Leaving Saville

This beautiful city is like a fairy tale.  But even fairy tales have another side.  We took a bus that traveled to the outskirts of the city, the place where the real people live.  It was not like a fairy tale but like any working class neighborhood.  There was a Costco and a Carrefour *the French supermarket ) and a big Renault plant, but as our taxi driver told us many of the kids, including hers had to go to Liverpool to find work.  There was a big park along the river that was lovely.  It was mostly deserted but I assume on the weekends it's used more.

On a more artistic note we came back into the center city and went to the Fine Arts Museum.  We had been there before but there was a new Murillo exhibit that was breathtaking.  The museum itself is lovely, built around a central courtyard with galleries leading off.  It's small but gem like. The Murillo's were massive religious painting that were done for a Capuchin Monastery.  There were about a dozen of them many at least twenty feet tall.  They were done in the sixteenth century and hung in the monastery.  But during the Napoleonic Wars they were captured and take to France.  They were returned to Seville  in the nineteenth century but had been pretty heavily damaged.  The museum had done a lot of restoration work and they looked beautiful.    One of the things I love about Murillo is that he used ordinary working people as his models, so the Virgen Mary looks like a serving girl.  

We had a lovely meal across the river from our place in Triana.  I was sad to leave.