My five day trip to Spain was amazing! I saw a lot, learned a lot, and felt like I got to know the authentic Spain! It was great.
Day 1- Cadiz
The place we ported was a tourist city called Càdith, at least that’s how you pronounce it with the Spanish Lisp. Anyways, because I didn’t have any big plans that day I joined my roommate and our friends in their journey to the train station. When we had arrived, we and the long strand of students before us were greeted by a gigantic line at the ticket booth. It was crazy! Most of them were SAS students and they were all super loud. We waited in line for about an hour and a half and tried to figure out their train plans. When we finally got to the front I decided to try and buy my train ticket for the following day now, might as well since I was already there. The person at the window looked absolutely overwhelmed and agitated….not good. I asked about my train ticket and he immediately said no and shooed me away from the rest of the line. Well, alright.
After my friends got their tickets we decided to head back for a free lunch on the ship. Nancy and our friend Katherine decided they were too super tired and so they went to take a nap. My friend Katie and I decided to go out and explore Cadiz. It only took a short walk to get to the town center. Once there, we wandered around, looking at the Cathedral and the people around, just sitting on the steps in front of the cathedral. A short walk from the Cathedral was the beach! It was such a beautiful post card like image. The ocean was a bright teal/blue color, there were lots of different colored umbrellas and swimming suits. The cold water was called Katie’s name so I watched her things as she ran to the water and dipped her feet in. I watched the people, little kids running around girls lying out, people walking down with their giant umbrellas and snacks. It was such a comfortable sight. A little shocking to see several women with their tops off…..but I guess that’s the culture right?
When Katie came back to claim her things again, we both decided it was just too super hot and we had to go get a coke and cool off, so we went in search of a nice cool spot to take a break. The break was nice and the coke was very refreshing. When we set off again we realized we weren’t quite sure which way we should go. We soon came to the realization that we were far far away from the ship, and so we started our trek back to the ship. Finally we had arrived. We decided to take a break after so much time in the heat and then go out and use the internet that was available at the cathedral. It felt so nice to be back on the cool ship and I finally began to feel the sense of home.
The rest of the afternoon we explored the main square of cadiz, this time not wandering very far from where the pier was. The odd thing about walking around was that most of the shops were closed. We were super confused, it couldn’t be a holiday that day….what the heck. It wasn’t until I saw a sign on one of the shops that said the time and I realized that here in Spain they are very serious about their Siesta. The siesta (meaning nap) is a 4 hour period in the afternoon, usually starting at 1pm and going until about 5 or 5:30, everyone stops working, they enjoy their very large meal of the day and of course take a nap. We both felt dumb that we had forgotten about that, so we wandered around until the shops opened up, then we went back to the ones we were interested in. it was so odd to see shoes and clothes and other things that were only 5-15 euros (7-20 dollars). We were very happy about that.
That evening after Katie and I had journeyed back to the ship and eaten dinner I left for my first falculty lead excursion: Flamenco Night. We gathered in a group outside the ship, everyone was pretty dressed up, there were even girls wearing their heels, Professor Ferguson was all dressed up in his suit and fancy black shoes. I found my adopted brother Chris (the Toscanos also adopted him) and we started our journey to a tiny bar in the middle of Cadiz. This experience was awesome! Simon, an English man, was waiting for us. He is a Flamenco expert who dances and plays guitar, he gave us a lecture about flamenco. He talked about everything from guitar techniques to how the dance looks like a bull fight. He taught us about how flamenco is usually in 12 time and taught us how to count it. He talked about how the songs were usually in major minor or the frigin scales. He showed us the castanets and taught us about how the left castanet was the male and kept time and how the right one was the female that danced with a pitch that was just barely higher than the male.
Finally, after eating a Tappa and drinking a little sherry, the music started. I was blown away, the singer was so intense, and woman who danced was so beautiful and amazing and all together it was incredible. A beautiful way to end a great day.
Day 2- Sevilla
The day started with a bit of a panic attack. Katie and I had gotten up before dawn to buy ours train tickets before our 6:45 train left for Sevilla, but when we got there at 6 am the ticket booth was closed, even thought it said it opened at 5:30. We waited around until a worker came, and then we asked if we would be able to buy a ticket before our train left. She smiled and said not to worry. She was right, the doors opened at 6:30, we were able to buy our tickets and got on the train.
