Sevilla

We arrived in Sevilla mid-afternoon. From the bus station, we found our hostel, dropped our bags, and went to try to meet with with the other girls from Burgos to buy tickets for a Flamenco show. The city of Sevilla is full of windy roads.... so what could be a straight show requires the upmost navigation skills to get from one spot to another without venturing out to a main road. After winding our way through the city, we arrived at the 3rd largest cathedral in the world (for being so massive, you sure couldn't see it over all of the other buildings...). 

Hannah and I had only had a pastry and a Coke that morning, so we were beyond starving by this time, so after paying the girls, we found a nice cafe to dine at. We ended up splitting a bottle of wine, appetizers and hanging out for awhile... typical Spanish way of eating... rather than the "stuff your face and sight see" method that we're used to. From there, we moseyed around to all of the shops, before being rejoined by Liliana. She wanted to see the Alcazar, but it had already closed :( We were headed in the general direction of the Flamenco show when we came upon the Plaza de los Toros... so we ventured inside. I first took advantage of the free bathrooms, and when I was exiting, was informed that there was a "show" starting in 4 minutes and the girls had already purchased tickets. I was nervous about seeing a bullfight, but thought when in Spain and went along with it. Turns out, the "show" was really just a tour of the area, so nothing yucky, just a lot of old stuff and information about the history of bullfighting. In the end, we all decided that we'd prefer to never see an actual bullfight.

Afterwards, we stopped by our hostel to get a corkscrew, as nowhere on the Flamenco ticket did it say that it WASN'T a byob event. There was quite the ruckus in the neighborhood, so we decided to investigate. Just the Spanish Halloween celebration... drum line and parade of children, typical Halloween stuff.

We arrived at the show early, and waited outside as tour busses showed up full of people. Apparently, there are people who aren't cheap, and decided to enjoy a fancy dinner during the performance... I bet they did not byo-vino. The dancing was amazing! A full crew of 12 dancers rotated though as singers and band members in the back rocked out! 

After the show, we decided to walk to the Plaza de España, as we had seen amazing postcards of it at night. Apparently, those postcard photographers get special privileges, because after walking 30 minutes, we found ourselves locked OUT of the Plaza. We walked back to the city in search of rabas (calamari), but all of the bars were either closed, or closing... so we settled on the BK meal... again.... it sucks that it's so cheap and always open. It was interesting scoping out all of the costumes of the BK goers at 1:00 AM... A for effort on Halloween Spain!

The next morning, Hannah and I woke up, took our bags to a locker at the bus station and enjoyed the city. We walked back to the cathedral to pay it a proper visit. Being that the day after Halloween is a holy day, it was free to enter (yay!). We moseyed around, snapped some photos, and enjoyed the facades. 

Afterwards, we re-ventured to the Alcazar and had a look around. The gardens there were more impressive than Alhambra.... but the actual palace had nothing on it. For fear of getting lost, we did not venture into the shrub labyrinth, but continued our walk through the gardens until we found a exit. By this point we were starving, and sought a restaurant on the way to Plaza de España. We found a nice one with a great menu del día special and sat down... after twenty minutes of not being served... water... anything... we continued on our trek to the Plaza, hungrier than ever. A stand outside of the Plaza was selling potato chips... a perfectly reasonable meal for those dying of starvation (and anyone in my house knows that chips explode after 10 minutes if they're not eaten... soooo it was more of a civic duty). Bag in hand, we entered the Plaza de España, and took in all of it's glory. A giant fountain. Check. A fake river for row boats. Check. Cute four people bikes. Check. HEAVEN! However, the worst thing happened in this magical place... my camera died. So there are limited photos of the awesomeness. Bummer. 

On the trek back to the bus station, we finally found proper nourishment, a tapas special at an outside cafe that appeared to be owned by the Spanish mafia. It was great food to tide us over for our 6 hour bus ride to Madrid. 

Cordoba

We bussed into Cordoba in the evening time. A two or three hour ride from Granada. Despite missing every sunset at the lookout over the Alhambra, I did get to see a beautiful sunset over a mountainside of olive trees during the trip. Hannah did not appreciate me waking her up to see it, but it inspired me to consider a retirement as an olive orchard owner someday.

We exited the bus, and consulted Hannah's trusty guidebook (We <3 Rick Steves!). Rick recommended two city bus numbers to take to get to the main part of the city. As we walked out of the bus station, #4 was waiting for us, so we eagerly jumped on. After boarding, we realized we weren't real sure what stop to get off at... and the longer the ride went on, the further off the map we ventured. We ended up in the suburbs/ghetto of Cordoba. We did manage to find the Hipercore and Carrefour... two huge markets... just in case we needed them for our less than 24 hour stay. Finally the bus returned us to pretty much where we got off and we hoofed it like we should have done in the first place.

