¡Seville!

This past weekend was our adventure to Seville! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but everyone I talked to described it as being amazing and beautiful, so I was pretty excited. It started off with a nice 6 hour bus ride…yup. And that one only started after we took an hour long bus ride from Toledo to Madrid where we then took the subway to our bus station. The joys of traveling! It wasn’t too bad actually, considering we had a lot of leg room (weird right?). Since we left at 10am from Madrid we got to Seville at about 4. We found our hostel no problem with the help of Mike’s navigation skills. It was a nice, clean hostel, with not-so-friendly French owners who made us turn in our key every time we left and who gave our keys back without so much as asking for identification. That was a bit sketchy/scary. Amy and I were upstairs, with the guys downstairs right next to the front door. We were lucky enough to be down the hall from some serious pot-smokers…one day it reeked like nothing I have ever smelled before…

Our first day consisted of wandering around near our hostel. We explored Corte Ingles (a department store like Boston Store, but with a floor for every department pretty much. Oh and they had a flower section). After that we split up, with Maren, Matteo and I going to explore more buildings and the other group taking a shopping trip to H&M and other stores. We explored a smaller church, which all the churches here are really cool and old with paintings and interesting sculptures. Hunger struck so we headed to an Irish café to get some caffeine. I tried café caribeño which probably had more chocolate sauce than it had expresso, and it definitely had more whipped cream than it had expresso. Thus, it was delicious. Matteo had the guts to try café dolce which had a splash of cream of whiskey in it. The Spaniards LOVE their whiskey. Apparently it was actually really good. Maren ordered a delicious looking chicken sandwich and hot chocolate (think a cup of melted chocolate..mmm). After this we headed back to the hostel to meet up with the others. After an eclectic dinner of foods from the grocery store we headed out for a bit. Our friend Brooke was in Seville for the weekend as well with her parents, so we ended up meeting up with them and took them to a Flamenco show (the only free one in Seville!). It was in a really interesting bar, and the area where the show was was packed (lots of tourists). The flamenco performers consisted of a heavier woman in a purple dress with a more-or-less manly-ish face, a male singer with a long dark ponytail and facial expressions of near-tears when appropriate for the song, and then two other guys on guitars. The music was surprisingly good, considering the fact that it seemed like it was improve most of the time. The dancer didn’t dance for the first few songs, but when she finally got up and danced she was ridiculously good. My legs would fall off if I tried to dance like she did. I don’t think I can even stomp that hard…We watched two different parts of the show before leaving. (We saw people drinking this white-smoothie type drink and found out it was called “Agua de Seville”. I forget how many liqueurs the waiter said were in it, but basically it is a ton of different alcohols with some cream and ice and it’s called the water of drunks, lol. We tried finding it the rest of the weekend to try it, but failed. I guess I’ll just have to return to Seville someday :)


After the show a few headed back to the hostel, while the rest of us went to another bar for some wine. We ordered a bottle for all of us, and just sat and talked. The night spiced up when we spent about 2 hours or more trying to find our way back to our hostel. Seville is a confusing city to begin with, and we somehow managed to end up without a map….Needless to say, I enjoyed seeing almost all of Seville at about 3am :)

After breakfast in our hostel the next morning we headed out to start touring the city! We saw:

-The Cathedral- ridiculously huge and amazing. This was definitely my favorite part. I saw Christopher Columbus’s tomb!! We also were able to climb the Giralda, which is the tallest tower of the cathedral, with 35 flights of ramps to the top. The view from the top is amazing-you could literally see all of Seville! I have never experienced such a great view before. It was soo windy up there; I was almost blown off of the window area where I was standing, lol.

-Torre de Oro- this was also really cool. The name basically means Tower of Gold, which I think it gets from its goldish color. This also had a huge tower which we climbed to the top of (not as high as the cathedral). Inside there were a lot of exhibits about Christopher Columbus’s trip to America. It was really cool seeing all the paintings and especially the recreated mini-models of all the ships on the voyage.

