This was a travel day, a true travel day. My plan was to wake up, take the ferry back to Tarifa, then catch the bus to Seville, via Cadiz. If all went according to plan, I’d leave the hostel in Tangier at 8 in the morning and get to Seville at around 8 in the evening. A long day. I woke up, checked out, wandered my way out of the medina, and walked down to the ferry landing. I hopped the ferry and took a nap. No one lined up along the wall this time, waiting to stamp their passports. After and hour and a half, I was back in Europe, checking in through immigration like normal. I walked back through familiar, wonderful Tarifa, to the bus station at the other end of town, by the beach. I thought I was going to have to take two buses today, one to Cadiz, a coastal town, and then connect to a second bus to Seville. I discovered though that there were direct buses to Seville, but that the next one didn’t leave until 4 in the afternoon. I chose the direct bus route and suddenly I had some time to kill. I bought some cheap food at the grocery store and with that, plus some leftover olives from the medina, I sat by the beach and ate some lunch. It was another beautiful day along the blue coast. I wandered back to the little bus station and waited for my bus to pull up. It eventually did, I paid my fare on board, and sat on this bus as it rolled through the Spanish countryside up to Seville.
I didn’t know much about Seville before I got there, but beforehand, when I told people that I was on my way to Lisbon and I was going to spend the night in Seville, they all told me that Seville was wonderful, possibly the most beautiful city in Spain, and they were disappointed I was just spending the one night. After our arrival, I started to get disappointed as well. I walked off the bus late in the evening and navigated my way to the hostel. Seville is a truly Spanish city. By that I mean, everywhere you turn, Spanish culture exudes. This city is one of the most attractive places I have ever been. The architecture is old Spanish, through and through. The climate is warm, if not hot, much warmer than any other place I have traveled to on this trip, the landscape is dotted with palm trees and other exotic, warm climate plants. Seville is famous for its music, flamenco, I believe, and the Spanish guitar. It could be heard emanating from bars and restaurants as I made my way through to the hostel. The city is also famous for its bull fights that still go on seasonally. In fact, many of the bulls given to the fights are raised in the hills around Seville, as could be seen from the bus ride. Everyone walking around the streets, whether locals or tourists, are tanned, fashionably well dressed, and happy. Bars spill out into the street and tapas restaurants are everywhere. The city is so remarkably pleasant.
And my hostel was incredible too. I booked a night here as per a recommendation from the German girl I met at the hostel in Tarifa. The hostel is attractive, new, and also has a rooftop terrace with a pool, with a view overlooking a popular square below. I’ve never been to a hostel with its own pool. You know this is one chic hostel too when there is no sign to the place out front, just a discreet symbol that I had only recognized from the website as the hostel’s logo when I was booking the room the night before. I walked up to the guy behind the counter to check in, a guy from Manchester, England, who had come to Seville one year ago without a word of Spanish. Now, he’s working in a bilingual hostel, speaking Spanish fluently to the other patrons. Pretty cool. I took my card key and opened the door to my hostel dormitory room on the fifth floor of the building and walking in, looked around at all the empty beds and then looking down at the number on my card, realized that none of them matched. Then I realized that my bed was sort of occupied by a girl who was passed out, sprawled across the top of the sheets, fully dressed. Another guy who was in the corner of the room, watching over the girl said to me, “Sorry, this must be your bed. My name is Esteban and this is my girlfriend. She’s drunk.” It was 8 in the evening. I said, “Oh okay, no problem, I’m just going to head out anyway. Do you think you could move her over to her own bed when I return in a few hours?” He assured me he could. At this stage of the game I’ve learned to just go with the flow. You kind of have to be a bit laid back when staying in hostels. To be fair, she was in her own bed when I got back later.
I went back down to the reception desk to ask about bus tickets to Lisbon for the next day. Like today, I thought I was going to have to take two separate buses, one to Faro on the southern coast of Portugal, and the second straight north to Lisbon. Wrong again, there was direct bus. But he recommended that I go to the bus station tonight in order to reserve a ticket in advance. Since there are no easy ways to get to Portugal from southern Spain by train, bus is the only option and the seats tend to get filled up. But as soon as I was about to head out the door to make the twenty or so minute walk over to the river where the bus station was, it started to downpour, lightning cracking, thunder booming, downpour. I looked out the door and decided it might be best to wait a moment while the rain let up a little. While I was on the bus earlier, we had passed through this storm in the countryside. It was night and day between this single storm cloud and the blue sky surrounding it. In fact, I could clearly see out in the grassy fields the edge of the wall of rain and where it ended. Pretty weird. I figured this same storm cloud had now found its way up to Seville. But I also imagined that it would be a quick downpour and it was, I was able to head out into the streets about 10 minutes later. The rain had stopped but the storm was still visible above the humid air hovering over the beautiful city in the distance. Lighting streaked the skyline and cracked in a million different directions, traveling sideways, parallel to the ground. Shielded by the safety of the buildings around me, I confidently made my way along the road towards the river and to the station.
