Last night I caught a ride through BlaBlaCar from Murcia to Sevilla. It was about a four hour drive, and I have to say... The countryside here is even more beautiful than eastern Spain. You go from Arizona with palm trees to rolling mountains of red and brown with greenery thrown in and layered hills of multicolored rock. Watching it pass us by as the sun went down was indescribable. Unfortunately, I was so enthralled watching it that I forgot to take pictures. Guess you'll just have to see it for yourself!
Turns out my driver and one of the passengers were headed to Sevilla to party and do some revisiting of the tourist sites. They invited me to go out with them, which I was totally going to do, but I by the time I sat on my bed in the hostel, I was too exausted to move and ended up falling asleep.
The hostel a pretty nice. It's called the Feetup Samay Hostel and it's located pretty well in the center of Sevilla where all the cool stuff is within a half hour walk. The attitude of the hostels here are so much different, because you don't get Spanish people working at Spanish hostels. For whatever reason, they tend to be British or German Erasmus students or something along those lines, and immediately upon hearing them speak Spanish you're like, "Your accent! It's worse than mine! Boo-ya!" And then when they figure out I can speak English they ask me if I want them to talk to me in English and I politely respond, "No. Estamos en España."
I met a couple cool girls from Michigan and told them about couchsurfing, got a free shot at the bar up above the hostel, and NEARLY went out for a pub crawl with the rest of the hostel gang, but I'm forty million years old and need my beauty sleep.
The next morning I posted a bunch of messages on CouchSurfing and then left my stuff at the hostel to go explore the city. I had all day up until about six when I would need to head to the airport for my flight to Las Canarias. No one responded (what is going on with you, Spain?!) but it wasn't even necessary. The guys from last night texted me to see if I wanted to hang out and see the city with them, so I did that! They had to come find me, though, because I was totally lost. I gave them the metro station name I was next to and they came to find me and walked me around the city, explaining some of the he history of the buildings and guy-watching with me. It was a blast!
One thing that Sevilla has zero shortage of is parks. Parks and parks and parks EVERYWHERE. But it's definitely a good thing. This city looks like it actually takes care of its parks, and each one has a fountain or multiple fountains to add to their aesthetic appeal.
Small fountain,
Slightly bigger fountain.
One of the coolest buildings in Sevilla was this thing (I think it's a Palacio... I'll have to look it up because I forget). It's huge and every couple meters along the base of the buildings, you can visit little sections that represent all the areas in Spain. There was one for Murcia!
Murcia's little cubicle.
Aside from that, Sevilla has one of the most impressive churches I've ever seen. The architecture is exquisite. The older section of it used to be a mosque, and you can tell where the old section ends and the Christian-reclamation era section starts by looking at the walls and the doors. Mozarabic doors look like keyholes. Christian doors do not.
We had some lunch (jamón serrano, ciabatta baguettes, sugar donuts, beer. Yum.) and we split up so they could go back to their hotel and I could go explore some stuff for myself. I'm glad I met them!!
I headed for a couple landmarks that were easily visible and just sorta wandered around for a while, nothing special. There were still a couple hours to kill before I needed to be at the airport.
The river Guadalquivir (I think it comes from an Arabic word Wad al-quivir?).
There's a really cool old wall that surrounds an entire barrio (that's what they call sections of the city, sort of like neighborhoods). I followed it halfway around and then diverged. Next time I'm in Sevilla, I'll have to go inside and see what there is!
Of course, I wasn't satisfied seeing just the big stuff so I started trying to find all the tiny streets and hidden places within the city. The streets are much cleaner here than anywhere else I've been, it doesn't smell like puke anywhere, and it's surprisingly quiet. I love Sevilla!
I evenended up running into a little flamenco performance. Flamenco is a style of dance/music for which Sevilla is famous.
My time by this point was running a bit short, so I got my stuff back from the hostel and headed to the bus station. I saw an ad for a frappe, and, thinking it would be like what I had in Greece, gave into temptation. Unfortunately, it cost me four times more, and was exactly like an American frappe, which is super gross.
Then I saw this wonderful thing:
This. This is perfect.
The airport was uneventful. I spent most of the time sitting next to a wall charger charging my phone and camera since I'd accosted both of them with overuse throughout the day, and boarded the plane when it was time to go. It was getting cold at night in Sevilla and in most of Spain, so I'm glad I'm leaving tonight. Currently it's dark and 72 degrees in Las Canarias. I. Can. Not. Wait.
Wish me luck!
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