I recently travelled to Seville, Ohio as part of my "Grand Tour" of Ohio cities named after European capitols. You can read about my trip on my "BrightMeadow on Bicycle" blog.
I was blessed to be able to visit Seville, Spain during my junior year abroad in college back in 1977. My friend and I travelled by train to Andalucia during Holy Week. This was during the era of Instamatic cameras, and I was a student on a limited budget, that did not include a lot of money for film and processing. Nevertheless, I managed to get a few photos at "La Plaza de Espana", which was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition (like a World's Fair).
I looked a lot different then!
Seville is in the heart of Andalusia, and Sevilla is the most important inland port of Spain. The port’s principal exports are wines, fruit, olives, cork, and minerals. I visited a cork tree farm during the year I was in Spain, but it was further to the north. Seville is famous for its bitter oranges. Winter is the orange season in Seville, Spain. The trees are beautiful, but the Spanish don’t eat the bitter fruit. Instead, most of the oranges grown on local farms are exported to Britain to be made into marmalade. According to an article on Springwise.com, the municipal water company, Emasesa, collects wasted fruit that falls on city streets, and uses it in an existing facility that generates electricity from organic matter.
Sherry is produced in nearby Jerez de la Frontera and in the region.
If you are interested in gardens and you go there, one not-to be missed place is the Reales Alcázares and Gardens: In 1364 King Pedro I built his palace upon the site of a fortress dating back to the Moorish period. It took just two years to build including the surrounding gardens. Over the years different monarchs added to the palace and gardens. The Alcázares gardens are made up of different types of trees, pretty flowers, ponds,fountains, pavillions and terraces. The Patio del Yeso is an exquisite garden in which the flower beds and water channels dating back to the original 12th century fortress have been preserved. I visited this garden during my travel.
My little Instamatic photo does not show nearly the detail as the no-doubt professionally photographed image above. Or perhaps, I have gotten a reflecting pool from Granada or Cordoba instead!
Typical dishes in Seville include gazpacho, Andalucian stew (chickpeas and vegetables), Flamencan eggs, Sevillan style beef (which may be presented as a bull's tail), Sevillan style duck, prawn salad and spicy potato salad.
I tried the Andalusian potato salad recipe from "The New Spanish Table" cookbook. It consisted of boiled potatoes, mixed with peppers and onions and scallions and tomatoes, dressed with a sherry vinegar and olive oil. I used white wine vinegar from my pantry, and it came out well. There is also a recipe for gazpacho in this cookbook.
Gazpacho is a cold tomato-based soup. It is similar recipe to the tomato salad, but take out the potatoes and put in a cucumber and some bread crusts. Here is a link to a typical recipe provided by Cooks Without Borders. 
One thing both recipes have in common is that they call for tomatoes. Tomatoes were unknown in the "Old World" until they were introduced by the Spanish conquistadores exploring Peru. The word "tomato" comes from "tomatl," an Aztec word that is a very clear influence for the word tomato. Additional history of how the tomato came to be used in the old world can be found on this web site on epicurean culture.
I had high hopes for the "Matina" variety of tomatoes for my garden this year. Matina is very early, salad sized tomato with heavy yield, good taste, and good disease resistance. I started 72 plants from seed. Unfortunately, only one survived the night of frost when I neglected to bring the seedlings in from the deck. I am currently nursing the one plant along. I bought a few other tomato plants to replace the ones that were killed by frost, but I will not find "Matina" variety plants, I am sure. I will try again next year. I am going to have to be more careful, at my age I will not get too many more chances to replant next year.
There are going to be a few cold nights, into the 30's again, this week.
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