Day 5- Seville

We started off the day at Plaza de Espana. It was a beautiful square built to celebrate Spain. There was symbolism of Spain and national pride everywhere- 4 bridges to represent the 4 sovereign nations that came together to create Spain, squares for each of the provinces to showcase what made their region important, and vendors selling local memorabilia. It was a beautiful area and the pictures won't do it justice. Alex bought a painting from an old man who fell in love with her and lowered the price of the painting for a kiss on the cheek and a picture with her. 

Panorama of Plaza de Espana

Alex's new admirerer

We then walked through the old city of Seville and made our way to the Catedral de Sevilla in the center of the old town. There were gargoyles on this cathedral, it made my day. I may or may not have taken a million pictures of them. The cathedral was stunning- the stained glass windows in the ceilings and the carvings through the walls were amazing. I discovered that my phone was much better at taking pictures inside cathedrals than my camera and my phone was suddenly useful again (no service in foreign countries and only using hotel wifi kind of makes your phone a sad little quiet thing when you're wandering around) The chapel alter had just been refurbished and cleaned and had opened the day before we got there for the first time in 2 years. Everywhere we looked there was another picture. The gigantic organ was made of mahogany, I really wish someone would have played it while we were there.

Seville is just pretty everywhere

Bell tower/ minaret

Ceilings

Gold plated alter

Another interesting thing within the cathedral is the last remain of Christopher Columbus. I say remain because all that is left of him is one of his fingers. One of Columbus' dying wishes was that he not be buried in Spain, he wanted to be buried in one of the lands he discovered. His original request was carried out, but as the Spanish colonies were slowly liberated through the years his remains were moved to the next place. After the last Spanish colony was liberated, the last remain of Columbus was sent back to Spain and entombed in a giant masterpiece in the cathedral. Not so long ago, people began to question whether or not it was really his finger, so the finger was exhumed, along with DNA from his son who was buried in the cathedral as well. They literally dug up this poor dead Columbus son out of the floor, yanked some DNA, and sent it along with the finger to a place in Texas to be tested. It was a match, and so I officially saw Christopher Columbus' finger. Crazy story!

Christopher Columbus tomb

The poor son that got dug up and reburied

After viewing the cathedral, we climbed the bell tower. This cathedral had been used by the Muslim religion for a time and they had used the bell tower as their minaret. Since you pray 5x a day in the Muslim religion and the tower was really tall, the Muslim people built ramps all the way up the tower so they could ride donkeys. This made for fairly comfortable walking- I don't know if I would have made it if there were stairs! It was still a long walk, but the view made it worth it. It was incredible, you could see the entire town of Seville laid out before you. Also cool were the ginormous bells in the top, and the up close view of the gargoyles along the way.

Views as we climbed

GARGOYLE!!!

View from the top

Bells in the bell tower

After the walk down, we stopped for some lunch in a little cafe. The waitress convinced us to try some paella and we decided to give it one more chance... yeah it was still disgusting.We decided to explore the alcazar of Seville next. It was the summer residence for Spanish royal families. We paid the 10 euros to get in and started wandering around. This palace was different than the other palace we'd been to because it was built in a Middle Eastern fashion and wasn't furnished at all anymore. We walked into the first courtyard and saw all that we could see in about 15 minutes. All of the doors looped back into the courtyard and we were a little upset we'd spent money for this little castle. We should have known better... luckily we decided to try one last door before leaving and it opened up into the rest of the palace...and it was HUGE! We would have missed out on one of the prettiest buildings I've ever been in. There were tons of rooms and courtyards and fountains to see, and the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen. It would have been a beautiful place to live and spend your summers. The walls were intricately carved and the ceilings were magnificent. The rooms were all built to surround courtyards with gardens and water features. It reminded me so much of the castle in the Jungle Book. I could have spent my entire summer in that palace and those gardens just reading and relaxing. Also, a cool side note- this castle is going to be used to film the next season of Game of Thrones. I am excited to see how much of the real castle they use and I think it's pretty rad I've been there!!

Ceiling in one of the rooms

Beautiful walls

Yeah, I would live here

Ceiling

Lions are everywhere. I loved it

Princess room

Ceiling of the princess room

The detail on the walls was incredible

Possibly my favorite stained glass window of the entire trip

Old school swimming pool

Yeah this scared the crap out of me

Hedge maze!

Another hedge maze! We wandered for a minute1

Mowgli would totally live here...am I right?!

As we left, we noticed some shops nearby and decided to check them out. Seville is known for its flamenco and there were a lot of cool guitar shirts in the shop. Since there are 2 major guitar players in my house, I spent some considerable time going through the shirts trying to find the correct sizes. Unfortunately, that first shop didn't have anything I liked and we made our way down the street to the next shop. After successfully purchasing a shirt for my brother in the second shop, we decided to stop at a cafe and have some churros con chocolate before riding the metro back to the hotel. As our food came to us, the first bite confirmed that this was the best churros con chocalate we had ever been served. I started hunting around for my phone to take a picture of them. As I searched through my bag, I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. My phone wasn't where it should be. I kept looking and started to panic and Alex finally noticed something wasn't right. She took my bag and started to look for my phone while I quietly had a panic attack across from her. After confirming that my phone was not in my bag or on the table or anywhere around us, I had a meltdown while Alex quickly got the check. If you know me at all, you know my little white iPhone 4s is never further away than the reach of my arm. All of my pictures from the day were on my phone, along with it being the only thing connecting me to home while I was gone. We started brainstorming out loud where I could have set it down. The problem was that I was using my phone as a camera that day, not as a phone, so I wasn't constantly looking out for it. We raced back to the second shop we had visited and frantically combed through all the merchandise. The shopkeeper helped us look but my phone was nowhere to be found. I was panicking- the only other place we could look without having to pay to get into was the first shop, and it had been about an hour since we had been there. What were the chances that someone had found my phone and given it to the shopkeeper there? It was far more likely that someone had seen the abandoned iPhone and taken it. I ran all the way up the hill to that first store, burst in through the doors- I'm sure I looked like a crazy American tourist- and asked the shopkeeper in frantic Spanish if she had a phone. She smiled and pulled out my phone from behind the counter. I cannot tell you what a relief that was and how happy I was to see my phone again. I thanked her probably a million times, and I hope good karma found that honest soul who was good enough to turn my phone in after I must have set it down on top of a pile of shirts to look for a size. There are good people all over the world and I am so thankful that one of them found my phone and saved my vacation.

After the drama of the phone, I was a little exhausted and we made our way back to our hotel to drop off our purchases and to calm down a little bit. After a phone call home to tell the fam about my near miss, we headed out to the mall across from our hotel to do a little shopping. The merchandise in the mall was so surprising- all of the current clothing in Spain has American states and English sayings on it! We knew from experience that a lot of the people in Spain don't even speak English, so they are wearing shirts with sayings and words they don't even understand on them! We had a good laugh especially in a high end boutique that had a fairly expensive blouse with the word "Montana" embroidered across the front. I'm sure the people who bought the shirt had no idea they were wearing a shirt advertising for one of our most boring states (sorry Montana).

After we got back from shopping we got all dressed up and went out for dinner. We found this awesome college joint down by the river and mingled with Spaniards our age while eating a delicious dinner. It was a lot of fun and we had a good time being with people our age- the only downside was that every single one of them smoked. Ew. 

Seville at Sunset