This morning I was in no rush to get out the door and moving, since I figured just about everywhere except the major tourist places (two of which I'd done yesterday) would be closed. From my hostel, I headed east to Casa de Pilatos, or Pilate's House. It's a 15th-century mansion built by the royal family of Tarifa, one of medieval Spain's royal fiefdoms, in the Moorish style. However, the most interesting part about the complex is that the original building was modeled after the dimensions of Pontius Pilate's home in Jerusalem. How those metrics are still known, I have no idea, but the original builder went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and came back with the idea to build it. It is located exactly as far from an important Spanish shrine outside Seville as Pontius Pilate's house was from Golgotha in Jerusalem. Thus, the builder then created a "stations of the cross" walk from his home to the Cross of Field shrine outside Seville's walls, and this became a popular religious walk for Seville's citizens.
I took a good hour and a half to walk through the house and gardens, because although not as impressive as the Alcazar (not a lot could be), the Casa de Pilatos was an incredible example of Mudejar art and architecture splashed with elements of Gothic and Renaissance influences as well.
Like parts of the Alcazar, the building forms around a central patio or courtyard, with several stories of rooms enclosing it. The bottom floor walls were all covered in Moorish-style tiles, which the family had specially commissioned, since the Moors had been expelled from Seville in 1248 and Spain altogether in 1492. Above the tile walls were 24 original Roman busts of emperors and generals that made up the original Count of Tarifa's sculpture collection, along with some larger ones that occupied the four corners of the patio. I was most taken aback by all the arches, because just like the Alcazar they were all incredibly ornately decorated with stucco friezes around them. But I won't bore you all with any more art history details.
After Casa de Pilatos, I went down to the Plaza de Burgos and had lunch at a tapas place called Las Coloniales, that both my hostel and a friend who studied abroad here recommended. Right about then, it started to rain reasonably hard and so I just took a lengthy lunch break under an umbrella outside and ate and read my book for awhile. Since I'm never really sure what I'm getting when they don't have an English menu, I looked up a few things in my dictionary and then just guessed at what I thought was a salmon plank served with ham. However, it turned out that "plank" is also a big piece of toast; what I ended up getting was a massive piece of toast with a salmon spread (think the consistency of sweet potatoes) slathered on it and then a bunch of roasted ham pieces on top. It was really good though, so I didn't mind the surprise.
Then, taking a wild guess and what may or may not be open on Holy Week, I went back toward the Catedral and Alcazar in order to see if the Archivo General de los Indos was open, which is a museum similar to Madrid's Museo de America. Since Seville was one of the top ports of medieval Spain, and where Ferdinand & Isabella welcomed Columbus back from America, it has a lot of good maps and documents and other bits of history related to the Age of Exploration. However...it wasn't open. It was only 2 o'clock on a Thursday, right?? Who am I to dare think that a museum might be open on 2 o'clock on a weekday??
After this, I figured my next potential stop - the Archaeological Museum - would also be closed, but I gave it a shot anyways. Along the way, I cut south to the River Guadalquivir to see the Torre de Oro. As the Alhomad regime was crumbling in the early 1200s, the amir Muhammed an-Nasir ordered that the remaining Muslim strongholds in Andalucia adequately fortify themselves. His son, the future amir Yusuf II, was in charge of Seville and built the 12-sided Torre de Oro (tower of gold). Originally, it was covered in gold tiles, but these were stripped away hundreds of years ago. The tower was one point that controlled a massive chain that stretched across the harbor and protected Seville's valuable harbor. During the siege of 1248, the Christian fleet rammed the chain and broke it, allowing for the city to fall more easily into Christian hands.
The small naval museum inside the Torre de Oro was closed, but Frommer's said it didn't really feature anything special, so I didn't really care. Instead, I headed south along the river on Paseo de las Delicias and into Maria Liusa Park to attempt to go to the Archaeological Museum. Inside the park, I went and briefly saw the Plaza de Espana, a massive crescent-shaped building built for the Spanish-American exposition in 1929 that brought together all of Spain's former colonies for a big cultural fiesta. On a prettier day, this place would be great to sit and read a book or something - people were renting rowboats and bicycles - but the on/off drizzle just made me want to push on. I got to the museum - surprise! it was closed - but took some good pictures of the Mudejar architecture on some of the pavillions there and at Plaza de Espana on my way out.
At this point, I'd been walking since after lunch for a good 2 1/2 hours (the park looked deceivingly close on the map) and needed to get off my feet again. I headed back toward the Barrio de Santa Cruz east of the Cathedral, a neighborhood known for narrow medieval streets and an overall charming feel. I got coffee and read my book for a bit, but when I noticed that it was 5 o'clock and, rain or not, people were setting up chairs for more processions, I knew I had to high-tail it home or else get stuck in the crowds for another night. I wouldn't mind seeing the processions again, but I can do that from my hostel neighborhood (or anywhere else, for that matter) and didn't need to be at the Cathedral right in the middle of everyone. 
As I was walking home, I noticed that a lot of people were beginning to drift toward the Cathedral for a Maundy Thursday mass (the bells in the Giralda were going crazy). The men and boys were all wearing suits (they had been all day) with purple ties. A fair amount of the women, though not all of them, were wearing a black dress and veil that poofed up off the back of their head and then came down the front. Spain is definitely more religiously... ostentatious? than we are. It was very neat to see all the cultural disparities between their overwhelmingly Catholic society and that of France, where I spent last Easter.
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