OTT Sevilla - Over the top and off down the other side

Being well overdue for a spotta kulcher, girlfriend Claire and I whizzed off to sunny Sevilla down in deepest Spain.

This was thanks to my old mate and former garage band confederate Glenn, who has established a gaff there, a casa even, with his partner Tracey. They were kind enough to invite us and we had a great time.

We came, we saw and were duly thrilled, charmed, interested, entertained and even genuinely gobsmacked: So a very sound plan.

Sevilla: the sweet smell of excess. This is the city of Velasquez and Carmen, and never does by halves what it can do by el shedload.

Textbook example No1 is the cathedral, as illustrated by one of my better pix. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Apparently you measure godspace by volume: Sevilla comes top, beating both St Peter's Rome and St Paul's London, though the fastidious will be quick to point out that Wren's masterpiece isn't Gothic.

Sevilla, like several other Spanish cathedrals, was built on the foundations of a previous mosque after the Moors were gradually expelled from Spain. First flatten your mosque . . . the cathedral builders wanted to create an edifice "so magnificent that posterity would think us mad". I can't say that they failed.

One bit of mosque that survived is the gorgeous Giralda, formerly the minaret and now the bell tower. The Moors actually wanted to knock it down rather than leave it to the infidels. But that notable extreme conservationist King Alphonse X declared he would put the lot of them to the sword if they touched a single brick of it. Who said town planning was boring?

Walking up the Giralda is also a great way to look out over the rooftops. I have a notoriously bad head for heights, but my tough babe girlfriend would have called me a wuss if I'd copped out. Actually it wasn't the biggest of deals compared to the 10,500ft Col du Galibier (See Blog maximum ruined underpants ratings, previous). So I did it.