January 1st, 2011

It was somewhat of a rough morning, but the first day of the year turned out to be great! We had a 6-hour bus ride to Seville, but we stopped 3 times, 2 shorter stops and 1 big stop in Cordoba. Cordoba was once the largest city in Europe (it’s where the Queen of Spain gave Columbus the OK to explore!). We walked over a 2000 year old bridge into what looked like a Spanish medieval theme park at first. It was AMAZING. The city is built around a gigantic Mosque that was later turned into a Catholic church, which made the architecture and statue combination really interesting. It’s a small area, so we spent about an hour and a half and drove the rest of the way to Seville.





Even though we arrived at night, we could tell right away how beautiful it was. All the streets are lined with orange trees and the buildings are the exact same color as the sand found on the ground. We got to our hotel, a really cute place called the Hotel Monte Carlo in a back alleyway in the ancient quarter of the city. We had 2 hour before the flamenco show so the three of us went exploring for some dinner. We got an outdoor table at a quiet German café and finally got to relax after a whole day of driving. All of a sudden, we heard farting noises coming from inside the restaurant. We all just look at each other and kind of laughed…but they were LOUD. Then, two really hyper ten year olds, a boy and a girl, ran out of the restaurant to our table with silly putty making more farting noises and speaking Spanish at a rapid pace. Garrett started speaking to them in Spanish but they wanted to try out their English. They asked us the questions that we first learned in our Spanish classes; “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” ‘WHERE ARE YOU FROM?’ “DO YOU LIKE BANANAS?” “MERRY CHRISTMAS’ ‘SEE YOU SOON.” We learned that they were cousins, Eric and Sara. We also learned that yes, they had seen the Mask with Jim Carrey (Garrett was POSITIVE they had seen it even though Lauren and I thought they were too young, and had to ask). They were so silly and made our night.

Sarah and Eric!

Afterwards Lauren and I went to the Flamenco show where we had 2nd row seats. It was really fun to watch and the live music was my favorite part. We finally got to the hotel around midnight and got some much needed sleep!!


-B