Sevilla, España

Sevilla Blog Entry
Sevilla was a spur of the moment decision. I knew I wanted to go at some point while in Spain, but it happened to be this past weekend because Ryanair is awesome. While paroozing their website I stumbled upon round trip tickets from Alicante to Sevilla for less than 30€! After trying to convince my friend Hill to go with me and not having any luck, my friend John walked into the University of Alicante cafeteria and asked if I wanted to go with him, Carli, Steph, and Carolyn to Sevilla to celebrate Carolyn's 21st birthday. Que casualidad! What a coincidence! I had my ticket purchased within 5 minutes. We left Thursday after class and had our first smooth Ryanair flight. We found our hostel and, to our pleasant surprise, it was one street away from a really cool park called Alamada de Hurcules. The alamada had a mosaic tile floor in sections, fountains, benches and was encircled by about 50 different bars, cafes and tapa places. Not bad for randomly selecting a hostel location. The hostel itself was really cool too. We had a private ensuite- which means rather than dorm style with strangers the five of us had our own room and bathroom. The atmosphere was very chill too. When we walked in a bunch of hippies from the Netherlands were playing acoustic guitar and singing Bob Dylan and the third floor terrace was always bustling. We took it easy Thursday night and just checked out a few places around the alamada, knowing that the next night would be Carolyn's 21st. We woke up early Friday to get a full day of tourism in. The first thing we wanted to find was the Cathedral and right when we got the steeple in sight a guy driving a horse drawn carriage stopped and asked us if we wanted a ride to the Cathedral. I laughed at him and pointed at the steeple just two blocks away. Nice try, señor. He laughed and said that it was actually a tour of the city that ended at the cathedral. The girls were really into it and before asking a price had already jumped in. Worried about breaking the bank in our first hour exploring Sevilla, I made sure to talk to the driver before getting in. For 10€ each the five of us got a carriage tour for an hour. It was perfect because we really got out bearings of the city that none of us knew at all. After we got out of the carriage we met up with Carolyn's friend from home who was studying in the city and was waiting at the cathedral. Her name is Sam and she had brought a friend (who was actually from Michigan). We all toured the cathedral and then went up the tower. The tower was 34 stories and was designed for horses to climb up it, so instead of stairs it had a series of ramps. After the cathedral and tower we all headed back to our part of the city to get dinner and hang out a little bit before going to a free flamenco show. David, the guy who was in charge of the hostel, organized this every weekend for the clients. We met in the lobby and walked to a flamenco bar. I'm not sure if the free price tag had anything to do with it, but I enjoyed this flamenco show more than the "famous" one that we had seen just a week earlier in Valencia that had cost us 19€. Everyone agreed. After the flamenco show we headed back to the bar area around our hostel to celebrate Carolyn's birthday. We woke up a little slower Saturday morning, but still got up relatively early, had a great Spanish breakfast, and then headed to an open-air market. Afterwards we went through the shopping district (which is very difficult to walk through when you're traveling with 3 girls) and then spent the entire afternoon at Plaza de España. Plaza españa in Sevilla is something like a shrine to Spain. It is a huge semicircle building with a moat around it. Around the front of the building are different bench sections all next to each other and each one is dedicated to a city in Spain. Behind each bench is a mosaic of a scene correlated with each city and on the floor in front of the benches are maps of the region around the city. Naturally we all took pictures on the Alicante bench. After a little wandering and exploring of the monument we rented a rowboat and enjoyed a nice row around the moat. After plaza de españa we split up into two groups- Steph and Carli went back to shop in the same shops that we have in Alicante (only in Sevilla) while Jon, Carolyn and I went down to the riverfront to find the Torre de Oro. It was the docking sight of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Columbus left for the new world from this sight and also returned to it, dropping off his piles of gold stolen from America. The tower was originally built in the 13th century as a watchtower. After the torre we decided to walk back along the river, even though it was quite a bit farther that way. We didn't care. It had been a beautiful day and the sun setting over the river made our decision a lot easier. As we walked along the boardwalk we saw crew teams rowing down the river, floating bars and restaurants, boats, the setting sun and as we continued to walk we heard a rumbling that grew louder and as we walked around a river bed we saw the boardwalk open up and covering the benches on each side of this plaza was a couple hundred people, all our age, just sitting around, drinking, playing music and getting ready to go out for the night. We spent a little time checking out the area, talking to a few people and then had to go, unfortunately, because we had to meet up with the other two girls. We did dinner, the girls got ready to go out, and then we went to the bars around or hostel again, only this time we were only at the bars to kill time before the discotecas. Carolyn and her friend wanted to go to a big dance club to celebrate her birthday. We headed over the club district around two, arriving 20 min later. We got in line at the most popular club in Sevilla only to find out that after 2am it was a 30€ entrance fee! HA, that's a good joke... That is more than our Ryanair round trip flight cost! We walked down the street to another giant dance club only to find out the same thing was true there. Although Sevilla is an amazing city, this made me pretty happy to be studying in Alicante. We ended up settling for a large bar/ smallish discoteca and having a very good time. The next morning my four amigos left for the airport and I set out into Sevilla to enjoy a nice, peaceful day alone. I went to the palace and toured its grounds and then went over to a park that a waiter had told us about the day before- something about it having 3000 trees and lots of fountains. He wasn't kidding! It was a pretty cool place. Afterwards I walked back to the center of the city and then down to the riverfront where I was going to kill time until my friend Lauren from Washington and Lee was done with her and intercambio. She showed up to the tapa restaurant about an hour after me. In the meantime, I had made friends with the waiter and cook at this little place (where they only had one other table to worry about). They were both native to Sevilla and had lived their entire lives there. As we made small talk they kept putting free tapas in front of me. Of course I had ordered one with me beer when I had first gotten there (Spaniards rarely drink without food), but they told me that they liked me and about four free tapas later Lauren showed up. I think the restaurant workers like how much I enjoyed their food. I'm a poor college kid traveling on his own €- nice meals are few and far between when I'm not having Stella put them in front of me. Lauren and I had beer and ordered another tapa but the restaurant was closing so we paid and moved on to another place. After macadillos we split ways and I headed back to my new hostel (closer to the airport because I had a very early flight the next day). I went up to my room, which I was sharing with 9 other people to relax a little and found four Italians who had just arrived. None of them spoke English but were all more or less fluent in Spanish, so we could get by. They invited me out to dinner with them and although I was full, I went anyway. It was a good opportunity to practice Spanish and also get out of the hostel with people rather than just alone. It was a Sunday night, so nothing big was happening, but we still have fun.