Seville!

The whole group wanted to take a trip while Dan was here and we agreed on Seville! Mireille decided to join us on the trip, and thanks to her we had a seven passenger car/van and a hostel booked for Saturday night. Way to go Mireille! I think if we took the bus to Seville we all would have been throwing up by the time we got there.

Dan, Brittany, Dawn, Riley, Mireille and I left for Seville around 9:00AM (Annika decided to stay home to catch up on standards and lesson plans). The drive was beautiful for the first hour or so passing through the mountains. There was not a cloud in sight. Our excitement about the trip was evident as we found it necessary to sing the lyrics to every song on the CD including Alanis Morissette, Pink, Anna Nalick, and The Pretenders. Even Riley joined in when Sheryl Crow came on. I never heard Dan’s voice, after the first hour he was probably regretting his decision to go on a road trip with four other girls.

It took us about two and a half hours to get to Seville. It was exciting driving through a bigger city with extravagant fountains at each roundabout. Unfortunately, locating the hostel was a bit of a challenge. We drove around the city for another half an hour and switched drivers before finally finding it. What was nice about our hostel is that it was located right in the middle of the city and there was a 24 hour underground parking not too far away.
After checking in to our hostel we head out into the city. We were amused with various street entertainments. There was music, musicians, and dancing. There was this one guy on the street who had rigged this costume to look like a man and a woman dancing. It was amazing. His feet were the man dancers actual feet and he bent over and his hands went in the woman’s boots to look like her feet. Very confusing I’m assuming. I’ll attach a picture below so maybe you will understand what I’m talking about. After each song people gave him money. He drew quite a crowd. Dan and I were trying to figure out how much money he made each show. I think he probably did a dance every 10 or 15 min. We thought that after the show we watched at least 10-15 people put money in his bucket. We assumed that they put in at least one or two Euros. We estimated he makes at least 25 Euros a show every 15 minutes. Exhausting, but not bad money…I am currently making plans to learn how to do this to get some extra money on the weekends.
All over Seville there are people trying to get you to give them money. There are these crazy gypse ladies who shove this leaf thing into your hand and start reading your palm. After this they ask for a ton of money otherwise they will put bad curses on you and scream in your face. I almost got sucked into it, but Mireille saved me, Dan was not so fortunate…hah. We have proof below.
We were also confronted by a man playing the baritone at our dinner and asking for money, statue men, and a lady attempting to sing “La Bomba” at breakfast.

While walking through the city we saw some interesting things. There was this huge youth festival but we didn’t know why. Near one of the buildings there was a large group of emo/goth teenagers. I honestly thought some of them looked like they were straight out of the Michael Jackson Thriller music video. Many of them were dancing together to a few choreographed songs. We were so confused, still not quite sure what it was for, but definitely entertaining. After walking around for a while we stopped to get lunch. I split chicken paella (a common Spanish dish with rice, spices, and vegetables).

After lunch we walked to a Spanish castle, went in and walked around…took some pictures. When I say took some pictures, I mean ten, maybe. When Dawn says took some pictures, she took about 50. Throughout our two day trip to Seville she took over 150 pictures, ridiculous…but funny.

Later in the afternoon we were exhausted from traveling and walking around. We sat in the sun and had some café con leche (coffee). Later in the afternoon I wasn’t feeling kind of dizzy – maybe from the food or coffee. We went back to the hostel, relaxed and I took a quick nap. After the nap I started feeling better and we went out for dinner. We decided that we would create our own tapas restaurant crawl. At the first place we stopped at we ordered three tapas: a tomato basil bread thing, a cheese bread tapa, and one with onions and vegetables. The second place we went to we ordered potatoes and hot sauce, mushrooms and croquettes. I am not a big fan of croquettes, but Brittany likes them. They are kind of like deep fried bread ham and cheese…actually what am I talking about, I have no idea what is in them. Our third place we stopped at we just ordered some drinks. But the coolest thing as the last place was the live flamenco music and dancer. It was awesome, one of my favorite parts of the trip so far! They are so angry when singing flamenco music, it’s kind of scary. But the dancer was fabulous.

After the show we went back to the hostel to crash. In the morning we woke up early and went to mass at the massive – MASSIVE catholic cathedral. It was really interesting seeing guards at the church service. It was all in Spanish so I’m not quite sure what it was all about but I could pick up on a few words and sentences. After mass we got breakfast outside, I was so hungry and scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, fresh orange juice, and coffee tasted amazing.
We wanted to go into the rest of the cathedral, but it was closed until 2:30. If we left Seville that late we wouldn’t get home until dinner and a lot of us had lessons to prepare for Monday. It would have been really cool though, because apparently one of Christopher Columbus’s tombs is located at the cathedral. Instead we went to a flamenco museum with pictures and looked at the gift shop.

After stopping at STARBUCKS (we had to) for a coffee and sandwich…I feel like I’m drinking a lot of coffee…we headed home. We didn’t have as good of luck getting back as we did traveling to Seville. A two and a half hour trip turned into four. I was in the very back of the car with all the bags so I just attempted to stretch my legs over the bags and sleep to pass the time and avoid car sickness. It worked pretty well.
When we finally got home it was time to plan for some lessons and then go to bed. Seville was so much fun, one of my favorite parts of the trip so far. I am excited for our possible trips to Morocco and Madrid! =]