SOMOS TORISTAS!

At last! The long awaited and eagerly anticipated SEVILLE BLOG POST!
This weekend Kaja and I took our first of hopefully several weekend trips away, and this time we went to Sevilla, or Seville. Friday started out as usual, except that I had to pack for the weekend trip and carry it all with me through my forrest walk to Kaja's. I got there, we packed up some sandwiches and snacks, and walked to the Metro. We were a little pressed for time, but actually got to the bus station basically at the perfect time! We also felt very successful because the Bus tickets were so cheap but the bus was spacious, comfy, and even played some spanish soap opera during the 6 hour trip!
Kaja and I had a great bus ride. We loved looking out the windows, because even though it was mostly farm lands interspersed with little pueblos, it was all so different and beautiful! There were also lots of solar panels and wind turbines that we passed Dad! Be proud of Spain! There were beautiful mountains, rock outcrops, canyons, fields full of sunflowers for as far as the eye could see, trees, and my favorite: Bulls (Toros)! Kaja and I plan to actually go see a bull fight at some point, although we are terrified of what it might be like and that we will vomit.
There was also this lady in front of Kaja that was just the classic example of an annoying bus traveler... Her phone would ring loudly and she would answer and practically yell as she spoke to the other person for like an hour at a time! Then when she would sleep she would drape her arm into our area... just pretty icky. She also sometimes made strange noises in her sleep, which was funny.
At some point we passed some cute town, which we decided was called, "Tembleque" because we saw that on some signs, but actually don't really know. We spent some time napping and listening to our ipods, then did some friendship bracelet making!
Finally we arrived in Seville! Kaja had written out the directions to the hostel that they gave us online, but they turned out to be so unhelpful because they told you streets to go to, but not which direction to turn once you reached them, so we would walk in one direction for a while and then turn around and walk the other direction if it didn't look promising. Eventually we saw a bus stop so we looked at the map inside and were able to orient ourselves and figure out the way to go! It did take us quite a while to get to the hostel though... a twenty minute walk took a little over a hour.
Kaja and I both got pretty frustrated when we got to the Hostel and they informed us that we had double booked ourselves, and therefore had paid twice! They let us cancel one of the nights of our second booking, but it still sucked. We were annoyed because they had sent Kaja an email that said that the credit card we payed with didn't go through, hence we paid again... only to have the credit card we payed with the first time TO go through! Overall, even though we felt suckered into paying for more than we were staying, we didn't let it bring us down and let the money go.
The hostel was pretty nice, we were staying in an 8 person room with beds much comfier than in OOPS and they also provided Lockers in the room, which made me feel much safer. In the last post I gave a trivia question, and the answer is, of course, A BIDET!! You can imagine I basically freaked out when I went into the bathroom and saw a Bidet. Made my day.
We left the hostel to grab dinner in Santa Cruz, the Jewish quarter. We went to a cute little tapas place! I got this yummy toast with tomato and fried goat cheese, Kaja got some eggplant egg dish, and we both had some delicious fruity Sangria! I must say, I just love that in Europe we can order drinks with dinner, it is really fun! Of course, we made the rookie tourist mistake of eating the plastic wrapped bread they put on our table, because we got charged for it in the end.
The restaurant was a short walk from our next destination, Casa De Memoria, where we saw a flamenco show! It was really authentic flamenco, with spanish guitar, people clapping and stomping, and really really intense flamenco dancing. Although it was really cool to see, both Kaja and I agreed that we almost laughed at it... the singer guy made the funniest faces as he sang, it was really goofy. Overall, it was impressive and they all were very talented, but it was a kinda boring show with only a little of the dancing that we wanted to see, too much spanish guitar that we didn't really want to hear, and none of the pretty colorful dresses that we craved. Both of us do want to see another show though, maybe less authentic and more touristy frankly...
We then walked back to the hostel, at around 11:30 PM, and both felt pretty icked out by all the European guys that if you even make eye contact with (or sometimes even if you don't) make comments to you (Hola guapa!) and make you feel super objectified. Also we both got a kick out of the fact that several people came up to us and started talking in spanish asking for directions places, we kept saying, "Somos toristas!" (we are tourists) but gave ourselves thumbs up for blending in.
We went to sleep at the Hostel early, around midnight, and it would have been great except there were some bugs in my room that literally chewed up my left side that was exposed! It was so icky!!! I woke in the middle of the night, freaked out about my swollen itchy left side, and immediately pulled my sheet up to around my neck and somehow went back to sleep. Then I woke up a short while later with three bites on my face!!! So so gross, I will have nightmares about that night. At least the bed was comfortable.
