Spain, Day Fourteen

Our first full day in Seville was quite impressionable. I thought it was a beautiful city the night before, but seeing the city in full bloom with the sun high in the sky is just incredible. It was like a paradise resort, but one full of beautiful stone architecture everywhere and lots of history.

We began our day with a free tour of the city, which we promptly learned at the beginning of the tour was intended to be no free in the form of a tip at the end of the tour if we had enjoyed ourselves and/or learned something. We are hopeful that an old, retired couple with lots of money tipped our guide extra because while she was great, we are just lowly college students who thought we signed up for a nice tour intended for other broke college kids. We did enjoy it nonetheless though and learned much about this gorgeous city. Our guide basically just walked us all around the best sites that Seville had to offer, which I won't go into too much detail about now since we went back and visited more in depth later. Our tour basically walked us from the center of Seville, to the plaza that housed the Real Alcazar (which is the royal palace) of Seville, the Indian Archives which holds all of the important documents from the time of the discovery of the Americas (sadly, we did not make it in here), and of course the vastly overwhelming Seville Cathedral. Then she walked us through a few historic neighborhoods that were just so cute and unique, which leads me to our palabra del dia. If you want to say something is "super cute" in Spanish, then you would say that it is "mono," which is really funny to me because mono also means monkey in Spanish, so you are basically calling all the cute things in the world a monkey.

While we were in one of the historic neighborhoods (this one was the Jewish neighborhood, which if you have read my previous post on Toledo, you will know that the Jews had quite the presence in Spain), we learned that it was actually home to Europe's oldest bakery! It was built in 1385 and is still functioning today. Sadly, I forgot to write the name of it down so we were unable to revisit that bakery but I am determined to come back to Seville someday, if for nothing else, at a minimum to get a delicious pastry from this bakery.

Our tour guide casually pointing out the oldest bakery in Europe

We continued our tour along the river's edge of Seville, which was a huge hub for trade, as many rivers were about five hundred years ago. We also learned that the area across the river recently seceded from Seville to become its own city because they didn't like it for some reason–I can't see how because everything there is GORGEOUS! The river is now the official dividing point between Seville and this new city named Triana.

Our last stop on the tour was at the critically acclaimed Plaza de Espana, and let me tell you, it was just incredible. Words cannot even describe the magnificance of this place. It was grander than any other plaza I had been to in Spain, and I have been to my fair few. Apparently there was an American expo held in Sevilla for which this plaza was made for. It's constructed in a semi-circle shape, facing the river which flows in the direction of the Americas, as if to be a motherly symbol who is welcoming her children home. How neat, huh? But the architecture of this place was just awe-inspiring. Take a look for yourself because my words don't even come close to doing it justice.

Even this picture doesn't do it justice. You have just got to go see it for yourself someday.

After taking in this magnificent architecture, Maria and I decided to try a chain restaurant recommended to us by our professor: 100 Montaditos (which basically means tapas). We really got our fill at this restaurant and it only cost five euros for a huge meal! You could get one even cheaper for 3 euros probably if you brought your own water bottle, but I was just happy with the price I had. All of the "montaditos" are served on a mini-bun and with potato chips. My favorite of the kinds I ordered was called "queso de cabras" with pesto. If you didn't guess already, this is going to be our word of the day today! So you all know that queso means cheese (duh!) but what you probably didn't know is that cabras means goats! So know you know how to order goat cheese in Spain, which is by far my favorite type of cheese. This sandwich was definitely the best though. I forsee many more in my future.

So we lunched. And we were full. We needed a descanza (anyone remember this word of the day?) but we decided to press on. We trekked a mile back to the plaza with all of the historical sites and decided to hit up the Alcazar. I must confess, I am a little disappointed with the Alcazar. Don't get me wrong–it's beautiful and wonderfully impressive. But the outside looks NOTHING like the inside. The outside looks like it came straight out of a Monty Python movie, so obviously I was expecting knights and medieval-looking things when we got it, but from my first step across the threshold, I was emerged in an Arabian palace (if you can even call it a palace due to its lack of size). The inside was definitely not as big as it appeared on the outside. The palace to garden ratio of this structure was like 1:8. So much gardens! I have decided that I need a royal garden though and have mentally added it to the list of things to incorporate in my future house along with a giant library that has ceiling to floor book shelves on every wall and an indoor/outdoor swimming pool. So the palace was impressive, but the most exciting part about it for me was the student discount. I saved eight euros just by being a college student! That's like two whole meals at 100 Montaditos. I'm sure I've made my parents proud by taking advantage of my college education. Slowly earning back that out-of-state tuition one college discount at a time.

See how the castle looks like something medieval and should have knights and shining armor guarding it?

But on the inside it has these yellow sandstone walls everywhere to totally clash with the outside. So Arabic.

Part of the immense gardens that we saw.

For real though, the Alcazar took the last of our energy, so it was time for a brief two-hour nap back in our hostel. We woke up around 8:00 feeling refreshed and ready to take on the night, which really just resulted in us going to this super cool tapas market for dinner and then having a night-cap at a local Irish pub (been trying to get my fill of the British culture any way that I can if you can't tell). This market was so cool though. I don't even know the name of it but it was the first building I noticed on our way into the city on Thursday. You can't miss the giant black building with glass walls and a huge "M" on the front. We had walked through quickly the night we arrived and decided we definitely needed to make our way back for a meal. Here are how my courses of the night proceeded:

Round one: Ham focachia (pretty sure I butchered that spelling... it was pizza)

Round two: Gorgonzola croquettes (more or less fried cheese). Please note that the pitcher of sangria was not all to myself!

Round three: Dessert! Chocolate covered strawberries which paired perfectly with the sangria. Seriously, best sangria of my life..

So after this point, I was barely able to walk (from the food... not the sangria..). I slowly sipped a SmithWicks halfpint at the pub across the street and chatted with my roomie before we found the energy to make it back to our hostel. Needless to say, we slept like rocks after our long and adventurous first day.