Seville! Free walking tours! Budget airlines!

Thursday, March 24

Seville was the second out of the three cities we would be visiting on our trip. Early thursday morning, we took an early-morning taxi from the hostel to the airport, and then a plane to seville. Because of the great deal that we grabbed on our flights, the taxi ride ended up being more expensive than our flight. That's pretty crazy - I doubt anything like that would be possible in the us. With the budget airlines, I also expected the quality to be really bad, but they are quite similar to typical plane rides in the states.

We hadn't done too much planning before hand about what we were going to done once in Seville, so our first goal was to find a tourist center somewhere in the city. The tourist center was pretty well hidden in the city, but we finally stumbled upon it, and received a map and recommendations on what to visit.

Downtown in the historic area of Seville

Inside the Alcazar

That afternoon, we visited the Alcazar, the royal palace. The Alcazar began as a fort, but was eventually converted into a palace, with subsequent rulers adding their own attachments to the building. As a result, the palace and royal gardens are huge and complex, and really interesting to walk around in. We didn't stay too long in the palace, however, because wanted to catch the daily free 3-hour walking tour. This was my first time participating in a free walking tour. According to our tour guide, there is some restriction in sevillian law about giving tours without getting certified, but they no longer offer certifications as a means of keeping tour guide competition down. As a work-around, the tours are offered for "free", and you are strongly encouraged to tip at the end of your tour. This has the benefit of motivating the tour guides (if you give a dull or uneducational tour, you will probably receive less tips), and the method seems to work well - our tour guide was very interesting and knowledgable.

Our tour took us all around Seville, and we saw a ton of the city, including the Plaza de Espana and the bullfighting ring. The guide explained that many people today are opposed to bull fighting because it is really inhumane to the bulls. The bull is killed at the end of every match, and they injure the bull several times before hand so that it is weakened and starts to bleed out. NOT COOL, BULLFIGHTERS.

The Plaza de Espana

We were pretty exhausted after our day of touristing around seville, so that night we just chilled at the hostel. The 2 days that we were there, the hostel was undergoing construction, so to make up for the noise and the lack of a lounge, they served free homemade sangria. 'Twas delicious, and quite a bit better than the cheap jug we bought in Barcelona. Hanging out on the terrace was one of the high points of the day.

Entirely unrelated song post:
I'm a fan of a lot of stuff by DJ Shadow, a really well known producer and a major developer in the whole trip-hop/experimental hip-hop scene. He recently released a remix album for free download on his website, and while I don't like all of the songs on there, some of them are quite good, including this one by Ruby My Dear.
Building steam with a grain of salt by Ruby My Dear