Coming to Cordoba we had no plans... literally NO PLANS. No hostel. No set bus times. NOTHING! (This should be very shocking for those of you who know me... I DO NOT fly by the seat of my pants.) Thus, we were two girls and two backpacks marching through the streets of Cordoba at 9:00 PM hoping for a room anywhere. The first place we went wanted to charge us $100 (USD) to sleep in their room for the night, and the next only had the honeymoon suite available (despite considering this our "second honeymoon" [see Santander post for the 1st], we were not on a honeymooner's budget). Finally we found a place on a side street with a grouchy man running the desk who offered shelter for a reasonable price. SUCCESS!

Rachel H., Liliana, Lizette, and Fran were already in Cordoba, so we met up with them on the magical bridge for a mosey around town.

alter on the bridge 

They had already spent a full day there and were headed to Seville the next morning, so they gave us the rundown on what we should and shouldn't do. We sat on the steps of the mezquita chatting and joking... only typing this do I realize how cool that is! (Ohhh... no big deal, just hung out on the steps of one of the most FAMOUS places in Spain catching up with friends! GOD MY LIFE IS AWESOME!) We parted ways, and Hannah and I found a restaurant to get tapas and wine before turning in for the night.

The next morning we woke up early, ready to go see the mezquita.

It's free to visit on Mondays (and lo and behold Monday we were there), so we were expecting megalines. YEP... we walked up, asked a guard where the line for tickets was, he laughed and just pointed towards a door... we just waltzed on in... no line... no money. YAY! So Cordoba's mezquita is as iconic as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It's something I've seen pictures and learned about a bajillion times, and was ELATED to finally see in person. IT'S FRICKIN AWESOME! The only disappointing part is that it was converted from a mosque to a Catholic church when the Reconquista occurred... so there's beautiful Moorish work, then a giant, out of place crucifix. I'm not anti-Catholics... just build your own darn church... stop stealing everyone else's!!!

After the mezquita, we walked around for a little while deciding what to do with our day. After pre-reading about Seville in the guidebook, we decided to grab an earlier bus so we could have more time to enjoy Seville.

Granada

Halloween weekend meant another puente (direct translation: bridge, literal translation: long weekend)... yay for two girls in need of a little traveling. Unfortunately, the trip started out a little rough... with me buying the wrong bus tickets for the day before... ouch! Good thing these pretty, sparkley euros grow on trees. After repurchasing tickets and sleeping like the homeless on a bus station bench in Madrid for a few hours, Hannah and I finally made it to Granada. After taking a city bus downtown from the bus station, we found a miracle with four walls, a palace of a Burger King with 3.30 euro meal deals! So tasty after a long day of traveling, and probably made with much higher quality meat. After our American meal, we hiked up a hill to the Albayzin neighborhood, a historic area of town with a killer view of the Alhambra. After setting down our bags and filling our BK cups with vino, we headed over to the lookout.

The next day, we woke up ready to explore the city. We perused through all of the touristy shops, then hiked over to the neighborhood of a famous graffiti artist. After becoming famous, he came back and decorated his childhood neighborhood. 

The colors were so bright, and each of the of the pieces had thought provoking quotes. Sooo artsy. Afterwards, we found a bar with wifi, wine and free tapas and looked into visiting the Alhambra and emailed home to let loved ones know we weren't dead. Since our hostel had a kitchen, we brainstormed all day walking around about what American meal we could cook for ourselves that night. We settled on chicken, mashed potatoes and salad, inexpensive and easy. While shopping, we realized there are still things we haven't had to do for ourselves here... like purchase meaningful things the in market (i.e. not candy and wine). When we got to the meat counter, we ordered a quarter of a kilogram of chicken, not realizing that was 5 chicken breasts. Improvising, we bought tortillas so we could use the leftover veggies and excessive amounts of chicken to make wraps the next day. The goal was to make dinner and actually see the sun set over the Alhambra, unfortunately, cooking took longer than expected (cooking tools were limited, no veggie pealer, no baking devices) and we ended up hanging in the hostel with the owner for the evening. 

