Andalucia loves you!

"Andalucia loves you!" "Andalucia, Spain: Where the sun is shining and life is smiling"- various billboard advertisements ranting about the wonderfulness of southern spain, Andalucia. And they are SO RIGHT.

Went to Sevilla this past weekend with my friends Sari and Jenny, and we met up with our friend Kate who is living in Madrid. I haven't been back to Sevilla for 5 years, as the last time I was there was as a scared 20 year old study abroad student, living in an "orphanage" with 16 other foreign students. I remember barely speaking any Spanish, I was so scared, so as a result didn't improve as much as I'd hoped. I'd like to think I'm loads better now!

I was both apprehensive and elated to have the chance to come back to the first city I ever loved in Spain. We did the whole early-morning-turbulant-yet-cheap RyanAir flight to get there, and stepped out of the plane into intense heat. Sevilla has a pretty lame tram system now, which is kind of pointless but we used it to get to our highly reccommended hostal near the city center. Riding the tram into the center, I felt almost as if I had been living there all along, but had just been away for a few weeks or something. Mostly everything, upon first glance, looked exactly the same, I was so relieved!

Our hostal was another story. We cheaped out and were in an 8 person bedroom, which was nice enough and we met some fellow travelers, checked out the awesome rooftop deck with gorgeous views of the cathedral and its tower, La Giralda. And then we realized.. there was only one bathroom. ONE bathroom for 20 people! Kind of a problem.. tried to deal with it the best we could but it caused some blood boiling and swearing heavily on our end. Ah well, part of the experience!

We spent Friday roaming around near the cathedral, along the Universidad de Sevilla's main building, and I made my friends cross over the river to Los Remedios, where I lived. It felt so surreal to stand in front of the building I lived in, everything looked the same! We also checked out this market I used to frequent that sells gorgeous leather stuff like bracelets that I bought my weight in, purses, etc. Kate arrived in the evening and her friend Scott, who currently lives in Sevilla, brought us to one of the plazas where you can "botellon", aka drink in the streets. I forgot how much I love love love Tinto de Verano, which is red wine mixed with lemon fanta, fabulous!

Saturday was about a million degrees so after some mediocre breakfast at our hostal, we went to check out the Real Alcazar Palace which has gorgeous, lush gardens and it's just HUGE and beautiful, with ornate Moorish carvings on the building. We got some amazing tapas in the Barrio Santa Cruz, which is the old Jewish quarter, and then meandered to the Plaza de Espanya which is another gigantic, beautiful building with little mosaic sitting places named after each province in Spain, very cool! Afterwards, we went back to our hostal and started hearing all this marching band sounding music- turns out it was the Cruz de Mayo, or some religious festival. Right outside our hostal there was a tiny church and for 4 hours straight, they had a band slowly marching, playing this haunting melody as a float with a pretty much a life-sized creepy statue of Virgin Mary ( I think) went sauntering by. People were underneath the float and moving it so slowly so it looked like it was moving by itself, CREEPY.

We ended up hanging out on our rooftop bar and meeting this group of hysterical Spanish guys who were in Sevilla to celebrate a bachelor party. Language barriers galore, but we had a great time with them- apparently they had an obsession with American music, and when I asked which artists, they said "Hannah Montana and Bon Jovi!" We also met a group of Italians at our hostal who spoke no English, so I was pulling out mediocre Italian to try to talk to them. I LOVE meeting other travelers in hostals!

Sunday was a lazy day, filled with lots of sweating, drinking gallons of water, and exploring the city in the shade as much as possible. Kate left in the afternoon so the rest of us walked near the river, got some ridiculously great and cheap tapas (much better than in Barcelona) and even found this hole in the wall pizza place that I remembered, and it was still there! Sevilla is so easy to walk around in, which is one of the best things about it. The city is also intoxicatingly beautiful, very "Spanish", and made me so so excited to travel through more of Southern Spain when I'm doing my traveling bit in July.

Glad to be back in Barcelona, and to have 2 teaching jobs to sustain me. Reveling in the downtime right now, and planning my travel plans for the month of July. About a month left actually here in Barcelona, que loco!