I walked up to the first ticket window where an old man sat behind a glass counter. He looked up at me when I approached and I said, “Hola, hablas ingles?”. He said flatly, like a man who had been doing this everyday for the last forty years, “No.” I said, “Okay, quiero una billeta para mañana a Lisboa en Portugal, por favor,” in my best Spanish. He understood me and I was proud of myself. But he also said he couldn’t help me, that I wanted ticket booth number three. I said gracias and repeated the process with a slightly younger, but just as tired looking man behind ticket booth number three. When asked if he spoke English, he replied, “Not really” in English, as if he got that question more frequently than he’d liked. So I just used my same Spanish phrase to reserve my ticket to Lisbon and not another word of English was spoken. I was really happy that I had two successful encounters in the language that I had given up studying years ago. I had my ticket in hand and I left the bus station to go explore a bit in the late evening hours.
My ticket for the bus the next day told me that I wouldn’t depart the city for Lisbon until 3 in the afternoon which meant that I had some time tonight and a little time tomorrow to explore. This was good news because I liked every inch of the city so far. I exited the bus station and walked back towards the street that runs perpendicular from the river, where most of the major sites are, towards the denser city center where most of the nightlife was rolling on around the streets. I passed a small plaza, La Plaza de Armas, across from the station where dozens of rollerblading tricksters had taken over. I read a sign nearby and it looked like they were practicing for a tournament that would be hosted the next day in the square. Some people had set up miniature cones and were doing tricks as they weaved in and out of the line of cones, some were playing soccer on skates, some were dancing around like they were on ice skates, jumping in the air and landing majestically. But most were just fooling around. It was pretty cool to watch. But I left them and continued on.
Getting closer to the plaza where my hostel was located, I could hear the sound of drums in the distance slowly getting louder and louder. I went down a side street to investigate and found a crowd that had gathered by the hundreds. Some people were simply watching but others had tied Spanish bandana head scarves around their head and led a huge procession slowly down the alleyway toward the main square. I have stumbled across things like this in the past, but they almost always were protests of some sort. I pushed my way through the crowds to get a better look at what was slowly rolling closer and saw a huge float, like a giant, ornate, box with several statues of Mary and other religious figures around the edge and topped by a huge cross, which to me looked like the Orthodox cross I had seen in Russia, given the trend of having another dash at a 45 degree diagonal, just below the main portion of the cross. The float was being carried by at least 20 people, all concealed below and within the box, their feet visible, slowly marching together in unison. Behind the box was a group of brass instrument players, at least a hundred of them. In the fore part were at least thirty or forty trumpeters followed by a cascading array of larger brass instruments, culminating in the drum line that I could hear from a mile away. They all had a shirt that read “Las Cigarerras” and they all played a sad Spanish serenade that matched the slow, wallowing pace of the procession. The trumpets were beautiful, playing unimaginably high notes, like playing an ode to an important local figure who had just died, maybe, I didn’t know. It seemed like a confusion of culture, music style, and religious affiliation, Arab, Spanish, and Russian, respectively. But I had only stumbled upon the grand procession and didn’t know anything about it. I stood by the side of the road as the procession of hundreds slowly moved past me, getting swallowed by the dark streets under the cover of night, further down the road.
