Sevilla was incredible! We got in Sunday night, and checked into our super cool hostel (a five hundred year old former Jewish family's home!). We grabbed some tapas (and made friends with a tiny chocolate lab the man at the table next to us set on our table) and wandered the streets.
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| Puppy! |
Monday afternoon was spent on another free walking tour. Our tour guide was a bit rough, but the city was super interesting. We learned all sorts of triva: Sevilla buildings must be shades of Gold (like the sand in the bull fighting arena), red (like the bull's blood), or blue (like the sky). We saw the arena, the river, Torre de Oro (the Gold Tower), Parliment, Plaza de España, and the former tobacco factory (the setting of the opera Carmen) that is now the University of Sevilla.
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| Bull Fighting Arena |
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| Torre de Oro |
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| Plaza de España |
After the tour, we checked out the Cathedral of Sevilla. It is the third largest cathedral after St. Peter’s in Vatican City and St. Paul’s in London (we unfortunately missed that one). It was indeed quite large and extravagant. Even after seeing tons of Churches during our stay in Rome, this one still managed to take my breath away. One interesting feature is one of the six “official” tombs of Christopher Columbus. We climbed the Giralda tower. Before it was transformed into a bell tower, it was a mosque. Each day, five different times, a person would have to go to the top of the tower and to signal it was time to pray. Because this person would be terribly exhausted if it were stairs, the tower is mostly ramps, and the messenger would ride a donkey up and down so he could save his breath for yelling. The tower allowed us a fantastic view of Sevilla.
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| Christopher Colubus' Tomb |
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| Climbed it! |
We hit up a grocery store for sandwich supplies. We went to the terrace of our hostel and had a nice dinner watching the city light up! After dinner we wandered around looking for (and failing to find) churros (a Spanish dessert- basically fried bread). We then got all dolled up for our nightlife tour with our guide from earlier. This included a fantastic flamenco show featuring a singer, a guitar player, and a dancer named Sophie. It was incredible. My eyes kept going between the guitar player’s furiously playing fingers and Sophie’s feet.
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| Watching the city light up: Dinner and a Show |
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| Sophia and Her Fancy Footwork |
We've just arrived in Madrid after a 3 hour train ride, and we have gotten all settled into our new hostel (fun fact: our room for just us three is so big, we could fit two of our last 6-person rooms in Sevilla inside of it. The guy at the reception told us we could play soccer if we wanted...) Let's see what Madrid has in store for us!
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