We woke up around 9am, I showered and washed my hair being careful not to use up too much hot water, as yesterday morning we'd run out. While my wife got ready I went out to a place nearby called Alfonsito to get some pastries. I came back with two trenzas, braided stuffed puff pastries - one with chocolate and orange, one with custard cream and pistachio. I made the usual abysmal moka pot coffee and we had a peaceful breakfast in the living room, watching spanish TV and enjoying the sunlight coming in through the door-window.
We left the apartment at 11am and headed straight for the Cathedral, for which we had a booking at 11:25. We entered quickly through another checkpoint and started exploring the perimeter of the cathedral little by little, stopping by every side room/chapel. It is a massive gothic building with very high ceilings supported by mastodontic columns; it felt a bit like Moria in the LOTR movies. The church is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary and the majority of artworks (paintings and sculpture) represent exactly that. In the iconography I noticed abundand images of seraphim (remember the "biblically-accurate angels" memes? the kind wrapped up in too many wings) and a load more of those bloody disembodied putti/cherubs that freaked me out the day before. We walked into a richly-decorated room with a circular plan and noticed that in the arch that led into it sculptors had depicted plates with many foods; we tried to identify them all (one looked like a camembert, I forget the others). A french middle-aged man approached me to ask whether I could explain the decorations to him - he had been tricked by our silly discussion into thinking we were knowledgeable, lol. I had to let him down. We stared at the concentric scupltures on the ceiling long enough to notice that the outer one was an interesting depiction of Hell, complete with devils and sinners devoured by flames (and long enough to give ourselves stiff necks). We kept exploring and moved onto a room with scupltures depicting biblical scenes from the old testament; then into a room with many reliquaries. We became progressively more irritated (ok, it was mostly me) at the hordes of idiotic tourists that kept getting in our way and literally in our faces to get a picture of everything. These people (and there were MANY) were literally looking at everything exclusively through their phone screens - it was insane. The vast majority were boomers, and I think all the discussions about phones frying the brains of young people were projection: it is the boomers that are most vulnerable to it, they are completely addicted to them in an irredeemable way. Anyway, I vented by imitating them in exaggerated fashion to get a laugh out of my wife, and I felt a little better. Once we completed the tour of the perimeter we moved on to the central parts. Admired the impossibly dense altarpiece (I tried to look at every single scene depicted but it was almost dazzling; I stood stoically in the front surrounded by people crowding around me to take a picture). Then we took a good look at the massive pipe organ and walked around it back to where we started. At this point we made a terrible decision: we got in the line to climb to the top of the Giralda tower. When we had first entered the cathedral there was no line at all, but of course now the line snaked from the bottom all the way up. There were 34 ramps to climb and it took FOREVER. We didn't even talk much to each other because we were growing more and more irritated by how long it was taking. My wife asked how many ramps there were in total and I refused to tell her or she'd get mad at the world. It must have taken us over half an hour to get all the way up. And for what? There was a good view of the city from above which was however compromised by finely-meshed grates they had put on the windows (presumably because morons kept dropping their phones from that height, potentially killing someone down below). It was honestly not worth the hassle and I recommend against doing it if there is any queue. We left the crowded top of the tower very quickly and raced down the ramps.
We left through the cathedral's courtyard and headed straight for Bodega Blanco Cerrillo, which had been recommended to us by an old friend who'd been to Sevilla before. There was yet another queue for the handful of tables they had. By 3:30pm we had lost all hopes we'd get to eat there (it was closing at 4pm) but we finally realised that it was ok to just go inside and eat standing, rather than waiting for a table! We did exactly that and got served immediately (felt like idiots for waiting so long). The place is one of those family-owned taverns with cheap and unsophisticated food which is however extremely good. They specialise in fried food and that's most of what we had: we ordered pavía de pescado (battered fried cod fillets), adobo (marinated fried boquerones), croquetas and caballa aliñada (mackarel dressed with vinegar, onions, green pepper, tomato). Drank a glass of house white. It was all of high quality, especially the adobo: the marinade had balanced the fattiness perfectly, and it had a pleasant freshness to it (there was also some spice we were not able to identify conclusively). Afterwards we haded again towards La Gata en Bicicleta to get a coffee and rest our weary feet. Once more we went home after the coffee, to rest and freshen up (it was a hot day, 28 degrees Celsius, but luckily very low humidity (30%) which made it bearable - we had barely sweated at all).