-The Alcázar- which usually means palace, but I think this one was more just like a donated house of someone really rich. It was interesting, there wasn’t much inside to see, and since the gardens were closed (which is the best part) it was a little disappointing. We were still able to see some of the gardens, but not even close to all of them :(

-Plaza de Toros- unfortunately I didn’t get to go in and take the tour, but I saw the pictures and the outside. I would love to return and go here in the summer when there are actually bull fights taking place! Whatcha think mom?!! How’s a bloody bullfight sound to you?! ;)

-Plaza de España- This was ridiculously huge and cool to see. It was a half-circle building with all of the cities represented by a painting on the walls. (outdoors).

We also just walked along the edge of the Guadalquivir River, which was really cool with all the interesting bridges. Amy and I bought these sweet souvenir board things with pictures on them of Seville. We walked a TON this day! I was soo sore the next day!

We did another eclectic dinner of interesting pre-made ham/cheese/croissant/mysterious sauce? Sandwich things, carrots, cheese slices, ice-cream bars, and very cheap (and disgusting) sparkling Rosado wine. Since it was close to Brooke’s birthday we decided to go out for a bit and celebrate! Some people wanted to try orange wine, so we found a restaurant which had it. It tasted a bit like orange flavored cough syrup. I didn’t really mind it, but a lot of people didn’t like it. We had an interesting encounter with Spain’s drunk homeless here…this drunk homeless guy came up to our table, grabbed Brooke’s stepdad’s glass (with wine in it) and put it up to his lips. He was mumbling and clearly wanted more alcohol. He was a very aggressive homeless man; we had to pretty much yell at him to get him to leave. He then proceeded to run inside the restaurant where they didn’t hesitate to scream at him to leave. After this he went to a table outside a different bar, and I presume, he picked up one of their glasses and dropped it, as we heard shattering glass soon after.

After the homeless encounter we left, with information about where the night life of Seville is, thanks to our waiter. Walking through most of Seville it is pretty much dead at night. We barely saw anyone, until we arrived at the recommended street. There were about 5 or so bars on the street and every single one was packed to capacity and spilling out onto the street. We finally found a semi-well hid one which wasn’t as packed, and we found seats in the back area where we could chat. After a round of tinto veranos everyone proceeded to celebrate Brooke’s birthday. We had a great time, and even managed to meet some lying Spaniards (2 claimed they were brother-in-laws to Brooke, then later a different one told Brooke those two were brothers). Brooke and I pulled the sister routine of course. Though this time we gave up trying to convince people that we were from Germany, since neither of us speaks a word of German. We left the bar at closing time (4am) and took the long, but sure (we were not about to wander Seville again for 2 hours, as fun as that was…) route home – in bed by 5:30am. Actually relatively early for a Spaniard. I feel though, that we are becoming more and more Spanish as the days pass. Not only do we stay out almost as late as them, but most of us are developing our Spanish attitudes (no, no, noooooo and other seemingly-whiny Spanish responses) and our ability to lisp almost every word containing a ‘c’ or ‘z’. I have also slowly acquired a liking for Iberian ham, which is basically cured raw salty ham (think beef jerky of ham that is very very moist). We also have perfected our ability to bargain, obtain free maps, and ignore ridiculous comments. We still need to work on our comebacks to these comments, however.

Sunday passed easily and calmly. We found the Spanish equivalent to Subway (of course it didn’t taste as good) and enjoyed another 6 hour bus ride home – this time in a bus with much less leg room.

This coming weekend I’m off to Andalucía once again (Seville is in Andalucía also – which is southern Spain for those of you who don’t know Spain very well. Think nice 60s – 70s weather!). This time I’m going on the trip with our program. We’re hitting up Córdoba and Granada. I cannot wait!!

I swear I’m going to write about Madrid and Malaga soon…bahaha