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.