Sevilla

Before I get going on Sevilla, I´d like to describe one more "Rick" incident from Geneva. I´m actually glad we´re headed home soon so Becca can get some treatment for her developing obsession...

Let me give you a snippet of what I mean...

"This marzipan chocolate is good," Becca said while we waited for our night train to Barcelona. "But I like Ritter Sport better."

"I agree," I said agreeably.

And then, out of nowhere, Becca says...

"I wish Rick Steves was made of marzipan. I would eat him."

I was already a little weirded out but I egged her on anyway...

"But then there would be no more Rick Steves," I said.

"I know," Becca replied lustily, "but then at least he´d finally be inside of me."


Wow.


So.....Sevilla!

We left Barthelona early the next morning on a high speed train. Very nice. The seats were comfortable and they even played a Zac Efron movie on the way. Swoon!

We got into Sevilla just after 1 in the afternoon and quickly discovered that the city is impossible to navigate. It´s basically a tangle of one way streets loaded with shops and bars. Awesome. We took a cab to our hotel and set out to explore. The city is refreshingly easy to get lost in, which is nice when the weather is sunny and hot and you have nothing in particular to do. We basically sat around, ate awesome tapas, drank some decent Spanish beer, and soaked in the atmosphere.

When we finally decided to actually do something, we headed over to the Alcazar, a fortress and royal residence dating from the Moorish days of the tenth century. The complex is an endless maze of courtyards and verandas with beautiful artwork and tilework everywhere and some nice gardens too.

Sevilla is really cool because the historic center comprises a significant portion of the city, so actual Spanish people live there and it´s not just a tourist ghetto of gimmicky shops and crappy food. That made it very easy to get a feel for the city and find some great places to hang out. We found another great tapas place (sooooo "Rick," including his holy trifecta of trash on the floor, staff that don´t speak English, and good food) and headed to bed because we were getting pretty tired.

The next day, we slept in for a looong time since we didn´t have to worry about checking out. Well rested and ready, we headed out into Sevilla again. The first thing we did was see the Cathedral, which is very impressive and filled with all sorts of gold and jewels and shit. Sorry to any Catholics out there, but that´s about the only way I can describe their vast collection of artifacts because nothing was in English. Oh well. It was beautiful anyway.

We stopped at a Starbucks so we could use their bathroom (we may have picked up an iced Mocha along the way) and Becca was smelled by a creepy homeless man. We spent a few hours doing housekeeping type stuff (updating the blog, buying train tickets, etc.) and then headed back into town. We went to the city´s riverside park (very nice) and saw the Placa de España, a really cool building that has a tilework facade representing every region of Spain.

Afterward, we went to a nice sit down dinner at a place with cool views of the Cathedral. We got some more dank gazpacho and really good duck and some sort of goat cheese salad (leave it to Becca to seek out the damn goat cheese) and then went to bed...almost. We first had to navigate an alleyway fencing match on our way back.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and caught our train to Granada. More on that to come.