became so fixated on creating content that I thought would garner attention, that I felt more and more disconnected from the writing and the photography I had set my heart on doing in the first place. Enter a last-minute hastily-cobbled together trip to Spain, allowing Barcelona and Seville to work their magic, and voila, I slowly returned.
So what on earth have I been up to, you may well ask. Well, it’s been getting back to the living, the travelling, the breathing and the soaking in of new places, different weather, the reconnection to me as a person, with the physical world in which I live. In all honesty, Barcelona was a trip switch as such for me. It had been an incredibly long time since I had travelled to a city with which I’ve had such a resonance.
It could be said that Barcelona, was a trip switch as such for me. It’s been an incredibly long time since I have travelled to a city with which I’ve had such resonance. It stopped me in my tracks. The pursuit of perfect blog posts and Instagram images slowly ebbed away, disappearing into a world of artifice that simply held me back from experiencing the joy and the beauty of this gorgeous city.
It was also the first time on this trip, that I was travelling and exploring with someone I knew; a dear friend. The sharing and the observations I have of a place were shared immediately and directly with someone standing beside me, not something I had to note down on my phone to remember to include in my post write-up later on. It is a city that you have to be engaged with, and living behind the lens constantly was preventing me from experiencing this behemoth of a city on a level that mattered.
I needed to find that beautiful balance again; the invigoration to take photos and to soak in the experience one only garners from travelling.
I had three days in Seville (Sevilla to those who fancy themselves adept at the native tongue) following my week of reconnection in Barcelona, and I simply just packed my gear in my bag, and then just walked. No plan, no map; well not too much anyway. I became a flaneur of sorts, albeit in 44ºC in the midday Mediterranean sun. Drenched in a heady combination of 50+ and beads of sweat, I had an unspoken deal with myself, that the camera was only coming out for something rather special.
Seville did not disappoint (the shopping district alone was gorgeous enough – apologies though, no images to show here, the focus was purely on clothing acquisition at the time, priorities right?).
Succumbing to the heat, and declaring an early night (out loud, in the Airbnb, to myself), my only thoughts of the next day were to fully immerse myself in my new-found flânerie before my body fell victim once again to the insidious heat.
Travelling a new: Embracing one’s inner-flaneur
It wasn’t long after venturing away from the familiar surrounds of my Seville digs that I encountered the architectural magnificence of the Andalusian capital. It’s town hall, enveloped in the boughs of palm and orange trees (I know, orange trees right, stereotypical Seville), a gorgeous beacon of cool in the shadow of the enchanting civic building. The path shrouded in green spanned the front of the hall and opened up to an esplanade that simply took my breath away.
The curvature of the Edificio de La Adriática (as pictured at top of the post) with it’s spanning cylindrical balconies was something to see with one’s own eyes. The varying degrees of its ornamentation somehow blended together in such mesmerising fashion. The intricately decorated tiles hint enough of Spain’s connection with Islamic North Africa, all leading up to a cupola adorned in striking heritage green and white stripes. It was a building that embued a sense that time had indeed not moved forward, since its completion in 1914, apart from the stealthy silence of streamline twenty-first-century trams that purred down the Avenida de la Constitución in total incongruence with their architecturally sumptuous surroundings.
The Avenida de la Constitución was made in the balanced service of fulfilling the inherently voyeuristic nature of the tourist, as well the desires of the creme de la creme of Andalusia’s wealthy to be seen and admired. The design of the Avenue lends itself to this notion, a single level for both man and vehicle, a space shared.
Located on the Avenue’s penultimate corner is the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede, commonly referred to as Seville Cathedral. I was accosted by palm readers outside the Cathedral’s entrance and was begrudgingly pulled aside and fleeced of €20, for a reading in Spanish that I had not asked for. I became incensed trying to figure out why something of such a scheming nature was allowed to occur so frequently so close to a place of religious significance; and why it didn’t seem to raise any issues for the laissez-faire police officers dotted in the adjacent square.
Alas with a slightly lighter back pocket, I settled my enraged moral self and resumed my mindset of being a flaneur in one of Europe’s finest cities. I needed shade and something that would restore my faith in this gorgeous city.
Walking off the moral rage proved beneficial, allowing myself to follow some fellow flaneurs (my own observation, of course), and ended up at one of the few landmarks that I had hoped to visit in the weeks leading up to my Spanish trip; Plaza de España.
But I’ll leave that for ‘Part Two’ of this post, I think this is probably enough for you all to read in one hit. To be honest, I took so many photos at the Plaza de España it needs its own post anyway!
Anyway, it’s good to be back on deck and writing again!