The next morning was our last planned day in Granada. We were told by the landlord to make it to the Alhambra by 8:00 and we'd have no problem getting in (they reserve 1000 tickets to sell each morning, in addition to the ones that were already sold out online). After hiking up a giant hill, we were making impeccable time. It was a little after 8:00 but there was already a mega line. After an hour of waiting, a small commotion erupted in another area, so like a good tourist, I ventured off to check it out. There was another line available to purchase tickets with a credit card, so Hannah stayed in the cash only line and I was the 30th person in the credit card line. Great plan, until we realize that she only has a card and I only had 2 euro left on my card. I reached the machine, used the card, praying for chap overdraft fees as they were announcing that there were only 160 tickets remaining for the entire day. I found Hannah in the other line and we hustled to an ATM to possibly deposit cash and beat the fee. The world's best mother had already transferred my funds the day before, so we did a lot of running and freaking out for nothing. We grabbed coffee and pastries to rest before re-venturing up the hill to explore. The Alhambra is comprised of gardens, palaces and an old castle, all built by the Moors before the Christians not so politely asked them to get the hell out (1300s). Rude, but a completely different story. We explored the gardens and a place built for King Carlos V (1500s) before entering the palace. The detail and immenseness of both the gardens and palace was amazing. I am truly amazed at what people were able to do without any modern technology. 

There's like a bajillion pieces of wood put up there by hand. 

Once we left the palace, we explored the castle before back to make snack wraps and catch the bus to Cordoba. 

Lisbon... that's in Portugal... Europe

A few weekends ago we took advantage of another long weekend, and jetted off to Lisbon. Our plane arrived slightly delayed Thursday night a little after midnight. As directed by the lovely Begoña, we found the city bus stop outside the airport and waited. After sitting at the stop for a few minutes, we realized that there was only one night bus running and that the whole process might be a little more difficult than we originally thought. Despite our doubts, we climbed on the shady looking bus a headed towards the center of the city. They dropped us off at a giant arc around 1:30 and we were left to find our hostel. We then decided it'd be a good idea to fetch a taxi, rather than moseying around in the dead of the night with all of our luggage. After a 90 second taxi ride, a distance of 8 city blocks at the price of 5 euro, we realized it wouldn't have been that bad of a walk after all.

The next morning Aaron, Monica, Sean, Molly and I got up bright and early for a tour given by We Hate Tourism tour group. IT WAS FANTASTIC! We piled into an old German police van and sped away from the city to explore the outskirts of the city. Our first stop was the city of Sintra for coffee and sweets. Afterwards we perused in all of the local shoppes, sampling their local liqueurs... almond flavored, and cherry served in a chocolate shot glass) all before 10:30. We were then carted off to an amazing palace... Palácio da Regaleira to explore for a few hours. This mansion and crazy array of gardens, paths, and underground tunnels was built on almost 10 acres by a family who had far too much money and no real need for it. Next we were carted off to a roadside farmer's market en route to the best surprise of the day. We bought strawberries (THE FRESHEST YUMMIEST ONES EVER) and browsed the rest of the stands before loading back into the van. The surprise was the tastiest sandwhich/calzones (fresh bread baked with chorizo and goat cheese in the center), <3 OLIVES <3 , copious amounts of wine, and the most majestic lunch location:

... oh no big deal... just the Atlantic Ocean!

We settled in for a little while munching, chatting and enjoying the view before hiking a little ways up the road to join the throngs of tourists at the Western Most Point in Continental Europe marker. The last stop was another city with their claim to fame being the world's best ice cream. As a professional ice cream taster, I have to agree that it was great, but no gelato. We took a stroll on the beach and collected raw materials before being returned to the Lisbon proper area. There we saw a ginormous monastery and 

a monument honoring the explorers of Lisbon (where thanks to the wine I was much more interested in the fish in the water nearby than the actual monument).

 

For dinner that night, we joined up with Liliana, Roxana, Amanda, and Lizette for dinner at a restaurant that the tour guide had suggested. Each of us ordered chicken, and were served a CHICKEN... a whole entire chicken, along with french fries and some weird rice. After adventuring all day, we all turned into bed, ready to explore the city the next day.

Sunday morning, we found the local, and FREE art museum. The highlight of the trip was Molly complimenting my on my art critiques. Next we found another restaurant with massive portions and amazing flavors and had a feast for lunch. While we were feasting, a storm rolled in, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in the downtown area shopping and snacking on the famous pastries de nata. Later, we met up with Aaron's host brother Sergio (he's studying abroad for the year in Lisbon) and went to a dive diner for dinner then a bar to hear fado music. The fado music never materialized, but a creepy magician did. After calling him on every magic trick, and him calling Sean Sharon the whole night, we politely left him before he got the idea that we were bff. We all went back to Sergio's apartment, and met the rest of his roomies, from France, Spain and Lithuania and hung out for a little while before another stormy walk home.

Monday morning, we got up, packed up, and explored the historic parts of the city. We caught a cable car to take us up the mountain to the castle region. They're fun to look at, but very uncomfortable to ride in. We took in the views from the top, and enjoyed some local wine, vinho verde, before entering the castle. There were amazing views of the giant bridge (a San Fran knockoff) and the Christ tower (a Rio de Janeiro knock off) as well as the entire city. Before leaving, we found a small restaurant to enjoy one more cheap meal at before heading to the airport.