The countryside that we passed was very pretty. Spain being one of the largest producers in the world of olive oil (that’s where Italy gets theirs) we passed hundreds of olive orchards.
When we got in to Sevilla our first priority was to find the cathedral. It was easy to find a taxi that took us, and we soon arrived to this gigantic building in the middle of an old fashioned coble-stoned neighborhood. The reason we went to the cathedral was so that I could go to mass, since it was Sunday. But since we had a couple hours to kill we walked around and took pictures upon pictures of all the old buildings and the perfect European neighborhood. We stopped at a café to get some breakfast, we couldn’t help but take advantage of the delicious backerys while we were there. The atmosphere in the café we went to was wild. We were sitting at the bar, there were no alcoholic beverages to be seen, just several espresso machines and coffee machines. The three guys behind the bar were running around like crazy filling orders, none of them looked especially stressed, they were just very focused and worked fast. It took us forever to get our bill because of this.
After our breakfast we walked around the cathedral some more until it was time for mass. Inside the cathedral is was sooooo big. Usually people had to pay to get in but because I was going to mass I was allowed to go in for free. Mass was held in a small chapel on one side of the cathedral. I had been to many masses in Spanish while in Nicaragua and Mexico, so the language difference was not a huge shocker for me, even with the Spanish lisp. The mass ended up being very long, the old priest gave a very long homily. There was no music and there were only about 30 people there, but still it was a decent hour.
I was able to explore the cathedral a little more before I felt guilty enough to have to leave. When I found Katie again she told me she had found an amazing place. It was a place we had just seen in a postcard we were looking at. So we started our little journey to find that place again. Once we got out of the neighborhood around the cathedral Sevilla suddenly turned into a giant city. There were old building, beautiful fountains, and peaceful parks everywhere, but there was also office buildings, thick streets, busy pedestrians in the mix. We walked for a long time, and it was especially hard because we had to carry our heavy overnight backpacks with us too, not pleasant. We decided after about 20 minutes of walking that we need a break, so we went inside another small café and enjoyed a water and a coke, and gave our backs a rest. A man with a strange looking instrument came up to me and I usually try not to pay much attention to people going around asking for money….but his instrument was just too interesting to ignore. He was from Senegal, and he said his instrument was a pumpkin. It was a giant pumpkin, with a stick coming out of it, plastic strings pasted over a hole in the pumpkin and the wrapped around a large stick which was coming out of the top. There were no frets and the string was just wrapped around the stick, but they were each a different note. The man smiled and sung a short song for me, and let me take a picture. Sorry I can’t help but ignore and handmade instrument like that.
Finally after our nice little break we made it to the place we had journey so far to see. As we were exploring the giant courtyard with towers and beautiful mosaics of each city in Andalucia, we had no clue what it was, how it got there, or anything. We found out later that it was called the Plaza of Spain, it was beautiful but it was really just a bunch of government halls.
This is where we had our first experience of theft. We had gone upstairs to take pictures and look at everything from up high. We also wanted a break so we put our backpacks down. Not a good idea. It was difficult to take pictures up there because we were in the shadow and so as I was trying to take a picture of Katie and the beautiful view behind her, but the flash wouldn’t go off so she was always really dark. We were working hard to figure this out and stopped paying attention to what was going on for a split second. All of the sudden I hear Katie yell “Hey wait” I turned around and saw a guy walking quickly towards the stairs dragging Katie’s backpack with him! Katie was about to bolt after him but thankfully he saw her and dropped the backpack. He walked quickly down the stairs and Katie grabbed her backpack. That was close. After we both calmed down about, the weight of our backpacks and the shock we still felt from that incident made us ready to head back to the train station.
Well I will leave it at this today. I will post more about Spain and Morocco within the next couple day. To leave I will put a cute picture sneak peak of my adventure in Morocco!!! :)
Want another Morocco sneak peak? go check out my facebook.... ;)
Jya ne!
DUDE! are you riding an elephant!?
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