Wednesday, September 26

14 hours in Sevilla

i discovered that i've been keeping this as a draft since march. march!!! since i'm feeling oddly sentimental about europe now, i thought it would be nice to finally finish this and post it.

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after a four- or five-hour bus ride from granada, i arrived in sevilla with pia and jeline at about eight in the evening. i left at ten in the morning the very next day, staying a grand total of fourteen hours.

it was enough. enough at least to do the following:

  • get lost in a square full of shops that sold flamenco shoes and wedding gowns
  • somehow find our way to our totally unmarked, anonymous hostel
  • lug thirty kilos of luggage up a narrow, steep flight of stairs
  • meet the world's cutest, most harrassed and spaced-out all-around swiss-french muchacho (the guy at the front desk at oasis)
  • be shocked that we were checking into mixed-gender dorm rooms
  • join a free tapas tour with least a dozen other travelers
  • snap pictures in front of the catedral
  • get a minor crush on one of my tapas tour-mates
  • stuff my face with sodium-packed tapas and sangria
  • laugh uproariously and take photos upon seeing that the tapas bar was on a street called calle gago
  • walk downtown to a bar called la carboneria for a free flamenco performance
  • put away my camera as requested
  • wonder why polka dots seem to be an integral part of a flamenco dancer's wardrobe
  • watch flamenco
  • fall in love
  • marvel at the passion and intensity of flamenco all the way back to our hostel
  • be not-so-secretly pleased that we were sharing our mixed-gender hostel room with my minor crush
  • go online
  • sleep
  • wake up and get ready to go
  • misplace my room key and pay a 5-euro fine
  • have sardines and toast for breakfast while looking at la giralda in the distance
  • walk briskly with my minor crush to take photos of the catedral and la giralda in the excellent morning sun
  • part ways (he had to catch a bus to portugal, i had to catch a flight to barcelona)
  • get totally lost on the way back to the hostel
  • acquire a pair of leopard-print flats in the process
  • decided "ah f*ck i'll miss my flight, f*ck the money, i'm taking a cab"
  • have a twenty-minute conversation with the cabbie in atrocious but oddly serviceable spanish
  • turn down a free cab ride to cordoba
  • make a friend (if i ever need a cab in sevilla, i know who to call)
incidentally, i bought a taschen book on moorish architecture in andalusia, and i found out (among other fascinating things) that granada used to be called elvira. la lang.

i am soooo going back there someday.

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