I eventually made it back to the hostel, and taking with me my computer and a couple of Cruzcampo beers, the local beer of choice, I headed up to the peaceful terrace above and took a seat by the edge, overlooking the square and the people on their way to restaurants and bars, late at night. I was joined by a guy named Pedro, from Santander, who had come down to Seville to meet with some of his partners and promote a startup company they were founding. We had an interesting conversation about what it’s like living in Spain, how he liked Spanish beer, and what was going on with the procession. He assured me that it was very typically and very traditionally Spanish from the headscarves to the Orthodox cross that was not in fact Orthodox but Catholic, the diagonal dash that represents the Orthodox cross in the East is a symbol for the Latin letters that were written above Jesus when he was nailed to the cross. He had to work though so was off to sleep before too long and I had heard some lovely singing and wild applause coming from some corner of the plaza from high above on my terrace so I went to go check it out and see what the fuss was about. In a small bar below the hostel there was a good size crowd of young people jammed into the small space around a couch where a woman, accompanied by a Spanish guitarist and a bongo player who simultaneously worked those Spanish clapper things, was singing at the top of her lungs in wavering Spanish tones that sounded sort of Flamenco to me. It was incredible and she was very talented. The roars of applause coming from the inside of the bar was evidence of that. I observed the show from the open window on the street for a little while and then finally gave way to fatigue and made my way back to my now unoccupied bed.
I woke up the following morning to a bright and shining sun, made my way back up to the terrace for my free breakfast of toast and cereal, as is the custom for hostels in this corner of Europe, and prepared for my morning out and about, seeing some of the sights of the city. I walked back towards the bus station and the Plaza de Armas, along the gorgeous river that slowly drifted down its humid banks, passed the Plaza de Toros where the official bullfighting ring is, and down towards the palace. The palace is amazing. It consists of a massive open square with a huge, exotic fountain in the center, spewing water high into the sky. The square is shaped like a semicircle whose flat section gives way to a grand entranceway and whose rounded section is bordered by a moat and then the actual palace, ringed by huge pillars and a walkway. There is a scene in one of the newer Star Wars movies where Annakin, now grown up, is walking beside Natalie Portman and R2D2, explaining something about the palace. They walk the perimeter of the walkway along the edge of the palace and Annakin is talking about how inspiring the place is to him and his training as a Jedi or something like that. Anyway, they changed almost nothing about the palace in the movie because of how amazing the place actually already is. I spent a good amount of time wandering around the plaza and the gardens that sprawled out in front of the entranceway, much like R2D2 did.
I kept going, winding my way through the dense alleys of the central part of the city, back towards my hostel. I ate lunch from a small deli in the Alameda de Hercules, another large plaza where kids were playing soccer on the tanned stones. Then I checked out of the hostel and hopped the bus to my last stopover in this long journey of mine, Lisbon, Portugal, a shining city on the Atlantic Coast. I was both excited and saddened, it would all be ending soon.
 |
| A view across the river, behind me is the Plaza de Toros, where the bullfighting stadium is located |
And my hostel was incredible too. I booked a night here as per a recommendation from the German girl I met at the hostel in Tarifa. The hostel is attractive, new, and also has a rooftop terrace with a pool, with a view overlooking a popular square below. I’ve never been to a hostel with its own pool. You know this is one chic hostel too when there is no sign to the place out front, just a discreet symbol that I had only recognized from the website as the hostel’s logo when I was booking the room the night before. I walked up to the guy behind the counter to check in, a guy from Manchester, England, who had come to Seville one year ago without a word of Spanish. Now, he’s working in a bilingual hostel, speaking Spanish fluently to the other patrons. Pretty cool. I took my card key and opened the door to my hostel dormitory room on the fifth floor of the building and walking in, looked around at all the empty beds and then looking down at the number on my card, realized that none of them matched. Then I realized that my bed was sort of occupied by a girl who was passed out, sprawled across the top of the sheets, fully dressed. Another guy who was in the corner of the room, watching over the girl said to me, “Sorry, this must be your bed. My name is Esteban and this is my girlfriend. She’s drunk.” It was 8 in the evening. I said, “Oh okay, no problem, I’m just going to head out anyway. Do you think you could move her over to her own bed when I return in a few hours?” He assured me he could. At this stage of the game I’ve learned to just go with the flow. You kind of have to be a bit laid back when staying in hostels. To be fair, she was in her own bed when I got back later.