The next day we woke up and ate breakfast at the Hostel. The breakfast spread was actually quite decent- baguettes, hot chocolate, coffee, cereal, juice. We then left and had the BEST day exploring Seville!
Seville was so great because the city is small enough that you can walk everywhere, yet big enough that it looks different and contains SO many things to see!
First we went to Casa de Pilatas. It is an old Palace in Seville, and was AMAZING! It had such intricate tiles and every single surface was either carved beautifully or painted with scenes. The gardens in the courtyards were colorful and breathtaking with flowery vines and bright trees with an abundance of fresh oranges hanging from every branch. I loved this place, and it was a great place to start the day!
Then we decided to walk to the Cathedral. On the way we passed a store selling flamenco dresses. One of our goals from the beginning was to try on some flamenco dresses, so we promptly went in and picked some out. (you can see the result in Kaja's photo album on facebook) I tried out a green dress with dark pink flowers and big bright ruffles at the bottom and Kaja tried on a bright green dress with a colorfully patterned bottom. Kaja was embarrassed to take photos in the store if we weren't going to buy anything, but I insisted that we did because It was worth getting yelled at if I could have the pictures to show everyone! We didn't even get yelled at! Trying on the dresses was so much fun too! Then we passed a hat shop and of course had to go try on some hats! What we noticed throughout the day is that ladies in Spain actually wear big floofy hats with feathers and lace and stuff coming out of them, on special occasions like weddings. It is a legitimate and, in fact, necessary accessory!
We then made it to the Cathedral, the 3rd largest in the world! It was AMAZING! I don't think it was as beautiful and amazing in architecture as Notre Dam, but it was HUGE and really really beautiful. We walked around inside, saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus, and of course walked up the super tall tower to see the view of Seville! Awesome!
Then we decided to go to Alcazar, another old palace, (I kept accidentally calling it Alcatraz and Azkaban and Kaja made fun of me) but for once I totally messed up on navigating with the map! Instead we ended up at a cool old tobacco factory that now is the building for the University of Seville. We looked around inside for a minute and then left to try to find Alcazar. We walked for a while and when we got to where Alcazar was located on the map we looked around and realized that it was literally RIGHT NEXT to the Cathedral, so that whole walk was completely foolish, but fun anyways!
Alcazar was probably my favorite place I have ever been, ever. The palace was huge and amazingly decorated. Pretty tiles were everywhere, the ceilings were amazing! (Also as a bonus Kaja and I got in for free with our dinky student cards that until then had proved quite useless) We then went out to the Alcazar gardens which, I must admit, give Versailles a run for it's money! They are a tiny fraction of the size of Versailles, but are still huge and are like walking through the movie Avatar but in real life! There were paths and trees of all shapes and sizes, fountains and man made pools. We saw a bunch of ducks in a pool followed by 10 or so fluffy tiny ducklings! We continued to explore and saw a female Peacock on a wall. While taking pictures of her we heard a squawking and turned around to see a big beautifully colored male Peacock! (later we learned that the word for Peacock in spanish is Pavo Real, aka Royal Turkey) We literally followed it around for about 45 minutes, and at one point when we were in this secluded area with no other tourists he opened up his big beautiful tail for a good 20 minutes just for us! We took about a million pictures, but they just never seemed like enough to capture the amazing amazing sight of that peacock! I swear, everyone must see a bird like that one time in their life... it is incredible.
From Alcazar we went to the Plaza de Espana. Normally it is a really happening place, a big beautiful semi-circle building with a channel on the inside of the cemi circle that goes under pretty bridges that you can rent boats to row in, but it unfortunately was under construction so the channel was all dried up, the bridges closed off, and a lot of the pretty mosaic art lining the plaza was covered up! Even so it was a great sight... I wasn't too disappointed. Also there were two dudes dressed up in full our Native American garb, playing Titanic and Mama Mia songs on flute pipes... haha.
We left while walking though this cool park nearby, then decided it was time to go home. We had literally be sight seeing since 9 that morning, and were thoroughly tired (it was about 7 at that point). We walked home, stopping at a grocery store to get food for that night and the next day. We ate at the hostel, I had a tuna sandwich and Kaja had some lentil thing, and the Hostel sells pitchers of Sangria so we got one of those. We ate in the common room next to these three Canadian guys who we started talking with and made friends with. Somehow they convinced us to go on the "night tour" (up until then our plan had been to go get ice cream after dinner then call it a night and go to sleep early because our legs were killing us and we were so tired) which is a 10 Euro tour that brings people from several hostels to three bars and one club.
