(Short form of Buenos Dias, because as I´ve mentioned before, everything verbal is shortened here!)
Disregard the time of posting at the end of this entry, because it's Monday late afternoon in Spain. I met students of Erasmus today, which is an exchange program throughout Europe. There are many of students, from all sorts of countries, here at the university to study, many for the whole year. One girl is named Marion, from Germany, and I particularly enjoyed talking to her in Spanish as the group toured the old part of Cáceres and ate a light lunch. She isn't Spanish, but I'm always glad to make a new friend!
This weekend I went to Sevilla. As you can see on the map, it's south from Cáceres, in the region of Andalucía. I traveled by bus with two other Iowans, Karen and Chris, on Friday. We proceeded to look for our hostel. And look...and look... Finally we figured out we'd walked the wrong way, corrected our mistake by buying a map and arrived, tired of carrying our weekend backpacks and sweaty from the hot afternoon sun. So we took the rest of the day easy, checking into the hostel and chilling out. Later, when it had cooled off, we struck out to explore our area a bit. Turns the hostel was located near several famous places of interest, including La Catedral, an incredibly elaborate Gothic-style church (the largest in Spain!), and the Alcazares Reales, a Arabic fort-turned-Spanish palace. We ended up going into both on Sunday, when entrance was free. :-)
The hostel is 4 stories tall but pretty narrow. While resting and cooling off, we hung out on the roof patio, which provided a great view of the neighborhood and church towers. Among the youths I met at the hostel were Tom the Australian with his fascinating accent, and Syril and Theresa the Germans, who plan to live in Sevilla for awhile. I slept in a mixed gender room of 3 bunk beds, Karen slept in another, and Chris in yet another. The whole hostel way of doing things is new to me, but I didn't mind it.
Saturday was cloudy and much cooler. Basically we walked most of the day to see the sights. Karen and I met a Sevillan who rents rowing boats to the public (she was excited about that because she rows in the States). We ascended the Torre de Oro (Tower of Gold) that overlooks the river. The streets are full of little bars and boutiques, especially fancy dress boutiques with cool window displays, which I liked discovering. We also stumbled upon a Fair of Nations in a park, a month-long fair featuring booths of food and goods from various world countries--U.S. not included! I bought a scarf to match my turquoise dress for only 3 Euros, something I'd been wanting to do, so I was glad about that. We also tried a cup of sangria without the fruit: sweet and not overly-alcoholic tasting. That was a neat place too because the locals seemed to be there, a good change from the quite-touristy air of the rest of the city.
It sprinkled a little that day, which we hadn't expected. It doesn't rain a lot in southern Spain, so it's good for them, though. My host sister told me there's a phrase useful for practicing the "ll" sound (like a Y) in Spanish: "La lluvia en Sevilla es maravilla." Well, I didn't think the "lluvia" (rain) was so "maravilla" (marvelous) but it was fitting enough!
The other sight of note is the Plaza de España, which is actually a building shaped like a C. Wow. Absolutely incredible. You should look up a picture of this, or see it in my Sevilla album here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034001&id=1079670010&l=97ac65b611
Cool fact: It was featured, albeit digitally altered, in Star Wars II as the palace of Naboo. Anyway, the blue and white tiles on the building makes it so colorful.
Americans don't know how to decorate their buildings!
In the picture, Karen and I are sitting at the tiled bench dedicated to the region of Caceres, so of course we had to take a picture there! :-)
Saturday night Karen and I had hoped to see a flamenco dance show, which the hostel arranges to take a group to, but that didn't happen that night, so she stayed in to recuperate from our active day while Chris and I went to another hostel to drink sangria and then to go with a group of young people on a pub crawl. Our German and Australian friends came too. The night time is very active and the weather was very pleasant. We ended up at a night club with decent music, but didn't stay long before going home, since it was 3am by that time!
Sunday was more walking and seeing, clear skies (better for pictures!). The Alcazares Reales are HUGE and it could have taken all day to see it all, especially if you count the many gardens. Really neat! Also browsed an outdoor art market--only set up on Sundays--which made me think of Salida's art shows. Ate tapas for a restful lunch, trying different typical dishes (quite a cheap way to do it if you find a non-touristy place), and generally rested until we boarded our afternoon bus. So a good weekend, and it felt long, since we left on Friday. I was kinda bummed about not seeing flamenco, but so it goes. I'm really glad my last minute plans worked out so well, and I had several new experiences.
Where to next? Toledo? Portugal? We'll see...
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