Sevilla y Granada!

Hola todos! Sorry it has been so long, but as I mentioned in my last post I spent 6 days in the south of Spain and then the next week I had to get adjusted to real life again because classes started!

I'll use this post to recap my trip to Sevilla and Granada. To start, Sevilla:

Sevilla is a beautiful, beautiful city! It's smaller than Barcelona but that's what adds to its beauty. Although the streets are much more confusing and difficult to navigate, it feels far less like a city than Barcelona. We arrived in Sevilla on early Wednesday morning and went on a walking tour of the city that our hostel provided. This trip was my first hostel experience and the Oasis in Sevilla was definitely a great first experience! We heard many interesting stories on our tour about the city of Sevilla. Much of it was built to attract tourists for things like the World Fair but there were many interesting stories about the smaller parts of town as well. One of my favorites was the story of a young woman named Susona who lived in the Jewish quarter.

 

Susona was a Jewish girl who was the daughter of one of the rebellion leaders in the Jewish quarters, but ironically she dated a Catholic soldier. When the Catholics reconquered this area, they closed the Jewish quarters and murdered over 4000 Jews living there. The Jewish leaders decided to rebel and attack the Catholic soldiers to retalliate, but Susona told her Catholic soldier boyfriend everything so the Catholics ended up attacking first and killed 1000 more people in the Jewish quarter including her father. Since she had no one left, Susona ran away and joined a convent until she died. However, in her will she said that when she died, she wanted her head cut off and hung in front of her window to remind everyone what happens to a traitor. Per her wishes, her head hung in that spot for over 100 years until it detiorated and some children started playing with it... thus they decided to take it down and put this plaque up in its place instead.

At least that's the story I was told :) interesting huh??

 

Other beautiful sights in Sevilla included the Cathedral, el Alcazar (the royal palaces), and Plaza Espanya (a park designed for the world fair):

 

Cathedral:

View from top of Cathedral:

Fountain in the garden of the Royal Alcazar:

Plaza Espanya:

 

Like I said, Sevilla is a beautiful, beautiful city and I absolutely recommend it to anyone visiting Spain. One of my favorite things we did in Sevilla was go to a tapas restaurant and watch flamenco! We got to the restaurant early (T de Triana) to grab a good seat for the show, so we ordered some drinks to pass the time. We tried "Agua de Sevilla" which tasted like a pineapple smoothie and then of course sipped on some delicious Sangria. I also had some really delicious tapas there that night. Finally it was time for the show to start and I absolutely fell in love! It was just got a guitar player, singer, backup, and then two dancers. The small production was great because we were so close and I could feel the stomping in the floor and see the passion in the dancers' faces. After that I almost decided to drop out of school to move here and become a flamenco dancer!

Now onto Granada. Granada is even smaller than Sevilla, but has some beautiful sights, the foremost being La Alhambra. It's basically a royal fortress that spans the length of a mountain and it was constructed by the Moors. You can without a doubt feel the heavy moorish influence in Granada compared to Sevilla. We spent 3 hours walking through the fortress, but many people spent many more walking through all of the beautiful things to see. Words won't do it much justice, so here are a few pictures!



We went to a very fun bar called 380 Elvira in Granada that was just a local place, but the owner was really nice to the group of 20 or so that we were. In Granada, it's standard to get free tapas with every drink you order! We had so much fun the first night that we went back Sunday night to watch the Superbowl. It was definitely weird watching the Superbowl in another country, but mostly because there were no commercials! That's one of my favorite parts so thanks to Ale, I watched them all through youtube when I got back :)

On our way back from Sevilla, we had our first big travel blunder! Our flight was scheduld for 8:25 am so we got to the airport super early, but unfortunately there was a dense fog all around Sevilla. The flight back to Barcelona was delayed for an hour and then finally canceled. It was definitely a little bit of a scary feeling, but all turned out well. Apparently no flights could land in Sevilla and were redirected to Malaga. So what did they do? Ryanair bused us all to Malaga (a 2 hour bus drive mind you) to catch the plane there. When we finally got there, the plane was scheduled to depart at 1:00, but at 1:03 there was still no plane. We finally boarded at 2 and got back to Barcelona at 5. Although we were supposed to be back in Bcn at 10:30, the little fiasco definitely made Barcelona feel like home :)

Well this post is long enough! I promise to update more often. In the next post I'll tell you about classes and such!