Later on we left to go visit the Espacio Santa Clara, a palace in which they hold art exhibits. To get there we had to go through the "alternative" area again, and then walk along a long public square lined with little bars and people sitting outside at the tiny metallic tables. The palace was deserted besides us and we quickly realised we had misunderstood its relevance - it was definitely not worth a visit, very little to see and nothing you'd look twice at. The nicest thing was however a little courtyard on the back of the building, surrounded by walls and accessible through a garden inhabited by some large cats. It looked like something you might bump into by getting lost in Venice. There were various ruins littering the perimeter, including some old rusted cannons resting against the walls as if forgotten. At the centre of the courtyard, at a lower level than the rest, was an empty pool; just behind the pool was a stubby brick tower which was however not accessible. All around the perimeter was lined with orange trees. The ground beneath them was littered with fallen oranges, some rotting; the air was filled of the sickly sweet smell of decaying fruit. It was very calming. We took some pictures and then headed back into the main building, quickly visited a boring exposition on some spanish contemporary artist and left (we came across another couple while leaving - some other idiots like us).
We went back to the alternative area and visited a couple of vintage shops, in the first one of which my wife bought a purple robe she liked. In both shops our presence overlapped with that of a group of american teenaged girls with annoying accents that were being shephered around by the mother of one of them. They appeared to be trying everything on and had been drawn to the vintage shops like moth to a flame. I don't know if there is such a thing as vintage-shop-brain, but if there is these girls had it. The last time we were in this area we had also spotted a nice japanese shop which sold stuff like kimonos; we tried to find it again but failed (we would never find it again). We had gotten hungry by this point so we looked for a place to drink/eat at. After some hesitation we sat down at Bar Sal Gorda, where we were attended to by a young waitress who spoke italian (which was surprisingly common). We ordered a beef tartare and some roasted leeks in a "carbonara" sauce (they were good, but there didn't appear to be any egg in the sauce). We had a glass of Pulpo [Albariño] and a glass of Analivia [Verdejo] (we shared). We didn't want to dine in a single place so we paid and left looking for something else; this was a mistake, as it was Friday night and everywhere was more or less packed. We ended up in Taberna Águilas again because we'd liked their food, but all the tables were taken and they wouldn't even serve us drinks if we weren't sitting down (we thought it was strange to be turning down business like this, but they must've had their reasons). We decided to stick around until a table would free up, looking up places nearby on the internet in the meantime, hoping to score a last-minute reservation (we failed). There was a couple of british boomers sitting at a table that nursed a glass of wine for ages, attracting our silent curses. Eventually another table freed up (people who'd had time to eat and drink, mind you) and we were able to sit down. We got two glasses of the house red and some tapas: espinacas y garbanzos again, carne con tomate (pork in tomato stew) and pisto topped with some goat cheese (pisto is another traditional dish, a melange of summer vegetables stewed together into a sticky paste; very nice). Even though these were tapas the portions were very generous and we were full by the end. We saw again the old lady and her dog Coco - we realised she must have a routine, probably came down to the tavern every day to walk Coco and have a small beer; wholesome. We ordered our first Tinto de Verano of the trip. In the table next to us (the one the brits had finally left) there were 3 guys dressed in black that were eventually joined by 4 women also dressed in black, one of them wearing a black veil. They were jovial so we got confused: what the fuck were they celebrating? It couldn't be a funeral wake, so maybe it was a divorce celebration in poor taste? Eventually one of the women put up on the table a sign that read "R.I.P. single", which we took to mean that the one with the black veil was getting married and this was a bachelorette party in poor taste (the sign pissed me off because semantically it doesn't make sense). We were still puzzled by the fact that there were men at a bachelorette party, but at some point two of them kissed and we realised they were all gay, so everything made sense again. All bachelorette parties look sad, but this one looked terrible. I queued up at the counter to pay the bill and was behind yet another couple of british boomers. They were trying to order a sherry at all costs but could not communicate what they wanted with the poor waitress, who looked desperate to get rid of them; I started laughing by myself at the ridiculousness of the scene and I made the waitress laugh a little as well when she caught my eyes. I eventually paid and we went home, where we had a last glass of wine watching spanish TV.