WARNING: the next part is about Julia and Kaja going to clubs and bars in Spain. It includes drinking and clubbing, obviously. If you think that you are a disapproving parent or other person, then skip ahead. If you think you can handle reading about two college girls having fun experiencing Spanish night life, read ahead, keeping in mind that we were both very careful and responsible throughout the whole night, while still having a good time!
The fee includes your entrance fee as well as 5 shots per person, and kaja and I did NOT need 5 shots per person, me having Mono and her not WANTING 5, so we convinced the tour guy to let us go for a combo fee of 15 Euros! We got into some nicer clothing and off we went! There were about 30 of us in the group and it was actually really fun because I felt safer being in a large group with a guide who knew where to go! The first bar was a really retro club, dark with neon lights and funky club music. The first shot of the evening was Tequila (it turns out that no one kept count of how many shots anyone took, but don't worry everyone, we didn't drink a lot and the night was actually very long, you'll see, so the drinks were very spread out!!!) After a while in that club, we literally went next door, to a more sports bar kind of joint. Kaja and I and the Canadian guys played darts for a while, and the shot at that bar was like a cherry cough syrup nasty concoction that no one liked. The last bar of the tour was outside under a bridge right next to the guadalquiver river that runs through Seville. It had cool laser and strobe lights going everywhere. That bar's drink was a Pina Coolada. By the way, in all of the bars and clubs there were people smoking like crazy IN DOORS! I couldn't believe it haha, I am such an american. Anyways, after the third bar it was time for the club. At this point I believe it was about TWO IN THE MORNING! Kaja and I were SO tired, but we figure we were only in Seville once and we wanted to go to a dance club before we left, so we decided to stick it out for a bit more. It turned out that the club they took us to was a gay club, which I was SO happy about because that meant that we didn't have to deal with the crazy European creepy men and we could legitimately have fun just dancing. Although I must say, it was totally crazy. The club was outdoors on the side of the river, I have never seen so many gay men in my life. It was intense. Kaja and I just had fun dancing to the music. At about 4:00 AM we decided we had to head home, we were falling asleep, although the night was clearly far from over from everyone else at the club! We walked home together, the club wasn't far from our Hostel and I knew right where we were so we didn't have any trouble getting in! Shortly after we got back, the Canadian boys got back too and convinced us to go up to the roof of the hostel to watch the sun rise. Of course we went and it was fun, although I kinda just wanted to go to sleep at that point. I think it was about 6:30 when we finally went to bed!!! Spain is CRAZY!

NOTE: The PG 13 Part is now over, for those of you who didn't think you could handle the craaazy night part :P
We woke up at about 8:45 the next morning. Yeah... that sucked. We kinda showered, but there wasn't any shampoo or soap really, so we just used some body wash that someone left in the shower (sorry random person) and let our hair be dirty. We packed up all our stuff and took everything with us as we left the Hostel for good.
Now, it is difficult being a tourist. Add to that little more than 2 hours of sleep, plus somewhat heavy backpacks, plus tired bodies from yesterday's tourism and the previous night's dancing, and you get two pooped chicas. We walked around Seville for a little bit, the day was MUCH hotter than the previous day, increasing the laziness I was feeling. Kaja somehow dragged me to Santa Anna, the oldest Church in Seville, really pretty, and then to The big bull fighting arena in Seville. Unfortunately, everything was closed because it was Sunday... we hadn't counted on this, so it kinda ruined our plans for the day, but the day was really fun anyways. After the bull fighting place we walked back towards the cathedral because we just NEEDED some good ice cream on this hot day. So we found a Hagen Daz with outside tables. I got this amazing Belgian chocolate ice cream and chocolate cookie ice cream. We literally sat there for about an hour, just resting our tired bodies. Unfortunately at one point this black guy came up to us and really really started freaking us out... He wanted to talk to us and at one point he touched something on Kaja's bag, immediately sending major warning signals and creeping us out... we started saying GO AWAY. He got defensive, saying "I am human, like you, I want to talk" I was like, "We have been very clear, we want to be ALONE go away!!" And I got the waiter to come over and he finally left!
