Sevilla

We arrived Friday night at 7pm to Sevilla and had the same taxi driver issue. We get in the cab, tell him the street and the hostel name and he shakes his head, says I don't know that street. He then gets out, opens the door and orders us out. I was really pissed because these taxi drivers don't even know their own cities. So I call the hostel and tell ask them for something that the taxi can drop us by close to the hostel. So as the cab guy is taking our bags out of the trunk I tell him where to drop us and he says he knows where that is and lets us back in. Then he lectures me for five minutes on how I (along with every other American) closed my door too hard. All European cars are small and weak, and I guess I wasn't gentle enough. Other than the first 5 minutes of the cab ride he was really nice and I enjoyed what he had to say.

After we checked in and ate a 2 hour meal, we walked around the enormous cathedral and headed down to the river. Sevilla is the Spanish version of Paris.

The next morning we got up pretty early and began exploring the city. We walked through the Cathedral, the Royal Palace, and the Plaza de Espana. It was the nicest weather that I have yet encountered in Spain and one of the most fun days. We booked a flamenco show for the night time at a place called Los Gallos. All Spaniards complain that these places aren't "authentic" enough, and that it is watered down for dumb tourists. I couldn't tell the difference, I just loved the experience. The crowd was definitely pretty stiff and touristy, but Matt and I spiced things way up by initiating the loud Ole chants after impressive sections. You could tell the performers loved us for that. By the end of the show we had most of the place getting rowdy and shouting ole ole.

After the show we wandered aimlessly for 90 minutes before finding a dinner place that looked good and cheap. As it were, the table next to us was the Belgian Olympic team for 2008. They were celebrating having just qualified for the team that day, and drinks were in no shortage. The waitress for our table was waiting on them as well, and she was hating life. Europeans are just such boisterous people, even before drinking. At one point two Spanish girls came out of their apartment to simply take out the trash, and the next thing they know their getting cheered and jeered by a bunch of sleazy foreigners. I felt bad for Spain in general at that point because that is much of what Spain has become.

Dinner was over and half of our group went off to explore Sevillian nightlife and hit the town. We did not get far, and we certainly did not explore any nightlife. After about an hour we were nodding off so we went back to the hostel to get our beauty sleep.

The next day we cruised the city for a few more hours before catching a bus home. It was altogether one of the most fun weekends yet. The weather was perfect, my companeros were awesome, and the cities were very memorable. I will be very ready to go back down to Andalucia in December.