Gringa goes to Sevilla!

In the gardens of Real Alcázar in Sevilla

This past weekend I took my first trip to Sevilla and it could not have been a more perfect weekend! Sevilla is located in the southern Andalucian region of Spain and is dripping with baroque architecture and filled with the passion of flamenco. Spain is divided into autonomous regions and until this weekend I had only experienced Madrid. I was excited to see the similarities and differences between the two areas and curious about what truly makes an autonomy different.

The adventure began at 1am on Friday morning at the bus station. My roommates and I took an overnight bus and showed up on the streets of Sevilla at 7am Friday with no idea where to go and feeling pretty cranky and tired. We had directions to our hostel and eventually began to figure it out by asking people on the streets. At one point, we were looking for a church and we asked a nice looking woman. She told us to "venga," or come, and we began following her down a series of dark, winding alley ways. At this point, she wasn't saying anything else to us and I felt like I was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Harry is following a woman who he thinks is Bathilda Bagshot. For those of you who aren't familiar with the books, it doesn't end well for Harry. So in my head I was deciding what I would do when this woman attempted to kill us. Luckily for us, she didn't end up being evil and we found our hostel!

Barrio Santa Cruz

We wandered through colorful Barrio Santa Cruz and did some shopping. We came upon the Cathedral and Real Alcázar. Real Alcázar, the oldest royal palace that is still in use in Europe, is the most breathtaking palace I have ever seen. Every inch of every wall, ceiling and floor was covered in an intricate design of colorful tiles. The palace was sprawling and we spent a few hours wandering around the rooms and the gardens.

In Sevilla, there are orange trees everywhere. Lesson learned: don't eat them, they taste like acid. 

 

Real Alcázar

The following day we got up bright and early to rent bikes and see the city. It was much colder Saturday so we spent a lot of the day warming up our hands. We saw the Plaza de España, Plaza de America, Museo de arte y costumbres populares, and Triana which is the gypsy quarter where store windows were filled with flamenco outfits. In Triana we were ravenous so we picked the first restaurant we saw which turned out to be a snooty, over-priced pizza place that didn't appreciate our backpacks, tennis shoes, or affinity toward splitting dishes with each other to save money. We ended the afternoon at the peluqueria, or hair salon, where my friend Stephanie got a haircut! For the most part the haircut ended well, minus the language barrier and the stylist accidentally cutting Stephanie's ear. But hey, it's not a fun weekend unless blood is shed right?

That night we went on a pub crawl with our hostel. I made friends from New York, Argentina, London, Scotland, Morocco, Amsterdam, Holland and other parts of Spain. It was really interesting to meet everyone and share stories. I was amazed how easy it was to make connections and friendships with other travelers at the hostel. We instantly bonded over our travels and stories of where we had been and planned to go. I can only hope all my hostel experiences will be as successful as this one! My roommates and I are even hoping to go visit our new friend Holly (her real name is totally unpronounceable but she is from Holland so we called her Holly) in Amsterdam sometime in the next few months.

Before going to Sevilla I had heard a few things about Andalucia, the region in which Sevilla is located. Many people had warned me that the Andalucian accent is very thick and harder to understand. However I found the accent to be understandable and the people from Sevilla to be very patient with us. They listened to us and tried to understand and help us when we spoke Spanish. For this I am forever grateful to the Spaniards we met.

So now it is back to class while visions of Sevilla dance in my head. Check my Flickr on the righthand column of my blog for more pictures!

¡Hasta la próxima!