Spain - Sevilla

After our early morning escape from Lagos we crossed the border into Spain, and onto Sevilla. This was our first southern Spanish town, and it really does feel a bit different to the north.

We decided to walk from the bus station to the hostel, which was a 15min walk in little streets with orange trees along the sides. Its amazing to see such lush looking citrus trees right in a city. We´d seen some in Evora (Portugal), but there the oranges were terribly bitter.

Two cool things about Spanish fashion are the boots and the coats. There is such a huge range of really cool leather boots, lots of flat boots which is hard to find in NZ. A shoe shopping spree here would be amazing. And the coats! It is fashionable here for wealthy women to wear long real fur coats. They are extremley glamourous but you don´t want to think about the number of animal skins that go into each one!

The hostel we were staying in was very nice. We were in a dorm again, but this one was much more considerate, and we managed to get some good sleep. They also ran some free activities. We had a dinner there on the first night. It was 6 euro for three courses, and sangria (thats a good price). It was a really good way to meet some of the people staying there.

The cook then took us all out to see some flamenco (at his favourite bar). Other people who had been to the flamenco on other nights said that it was pretty touristy in a big place, but we were taken to a tiny bar where there was a guy in his late 20s and a 10 year old singing, and another guy playing guitar. It wasnt really a "flamenco show" but was probably more authentic. The singing was really good, and there was a lot of emotion going into it.

There were a couple of sights to see in Sevilla, but we decided to just do the cathedral, because we were going to see similar stuff to the other sights in Granada. It is one of the biggest cathedrals in the world, and from the outside it looked like it. Inside parts of it were under repair (as every tourist attraction in the world is). The main interior area was still huge, it wasnt as cluttered with stuff as Westminster, and as a result you could really get a feel for the size of it.

We also got to go up the bell tower, from where you can look out over the city. The view were pretty impresive. Luckily we weren´t up there when the bells rang, as they were loud enough from the ground.

We had a good time in Sevilla and as a treat (and because it didnt cost much more than the bus) we got a train over to Granada.