Parque Maria Luisa

In Ireland I have the privilege of living next to one of the biggest city parks in Europe, it's one of my favourite places and makes suburban life more bearable. I love having wide open spaces of grass to walk across and tall trees to look up at right across the road, and when I'm there I can forget that I live in a city. It's actually something I miss a LOT in Sevilla. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not one for inner city living, however much you might like pretty buildings (and I love pretty buildings) the noise and traffic and people get a bit too much sometimes and I'd love a field to go sit in and just be still for a while. The closest I've come to this in Sevilla is the Parque Maria Luisa in the south of the city just beyond the Plaza de España.

wouldn't be Sevilla without some oranges

 Other semi-green areas in the city would be better described as gardens, and while the Parque is still a little too tame and organised for my liking (a good comparison for my Dublin readers would be St. Stephen's Green) with its little fountains, statues and gazebos, it at least has grass to sit down on. I can't say I've been there much lately, February and March have had terrible weather and when it rains in Seville there's not much to do beyond sit in your apartment and look out the window, but on a nice day it's a lovely place to be. You won't find deer or foxes like in my park at home, but there's a selection of birds, including white peacocks (always fun) and I did see a rat swimming in a pond there last week. Nature, wonderful.

I know you love learning, so here's the smart bit. Originally the park was the gardens of the Palacio de San Telmo, a building I know next to nothing about other than that it is red, but were donated to the city of Sevilla for use as a public park in 1893. Sound. They were rearranged into the current layout of the park in the early twentieth century and of course a lot of work was put in for the Ibero-American Expo of 1929, just like the neighbouring Plaza. 

There are some smaller buildings around the edge of the park that I don't know a lot about yet but I'm making it my business to do so just as soon as I return from my little holiday at home, where I am now. Hasta pronto amigos x