Hola - Spanish Vacation Part 1

After a cold winter in Belgrade, I decided that I should head to warmer climes for a week long vacation in Spain.  I was meeting a friend from the States, so it was a trip I was really looking forward to having.  I landed in Madrid, and met my friend.  We had a few hours to burn before taking the high speed train to Sevilla.  The weather was pretty, but overcast.

Here was a park near the train station.

It was too perfect, with lots of couples rowing in the lake and a saxophone playing near the shore.

For those of you that haven't been on a high speed train, I highly recommend it!  We went from Madrid to Sevilla in 2.5 hours.  It's about 250 miles and we stopped a few times.  The top speed was around 180mph.  But it was so smooth!

Unfortunately, due to a very tight connection, my luggage didn't make it to Spain until 3 days after I did.  This was extremely frustrating, when I still couldn't reach a human after calling 12x (literally) and leaving 5 messages in 48 hours.  But the luggage eventually showed up, though I did have to take a $90 cab ride to fetch it in Sevilla.  I hope to be getting reimbursed + from Lufthansa. 

Anyway, Sevilla was great.  The food was good and the town had a very relaxed feeling.  It was also beautiful.

Here is a narrow street in the Barrio de Santa Cruz.  It is the former Jewish quarter, but they were expelled during the 1300's.  They call these "kissing lanes" because they are so narrow that you can kiss each other without leaving your window.

Sevilla neighborhood

See the orange trees filled with oranges?  Apparently the oranges are quite bitter and are only used for bitter orange marmalades that they make in England.

Sevilla is a capital of Bull Fighting.  Here is the Bull Ring.  And yes, they do still kill the bulls.

Plaza outside of Cathedral

Sevilla Cathedral is a big sight in town.  We went inside and got to climb up the tower.  Here are some pics.

Not Monty Python, but Christopher Columbus's tomb.

View of Cathedral Plaza from top

See the Bull Fighting Ring?

Sevilla is known for its Holy Week celebrations (maybe not the right word?).  Though it wasn't Holy Week when we were there, I guess they have some rituals all throughout Lent.  Here were 30 guys lifting a .... well, I'm not exactly sure what this was.

One night there was a bunch of people in the street with large candles and they were all dressed up.  We thought it was for a funeral.  I guess it was in a way.

Jesus was not a real person in this parade.

The last day we just toured around on the other side of the river.  After many delicious meals, it was hard to say good bye to Sevilla, but we needed to head to the sea.  More posts later!