Sevilla trip

Sevilla is beautiful! We made the 3 hour drive from Granada Friday afternoon, just when everyone else was starting their Semana Santa vacations. In California, this timing would mean horrible traffic jams, but it's a whole different story here. With everyone relying on buses and trains, even the busy times on the 2 lane roads are easy. Javi even let me drive a bit! It was hard to make myself get the speedometer up to 120, and also to keep it there. The speed changes so drastically in kilometers per hour! 120 kpm is like 70 mph and that's the speed limit on most freeways here. But we made it safe and sound.

To save money, we stayed in a hostel that had great location. We were lucky enough to get at private room with its own bathroom, and no loud people staying there! After dropping our stuff off, we wandered downtown towards the cathedral. This thing was huge. It's the 3rd largest church in the world and THE largest Gothic cathedral. We just walked around the perimeter, which took like 10 minutes. There were people waiting all around it and chairs and walkways all set up for Semana Santa. Holy Week starts the Sunday before Easter and ends on Easter, but in Sevilla, they get really into it and can't wait so they start on the Friday before. Javi says people live for this week! What is basically consists of are processions of people carrying these giant things that look like floats, but are made out of wood and gold and depict scenes from Jesus' death and resurrection. There are people dressed like Ku Klux Klan members (not kidding) with candles that walk after the floats and marching bands that go before. They walk super slow and block many major roads because every church in each city has these. They all walk from their church to the town hall to the cathedral and back. So it sucks if your church is far away. I'll post pictures from Granada's processions later! Anyway, in Sevilla, people with apartments that overlook major roads where many processions will go rent out their balconies to people can watch the parades. It's like a week of 4th of July parades!

We decided there were not enough people waiting for the Friday procession, so that meant it wasn't going to be for a while. We wandered down a random street and found a fried fish place (a staple in Andalucìa), so we had some of that while waiting for a friend. We were meeting up with Ramón who had also studied abroad in Davis and is from Sevilla. We met him at a bar that had heads of bulls killed in bullfights on the walls. Lovely. After dinner, Javi talked me into getting a Burger King ice cream. I haven't stepped into one of these places in so long! They sell beer at fast food places in Spain! As in, if you get one of those meal package thingies, they ask if you want a soda or beer. We went back to the hostel and went to sleep, which turned out to be my downfall.
When I woke up, I couldn't swallow or speak or anything. It was the worst sore throat I've ever had. On the way to breakfast, we went to a pharmacy to get Ibuprofen and the pharmacist also gave me giant Altoids. He said to dissolve these things on my tongue every 3 hours to make my throat feel better. They worked, but they tasted exactly like Altoids and had the same numbing effect Altoids have. But oh well, my throat felt better AND my breath was minty fresh. We started off on a wandering tour to see all the main attractions in Sevilla. My favorite part about this city was that all the trees along the sidewalks are orange trees, and we were there when they were all blossoming, so the whole city smelled so so so good!

We started off walking along the Guadalquivir River, which had lots of rowing teams practicing in it. Along this is the Gold Tower (Torre de Oro), where all the trading ships used to unload. Actually, that's part of the reason Sevillans' accents are so much more understandable to me (no lisping); there were a lot of South American traders coming through, and their accents stuck in Sevilla. Next came the famous Plaza España, which of course was under construction (like most things I see here). But it was still impressive and had benches all the way around, one for each county in Spain. Across from this was the Parque de Marìa Luisa. It was really gigantic with lots of fearless ducks and geese roaming around. We also saw the University, which used to be a cigar factory, and is where the opera Carmen is supposed to take place. They still use the building for university purposes. It looked a bit different than anything we find at Davis!

Before lunch, we went back to the cathedral via the gardens around the Alcázar, which is a Muslim palace right across from the Catholic cathedral. The cathedral being about 10 Euros cheaper, we opted for Catholic history and wandered in there. I was pretty disappointed by how small it seemed inside. It was so huge from the outside, but it was pretty normal inside. There were courtyards with orange trees that took up a lot of space, and the organ pipes were huge, but I'm not really sure why they needed to make it so big! There were about 10 mini churches inside the main one, all with overwhelming detail. The coolest part was walking up the bell tower. It's super-duper tall, so some very smart person put in a ramp instead of stairs, making it more gradual and less like a stair-master. The signs said we went up 34 flights, but if it had been stairs, I think it would have been more like 15-20 stories. Still, it provided some pretty awesome views. From there, we could see all the places we had just been, as well as get an idea of how big Sevilla was. There were people on their rooftop pools having lunch, the white houses extended out forever, and we could see the main plaza down below with all the tiny people. We got some lunch after (more fried fish) and decided to head home.

We were supposed to stay for 2 days, but I wasn't feeling great still and we had seen most of the sights. By pure luck, the hostel lady gave us our money back without us asking! We headed off for 1 more tourist stop. Across the river, there is an island with a never-used olympic stadium, a theme park and a monastery. Weird combo, I know. The theme park was closed, but we were there to see the monastery. Apparently it was like a mini factory where monks made pottery, but that day it was deserted. We were the only people there for a good 15 minutes! It was nice to get out of the city and just wander around the gardens. There was a museum in there, but that was the only part that was functioning, it was mostly plants and a bunch of huge, old kilns. It could have been really spooky at night, or a great place to play hide-and-go seek.

From here, we headed home to Granada. Again, it was a surprisingly easy drive. I'm getting more sick, but there's no polo this week, so at least I don't have to walk home with wet hair! Oh yeah, we get the worst times here as well: 9-11 PM, and it's a 15 minute walk home! Anyway, I'm going to go to the pharmacy and try to get some decongestants. Even if I don't know what to say to get these, I think once they hear my voice they will know what I need! Mom comes on Friday!