Friday, May 29 - Casa de Pilatos

As I was dropping off the kids for school, I ran into our neighbor/mom of another kid at the school, Karen, and she invited me to join her for coffee.  She's originally from Hong Kong, moved to Vancouver in 2000, and has lived in Sevilla for almost 3 years.  It was really nice to start to get to know her.

After coffee, I walked down the street to visit the tourist attraction of Casa de Pilatos.  It's one of the sites I wanted to see and one I wanted to check out ahead of time to determine if the kids would likely enjoy it or not.

On my way, I saw this pretty church.

Casa de Pilatos is located in Plaza de Pilatos.

Here's a picture of the floor plan.  Much of the palace is open for visiting, but part of it is still inhabited by the current owners.  

Inside there are many tiles with coats of arms.

Loads of amazing carving.

Intricate designs.

Multiple coats of arms on a ceiling.

Carvings

Gardens

Flowers

Fountains

Columns

Statues

Busts

Tiles

2-headed fountain

Gold ceiling

More gardens

Restoration work

More restoration work

I took a 20-minute tour upstairs.  I was able to take this picture while outdoors, but no photography was allowed in the rooms.  The rooms had loads of oil paintings of various owners of the palace.  

After school, Rosa was invited to play with Mar in the plaza.  Scott was able to join us.

While there, we ran into Simona and her mom.  Simona's dad is currently working and living in Australia, so she tends to navigate towards Scott and other men for a little "daddy" time.  She's a cutie.

Scott and Simona have fun together.  And Simona adores Rosa.

While at merienda, we also saw the boys' friend Clara who came over to play and the mom of one of Rosa's classmats, Sofia, who hung out with us for a bit.

Eventually Scott left to take the boys and himself to get haircuts.  And then we finally left.  On the way home, Rosa and Mar bumped into another friend who gave them a water balloon.  The 2 girls took turns carrying it.

When we got home Rosa was wiped out from the week of school and the heat.  She snuggled into the shade at the bottom of our stairway.

That night we returned to the "magic dessert" restaurant for dinner.  It's really called Az-Zait.  

Rosa's chicken skewers served on a rock (and Devon in the background).

Another picture with Rosa's pez dispenser front and center.

My salmorejo with what looks like a smiley face of toppings.  It was phenmoneal.

While we're enjoying eating out and trying new places, we're starting to burn out from all of the restaurant eating.  We're trying to eat in more on weekdays to save up for special weekend meals.  Plus, while service is often great with serving food, we still usually wait quite some time to get a servers' attention to get the bill and then pay it.  Sometimes we just want to eat and go and it's not that easy to do here.  Alas, at least there's no shopping, cooking, or cleaning up involved.