Day #25 - Sunny Sevilla

Today we took a morning train to Sevilla, again a super-speed AVE train that zipped us there in 3 hours. Once there, we had to take a bus closer to our hostel, and then walk a ways - which was brutal in the heat - it was actually 80 degrees here! (Finally, though, good weather!)

We found the hostel, then set off to explore the sights (the Catedral and Alcazar), which were literally two blocks away. We ate jamón sandwiches for lunch first outside in a park...enjoying the glorious sun. Then, we went to the cathedral, which is I guess the third largest in Europe. This means I have now seen all of the top 4 - St. Peters in Rome, St. Pauls in London, here, and Duomo in Milan. What's #5? I really want to know now!

Anyways, the cathedral was really cool. It had an intricate golden altar, a huge organ, cracking pillars, and coolest of all, Columbus's tomb, supported in the air by 4 statues. Inside the cathedral, as I read to Katie out loud from the Rick Steves book (yes, I am a dork like that), we were approached by some middle aged people who saw us, and were on a Rick Steves guided tour! Haha...Rick Steves fans, unite! :)

The cathedral also had a tower to climb (of course), with views of the city. This one had a ramp instead of narrow stairs though, which was nice. There was a good view of all the orange trees in the courtyard down below. Orange trees are everywhere here! (We hear that they're too bitter for eating though - they are only used for 'perfumes and cat food'). Haha.

We didn't have much else we wanted to see today, so we just wandered the neighborhood, finding Sevilla's bullring. We were going to go inside to see the bullfight museum there, but apparently they were filming a movie there that day - or so we think. Sort of confusing, but we saw cameras an a guy with a shirt saying "Actor" something, so that's what we assumed. So, instead of going there, we walked along the river, stopping to get some super-greasy churros con chocolate from a shady-looking sidewalk stand (for me), and a Kit-Kat McFlurry from McDonalds (for Katie). :)

To kill some time, we found the TI nearby which had free internet - hooray! After that, we just sat in the park for awhile, people watching, enjoying the sun, and seeing an interesting street performer who was wearing a costume to make it look like he was really two people dancing...I know, doesn't make sense unless you see a picture.

We ate a somewhat-earlier dinner tonight, at a more traditional Italian restaurant called San Marco. We split a 4-cheese pizza and a salad but were still hungry, so actually sprung for dessert too - which was amazing! Katie got a pistachio-chocolate mousse pie, and I got lemon mousse pie with strawberry sauce. Mmm mmm. :)

We actually managed to get our check in a decent amount of time, which was good, because we had a flamenco show to get to! We had bought tickets earlier for one of the shows which we had heard was pretty good. It took place in a small room with small uncomfortable chairs lined up in front of a small stage. There were 6 acts or so, each with two singers, a guitarist, and 1 dancer. Between each set, they'd switch dancers and usually singers. I could see why - the flamenco dancers definitely worked up a sweat after dancing for 20 minutes - it's quite the workout. The show was good, and probably more professional than the shorter show we'd seen in Barcelona, but something about it didn't feel as passionate to me. Maybe they're just more touristy here.

We walked back after the show, enjoying seeing the Cathedral lit up at dark. Sevilla, at least the part we were in, was really quiet at night, so we did what we like to do and got some sleep!