I went back down to the reception desk to ask about bus tickets to Lisbon for the next day. Like today, I thought I was going to have to take two separate buses, one to Faro on the southern coast of Portugal, and the second straight north to Lisbon. Wrong again, there was direct bus. But he recommended that I go to the bus station tonight in order to reserve a ticket in advance. Since there are no easy ways to get to Portugal from southern Spain by train, bus is the only option and the seats tend to get filled up. But as soon as I was about to head out the door to make the twenty or so minute walk over to the river where the bus station was, it started to downpour, lightning cracking, thunder booming, downpour. I looked out the door and decided it might be best to wait a moment while the rain let up a little. While I was on the bus earlier, we had passed through this storm in the countryside. It was night and day between this single storm cloud and the blue sky surrounding it. In fact, I could clearly see out in the grassy fields the edge of the wall of rain and where it ended. Pretty weird. I figured this same storm cloud had now found its way up to Seville. But I also imagined that it would be a quick downpour and it was, I was able to head out into the streets about 10 minutes later. The rain had stopped but the storm was still visible above the humid air hovering over the beautiful city in the distance. Lighting streaked the skyline and cracked in a million different directions, traveling sideways, parallel to the ground. Shielded by the safety of the buildings around me, I confidently made my way along the road towards the river and to the station.
 |
| Some colorful flowers and lively bushes in some side road in Seville |
My ticket for the bus the next day told me that I wouldn’t depart the city for Lisbon until 3 in the afternoon which meant that I had some time tonight and a little time tomorrow to explore. This was good news because I liked every inch of the city so far. I exited the bus station and walked back towards the street that runs perpendicular from the river, where most of the major sites are, towards the denser city center where most of the nightlife was rolling on around the streets. I passed a small plaza, La Plaza de Armas, across from the station where dozens of rollerblading tricksters had taken over. I read a sign nearby and it looked like they were practicing for a tournament that would be hosted the next day in the square. Some people had set up miniature cones and were doing tricks as they weaved in and out of the line of cones, some were playing soccer on skates, some were dancing around like they were on ice skates, jumping in the air and landing majestically. But most were just fooling around. It was pretty cool to watch. But I left them and continued on.
 |
| A crystal clear morning in Seville |
I eventually made it back to the hostel, and taking with me my computer and a couple of Cruzcampo beers, the local beer of choice, I headed up to the peaceful terrace above and took a seat by the edge, overlooking the square and the people on their way to restaurants and bars, late at night. I was joined by a guy named Pedro, from Santander, who had come down to Seville to meet with some of his partners and promote a startup company they were founding. We had an interesting conversation about what it’s like living in Spain, how he liked Spanish beer, and what was going on with the procession. He assured me that it was very typically and very traditionally Spanish from the headscarves to the Orthodox cross that was not in fact Orthodox but Catholic, the diagonal dash that represents the Orthodox cross in the East is a symbol for the Latin letters that were written above Jesus when he was nailed to the cross. He had to work though so was off to sleep before too long and I had heard some lovely singing and wild applause coming from some corner of the plaza from high above on my terrace so I went to go check it out and see what the fuss was about. In a small bar below the hostel there was a good size crowd of young people jammed into the small space around a couch where a woman, accompanied by a Spanish guitarist and a bongo player who simultaneously worked those Spanish clapper things, was singing at the top of her lungs in wavering Spanish tones that sounded sort of Flamenco to me. It was incredible and she was very talented. The roars of applause coming from the inside of the bar was evidence of that. I observed the show from the open window on the street for a little while and then finally gave way to fatigue and made my way back to my now unoccupied bed.
I woke up the following morning to a bright and shining sun, made my way back up to the terrace for my free breakfast of toast and cereal, as is the custom for hostels in this corner of Europe, and prepared for my morning out and about, seeing some of the sights of the city. I walked back towards the bus station and the Plaza de Armas, along the gorgeous river that slowly drifted down its humid banks, passed the Plaza de Toros where the official bullfighting ring is, and down towards the palace. The palace is amazing. It consists of a massive open square with a huge, exotic fountain in the center, spewing water high into the sky. The square is shaped like a semicircle whose flat section gives way to a grand entranceway and whose rounded section is bordered by a moat and then the actual palace, ringed by huge pillars and a walkway. There is a scene in one of the newer Star Wars movies where Annakin, now grown up, is walking beside Natalie Portman and R2D2, explaining something about the palace. They walk the perimeter of the walkway along the edge of the palace and Annakin is talking about how inspiring the place is to him and his training as a Jedi or something like that. Anyway, they changed almost nothing about the palace in the movie because of how amazing the place actually already is. I spent a good amount of time wandering around the plaza and the gardens that sprawled out in front of the entranceway, much like R2D2 did.
 |
| The official bull ring in the Plaza de Toros |
 |
| Stage coaches in the plaza in front of the palace |
 |
| The fountain in the center of the plaza, the palace circling in the background |
 |
| A shot from the balcony of the palace out into the square, also found as is in the Star Wars film |
No comments:
Post a Comment