Sevilla - February 4-6

A big Happy Birthday to my dad.. sad I couldn't be home to celebrate!  This weekend I headed to Seville, Spain with my friends Caroline, Lauren, Madeline, Andrea, Esteban and Ryan.  Seville is a 3 hour bus ride from Granada and very similar to our city, minus being a bit more spread out.  We got really lucky also because the weather was absolutely gorgeous; sunshine and 60 degrees (yes Fahrenheit) the entire time!  Here’s a little more about my adventure…

We decided to ride bikes... I don't think I've been on bike since the 3rd grade.

The morning started out to be an adventure in itself.  Our bus was leaving Granada at 8 am.  I live closest to my friend Lauren so we decided that she was going to take a taxi from her apartment to meet me at la mercadona (grocery store) so we could board the bus to get to the bus station.  I woke up so early, yet again, to prepare.. my senora even woke up with me to make me sandwiches for the bus ride (how nice right?!).  Lauren and I got to the bus stop right as planned, about 7, and got on bus #33 to get to the station.  We’re sitting on the bus with our enormously large backpacks (screaming tourist) for about 20 minutes when this girl tells us (a bit rudely if you ask me) that we’re going the completely opposite direction and we’re in a town in the SIERRA NEVADAS, yes the mountains.  We jump off the bus to realize we have NO idea where we are, cool.  Thank god there was a lady and her kids outside and we asked them for help… the lady told us that there was no use in calling a taxi because it would take FOREVER to get there and be really expensive.  Her kids walked us to the RIGHT bus stop and Lauren and I got on praying that we’d make our bus, it being 7:30 at this point.  To make a long story short, we rode the bus for 15 more minutes, got off and called a taxi, who wouldn’t come pick us up, therefore gave up, got back on the bus, and rode all the way to the station where we arrived at 8:30.  Our friends were all on their way to Seville!  Thankfully another bus was leaving at 10, but the bus station would not give us a discounted ticket or refund us our money so it ended up being a 20 euro mistake.. grr.  Looking back on it, Lauren and I laugh and agreed to NEVER take a bus again.

We arrived in Seville at the Garden Backpacker Inn.  Our hostel was awesome… super clean and the staff was really nice too!  We were in another 6 person dorm (that looked just like the one in Madrid) with a girl that didn’t speak, another girl from the states who had been living in Italy for 2 years, and a girl from Atlanta (I think?) who was rude and liked to sleep naked, COOL.  We unpacked a bit and decided to take the hostel’s free tour of the city.  It was 3 hours long and our tour guide was a girl from New York who had moved to Sevilla about a year ago… she was an awesome tour guide with all her stories and we were able to see most of the top tourist attractions in Sevilla (at least from the outside).  On our tour we had some recently graduated med students from Barcelona, and one of them, Eduardo, became particularly interested in talking to me.. and made it pretty obvious.  When we left the tour he ran after us and asked us to hang out later so we gave him our Spanish cell phone numbers.  He texted me to ask me to get a drink later… don’t worry I rejected; I wasn’t about to be the lead star in Taken: the sequel although they seemed harmless.

Plaza Mayor

We got back to our hostel and paid to have homemade paella there.  The owners of the hostel come and cook every Friday night… for 6 euro we got a heaping plate of paella and sangria!  It was meat/seafood paella and soo good, I’m definitely going to miss that going back to the states.  Our group ended up hanging outside on the patio until midnight, talking and getting to know each other way better than I expected… one of my favorite nights so far!  We decided to head out to see what the night life was like, so we went to wherever we saw the most people.  The bars here are super tiny and most people just grab their drinks and hang out and drink in the streets.  Something must have been up that night, because all of a sudden these police officers came and cleared out the area… someone mentioned something about a drug bust but who knows, we left anyways.

Christopher Columbus Statue

Day 2 was our crazy touristy day.  Our first stop was el Alcazar, or Sevilla’s version of the Alhambra.  Not to sound like a brat, but it was nothing special, especially after seeing the Alhambra itself.  After getting lost in the huge gardens (aka half the group ditching Madeline, Caroline and I) we stumbled upon a nice restaurant to get some menu del dia.  The waiter here was extremely touchy HAHA good thing I wasn’t sitting on the end, right Lauren?  After lunch we went to el Catedral, the 3^rd biggest in the world!  Everything was so intricate and gorgeous like 99% of the things in Europe.  Christopher Columbus is even buried inside this cathedral; DNA tests say they have 10 percent of his bones here in Sevilla – props to the tour guide for that one.  Attached to the cathedral is the tower… someone would have to climb up this tour each day, multiple times a day, to ring the bells.  Since they were smart back then, they made 36 ramps in order to get to the top… instead of walking the whole way up back then they were able to take horses up.  We climbed, without a horse unfortunately, to the top to get a gorgeous view of Sevilla!

el Catedral

The tower we climbed.

Altar inside the Catedral

View of Sevilla from the Giralda

We were all pretty tired of walking, so we decided to rent bikes to see the rest of the city we wanted to.  We found this sweet guy from England to rent us bikes for 3 euro an hour.  With Esteban leading, we went back to Plaza de Espana and rode around.  Parque Maria Luisa, another famous park, was right next door so we took our bikes around there for a while also, complete with “biker gang” pics to remember the day by.  After driving by the river to see it at night, we returned the bikes and headed back to our hostel.  On the way we stopped at the grocery store to buy some stuff to cook dinner so we didn’t have to spend a million dollars going out to eat.  I called it a night because I had a pounding headache once again and medicine wasn’t working… I gotta learn how to handle these long days better!

A bunch of the group went to mass at the cathedral, but Lauren, Caroline and I wandered around a bit and then met the group up after church.  We were able to sneak a few glances inside the church when mass was going on.  They had many masses going on at all the different altars and mass here was very quick, only about 45 minutes.  We walked across the river to Triana, a small town within Sevilla.  They’re really famous for their fresh food market and we were very excited to experience it… until we realized it was Sunday and the world literally shuts down in Spain on Sundays.  Instead of spending more time there, we relaxed by the river in the grass.  Feeling a little homesick yet again we decided to get a real American lunch.  Yes, I’m slightly embarrassed to say it but we did try Burger King – we were just curious on the difference!  You could tell how much better they prepare their food in Spain, regardless of it being fast food!  It actually tasted like real meat, unlike the rubber you get in the states.  We grabbed our stuff from the hostel and walked to the bus station where we headed back to Granada!

The river at night after our bike ride.

The group we went with was such a blast, definitely glad I got to know them better this weekend!  My city rankings (in order of how I like them, Granada being excluded) are Sevilla and then Madrid.  I leave for London in 4 days – can’t wait to see the adventure that’s going to bring!