I had a super early flight to Seville on Thursday and landed around 9am. In the airport I met my friend from home Courney Baratz and her roommate Lauren. I was staying with them at a hotel a little bit outside the city (we had waited too long to make reservations and everything was booked because of the Feria) so we headed to the hotel. La Feria de Abril is a huge weeklong celebration in Seville. Everyone dresses up in traditional bright, colorful Flamenco dresses and celebrates with their respective families, schools and organizations. Each of these sponsors a tent at the festival where friends can go and eat, drink and celebrate. The rest of the fair is very similar to a fair in the US. Lots of rides, food stands and people wandering around. We took the bus into town and walked around to get a feel for the city. We went to the Cathedral which is absolutely HUGE. Apparently it’s the fourth largest one in Europe and its ridiculous how big it is. Then we strolled along to the river and sat and hung out/napped- we were all so tired from our early morning flights. After dinner we went back to the hotel, watched a movie and went to sleep.
Friday
Friday we woke up and headed into town. Because of the large amounts of people in town for the Feria, the buses were running slow and it took us awhile to get into town. We took the bus straight to the Feria and walked around the Fair for awhile. We ate some delicious chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate covered bananas. They were so yummy! After wandering around the fair for a couple hours and then walked back into the city center to grab some lunch. We found a really good sandwich place and sat in the sun for a long time just eating and chatting. It was really sunny and really hot out but we had bought tickets the day before for a Bull Fight so we headed to the stadium. The bullring was absolutely packed with people, most of who were still all dressed up from the Feria. Here we were wearing little sundresses and were so hot, I can’t imagine how hot it must have been for all those women in long dresses and men in full suits. The bull fight itself was horrific. I understand that it is a Spanish tradition and they embrace it for their cultural aspects, but the act itself is so sad. Here are like 5 matadors all distracting the bull and trying to confuse it. We could only stomach watching 4 bulls get slaughtered so we left before they could kill the rest. We were a little hot and bothered (and disturbed by what we had just seen) so we decided to head back to the little town that our hotel was in and grab some dinner, watch a movie and go to bed….see a pattern?
Saturday
We had a goal for Saturday and one goal only- get a tan. After grabbing a quick breakfast, we headed down to the river to lie out. A friend of mine from Miami, Chelsea, is studying abroad in Seville so she came down and met us down by the river. The group of us sat in the sun and chatted all afternoon (while getting quite sunburnt). After a couple hours Chelsea needed to leave so the rest of us walked down the river a bit and found a place where you could rent paddleboats. We thought this was a perfect way to end the day, so the three of us all climbed into the boat and traveled up and down the river for about an hour. Since I was flying to Portugal on Sunday with Tess and her Dad, I decided to spend the night with them at their family friends’ house so that we could all just go to their airport together the next morning. Their friends came and picked me up from the bus station and we headed back to their house just outside the city. We spent the night chatting, eating pizza and watching a movie. We called it an early night since we had to wake up relatively early the next morning to make our flight.
No comments:
Post a Comment