Seville - The best city in Spain

So, I didn't write this week because nothing really exciting happened except for finally receiving my credit card (yay! I finally have money again!) with of course some problems with actually receiving it, (did you expect everything to go smoothly?) and getting a rose for Valentine's day! And no, it wasn't for Joey, I didn't mention it right away but we broke up. Its pretty much for good this time. He said that if we break up we'll never be together again. Which ok, I understand and surprisingly, I have been ok with the whole situation. Sure, its always hard to break up with someone, especially when he has been part of your life for two years, but I think its for the better. So yes, I was a little bummed that it was Valentines day and I didn't have a Valentine... but I got one... I was a little giddy about it too. :) I'll leave it up to you to figure out who it was... but the rose was so pretty. So anyways, this week was kind of uneventful but on Thursday, three of my roomies, our friend from upstairs and I went to Seville!

Seville is a smaller city in the Southwest part of Spain, so that meant warmer weather! YAY! Not that Barcelona weather isn't better than being back in Indy, but it was gorgeous in Seville! It was around 70 and sunny the whole time we were there. So we got there pretty late on Thursday night/ Friday morning...? There was some confusion with our reservations and they had our group of five split up into two rooms. The people that worked there were really nice though and asked one of the guys in our room to move out so we could all be together. Although there would still be one guy in our room, we were happy we would all be together. After we got settled into our hostal we decided we didn't want to go out but there was a little "hamburgueseria"/bar next to our hostal so we decided to go there to get a drink and a little something to eat. Of course something exciting had to happen though, we had a couple take a picture of our group sitting at the table. Like two minutes later this really really drunk old Spanish guy comes over to the couple and starts to yell at them for "taking a picture of him with the girls camera" Umm... NO... weird. It was like a 15 minute ordeal. The guy wanted to see our camera to make sure that we didn't take a picture of him but we were nervous because we didn't want him to steal the camera and we knew we didn't take a picture of him! I mean why would we want a picture of a gross, ugly, old alcoholic?! So after narrowly avoiding a physical fight between the alcoholic and the man who took the picture for us everything settled down and we were able to enjoy our sangria. 

On Friday we got up and going around 11. I asked the guy who was sharing our room if he would like to join us on our excursions because he was around our age and traveling Europe all by himself. He agreed and we all went to a cafe down the street for breakfast. During breakfast we were getting to know our new hostal roomie and we discovered that he helped start facebook! For those of you who don't know what facebook is, either because you've been living in a hole for the past four years or because you are just too old to keep up with todays current technological advances, facebook is an online network site. Wikipedia it if you want to know more, and if you don't know what Wikipedia is, I'm sorry, how are you even using a computer to read my blog? ...Haha, just kidding!... Kind of. Anyways, so facebook, in my opinion is a staple in our generation, its really defining our generation, whether thats a good or a bad thing, I'm not sure. So wow, we randomly get put in a room with someone who started facebook! CRAZY! He was really cool too. He's 24, graduated from Harvard and decided to take the whole year off after graduating to travel around Europe. I mean, he has stock in facebook, I think he can afford it. Anyways, after our amazing discovering we started walking around Seville. There isn't anything really important to see in Seville, but the city is so cool! We first headed through Barrio de la Santa Cruz. Its the old Jewish  quarters. It has narrow winding streets with European buildings and atmosphere. We headed to the biggest gothic (the type of architecture, not the people who worship the devil or anything) cathedral in the world. It was gorgeous, but there are two things that I have decided since being in Europe. One, when you see so many Cathedrals, they all start to look a like and I will never be able to remember each one individually. And two, the idea of walking through a Cathedral to just see it because it was so extravagantly built, with ornate and intricate designs made out of gold and marble kind of bothers me. I feel that it goes against Christian-ism (?) I mean these people put so much money into a place of worship for one, aren't we supposed to not be so flashy and is it really necessary? And now, people just walk through these churches (which to most people I'm sure are just cool buildings) admiring the architecture, not the reason it was built. So it bothers me. But the Cathedral was really pretty and it has a tower that you are able to walk  up into and see all of Seville. It was a gorgeous view. After the Cathedral we went to Alcazar Palace. It's not your traditional palace with gold and rich colors. It was open, flowy, and had a lot of like mosaic or alabaster facade. It was really pretty. It had an amazing garden that we walked around in for awhile. After all of that we were hungry for lunch so we went and got lunch with sangria. Of course. Then two of the girls wanted to go tour the bullfighting ring, two wanted to get manicures and pedicures, and Andrew (the guy who started facebook) and I wanted to go back to the hostal and drink wine on the terrace and watch the sun set. So we all went our separate ways and on the way back I met up with a guy who is in my spanish class in Barcelona who was also in Seville for the weekend. He joined us on the terrace too. Watching the sunset on the terrace was amazing. I could never describe it with words or pictures how cool it was. Its one of those moments in your life when everything just seems right with the world. Amazing. Eventually everyone got back from doing their own thing and we started to get ready for the night. Two of the girls have friends from college that studied abroad in Seville and after they graduated, decided to move back for a year, so those girls went to meet their friends for dinner. The rest of the group went to a free Flamenco bar. Flamenco is the traditional dance and music of Spain and I hadn't seen it yet so I was super excited. It was really cool. It probably wasn't the best show I could have seen because it was free, but hey it was FREE! We then went to the best dance club in Seville, but after being there for two hours in a smoke filled room with no ventilation, I had a wonderful little asthma attack (don't worry mom, it was a little one) we had to leave. But I think we were all ready.

On Saturday we decided to take the day really easy and just walk around and go to the park and hang out. It was another gorgeous day and it was amazing. We went to Plaza de Espana, this huge, beautiful plaza, with a huge fountain and a part of the plaza dedicated to each city in Spain. Then we took a horse and carriage ride (I felt right at home!) through part of the city and then afterwards went to get lunch. It was a relaxing day, with no real plans. It was so nice. Our plane left on Saturday night around 8 so we headed to the airport around 6:45. That is one thing I love about how we travel, we don't have bags to check and the security at European airports is nothing compared to the US so you don't need to get to the airport like 5 hours early. It makes traveling so much less stressful and so much easier. 

I love love love Seville! I think I might have made the wrong decision about coming to Barcelona. I know I said that about Rome too, but if I had to come to Spain again and do it all over I would definitely choose Seville! It is such a small, quaint, cute city. It is perfect. I loved the atmosphere. Everyone is so friendly and willing to talk to you. People gather on the sidewalks outside of the bars and cafes and hang out for hours. It is so amazing. If you travel to Spain I highly suggest visiting Seville. It is amazing. Perfect weather, perfect size, and perfect atmosphere. The whole weekend in general was just amazing. It all went really well. 

Today, my roomies and I talked about going to have a picnic in one of the parks here in Barcelona.... but its 2 p.m. and I'm still the only one up, of course. I swear, all my roomies do is sleep! Oh well, I'm going to go on a run and then shower so maybe by then they will be ready to go. Doubtful, but I'll be optimistic! Time to go sweat!

Toodles.