I’m finally here! Well, sort of. I'm traveling around a bit with my parents before starting my semester abroad in Madrid, Spain. On the way over I traveled to Philadelphia with my parents and brother to drop him off for his first year of college at Haverford College. We had two extra days at the beginning to get the last of the stuff he needed and be tourists for just a little bit. His school seems really nice and challenging academically, but I think he was just really glad to finally get there and was quite ready for all of us to leave him so he could start his adventures on his own.
After driving half way across the country in two days, these 5 and 7 hour flights just don’t feel that long to me. I attempted to get some sleep on the flight over since we would be landing at 7:30 in the morning. The first flight went well and we landed with no problem except for the fact that our baggage never showed up. We went up to information counter and were informed that our bags were checked through to Sevilla our next stop. Somehow I ended up in business class in the first row while my parents were back in coach- I didn’t complain.
A taxi took us as close as it could to our hotel, Hotel Alminar, since the road we had to go down was only wide enough for pedestrians. It is a pretty small hotel with 2 floors of rooms but there are beds for three of us and extremely nice and helpful people at the front desk. The location is also amazing. Less then a block to the main cathedral and right in the middle of the city.
Sevilla is a wonderful place! A city rich with history, and one of my favorite parts is how easily accessible everything is by just walking around. Most of it feels like a pedestrian town with horse drawn carriages for the tourists and taxis only along the roads large enough for them. The architecture and how the city was built up over the years was influenced by the Romans, Moors, then Christians each building on top on each other and what was already there. There is a Jewish quarters too with lots small winding streets because they were confined to within a small walled area.
After arriving in the hotel, we asked for recommendations from the lady at the front desk and went out to get tapas. We stopped at a place very close to our hotel that looked good. The menu had a lot of options, but we decided on ordering a three cold tapa sampler plate and 2 other small tapas. However, when Dad was trying to order in his broken Spanish (or words he thought were probably Spanish) along with me trying to make it make more sense to the waiter, we were only able to order the first thing before he walked away. Then he walked back with three plates of the cold tapas sampler so we ended up just having that for lunch and it was very good.
One-hour power nap time after we returned to the hotel since Dad hadn’t been able to any sleep and the rest of us got very little. After that we wandered around the city quite a bit finding the major shopping area, which actually had covers at the top of the buildings to provide shade. We wandered around to other parts, along the river, and then to the bull-fighting arena. It was a large circular arena like the traditional ones with an entrance for the bull fighters, an entrance for the bull, and the “prince’s entrance” which was only opened for a bull fighter one they won three trophies (such as ears or a tail) They had a tour available that we took and I really like the fact that I could listen to and understand the first part of each room in Spanish and then did not have to listen to the English part.
After that we attempted yet again to find tapas for dinner, but at the place we ended up going to, they weren’t serving tapas at that time, so we ordered and shared two half-plate servings of couscous with lamb and raisins and a chicken dish. All very good. We returned to the hotel and went to bed around ten, all very ready to just collapse.
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