The ice cream and rest rejuvenated us and we then got up and walked alllll the way across Seville to Parque de Hercules where we sat down and had lunch. Kaja gave me a massage, it was so nice. Then we really had to go to the bathroom, but couldn't find one, so decided to try to find one at our next destination, the Monastery.
Of course, the Monastary was closed! We then walked back across Seville to the Museo de Bella Arte, which was of course closed as well! Finally we went into a shopping plaza place that was open and got to go to the bathroom, after like 3 hours!! Then it was about 4:30, our bus home was at about 6, but we didn't have anything to do, seeing as everything was closed. We were both so tired, we basically just sat and waited for the bus, playing "Would you rather" which is a really fun game where you give the other person two options and they have to chose one, for example, would you rather have really bushy awful eyebrows or stumpy bad eyelashes? It was pretty fun and before we knew it the bus was here to take us home! On the bus ride home we mostly slept and listened to music. I did some reflecting on the trip and decided it was one of my favorite weekends ever. I love that we saw so many great things and although we were tired, we made the most of the little time we had!
The bus arrived back in Madrid at about 12:30 AM. The metro closes at 1:30 AM, so we were a little afraid about getting home before it closed down. We had to take several metro trains to the other metro line to Kaja's house. We JUST made it onto the last metro train to Kaja's house as it turned 1:30! Very lucky! When we got to Kaja's stop, we left the train and walked up the stairs to the exit the way we normally do, only to find that it was sealed shut with big iron gates! This was probably the scariest part of the whole trip. We were SO TIRED, all we wanted to do was go to sleep, and now we were locked into the metro station! There was a big red emergency button, which we ALMOST pushed, but then got frightened at the prospect of a bunch of Spanish police showing up, especially because we thought there MUST be some stupid obvious way out that we didn't see, and HOW embarrassing that would be! Kaja then decided to call her host family, even though it was close to 2 AM. BUT then she realized her phone was dead! I then decided we should go back down and see if there were any other exits. And Hurray! There was an elevator that took us right to the street and to freedom!!! Then there was a twenty minute walk to Kaja's house. If there is one thing I have decided, it is that I don't want to come home so late, ever again... it is creepy and scary!!
We finally got to Kaja's, I showered because I felt so crazy dirty. Then I PASSED OUT and slept!!!!! FINALLY!
In the morning we were able to sleep in until about noon. We then basically just relaxed, put up the photo's Kaja took, ate food, and did nothing! So fun!
I hopped on the bus to Las Lomas, got picked up by the abuelo, picked up the kiddies from school, went to the abuelo's house, played basketball with Rafita, played a memory card game with Carmen, and basically just had a really fun time! Actually also the abuelo showed us his "dead bug collection," he likes to kill bees, cockroaches, and other GROSS insects and keep them in a little cookie tin. gag.
Maica picked us up, I bathed the kids and made Rafita cry when I made him get out (We made a deal that he would get out in 6 minutes... legit I was not in the wrong) but he forgave me all but instantly and was his usual cheerful happy high pitched voice again! Then we all kinda ate dinner together for once, which I liked. Carmen asked me to make her a friendship bracelet so I started one, and it is so cute. She is so adorable too because I guess there is some girl at her school with one who shows it off all the time and Carmen was excited because the one I am making her is WAY better than this other girls! Love her!
Then it was about 10 when I finally went to my room and reality hit me that I only had two hours to write up my mini essays to apply to the honor's college at UMass! I was freaking out, madly writing, realizing that I just COULDN'T make the deadline although I was so close!! Then Kaja pointed out to me that we were 6 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone, so actually we had 6 more hours to finish! Halllllllelujah!! I took my time and finished the application, sent it in, and hooray! Now I just wait! I have a good shot at getting in because my GPA is the exact average that they accept and I think my essays were pretty decent! Time will tell...
Then, of course, instead of going to sleep I stayed up till 3 AM writing this blog post! But I didn't want to wait because everything was so fresh in my mind! I can sleep tomorrow at Kaja's!

A few things:
1) Shout out to Gma Carol, Happy Birthday!
2) THANK you to everyone who is reading my blog! I LOVE getting your comments and emails! I feel so missed and I love that everyone is taking the time out of their day to read my overly long and drawn out posts!! And I REALLY love the comments, everyone is so sweet and they make me happpppy!
3) Next weekend... MARRAKECH MOROCCO HERE WE COME!! SO excited!!

LOVE EVERYONE, misssss everyone.
xoxoxox Julia