Post # 3: Sevilla, gracias a dios.

Wow, night and day, Sevilla vs. Barcelona. In my opinion, Sevilla is much prettier and i actually feel 100 times safer here. The weather is perfect (70-75 daytime, 60’s at night) and the people are much friendlier…i feel like i’m in a different country. Granted, they don’t have the history or nearly as many tourist places to see as Barcelona, but if you’re not traveling for that, Sevilla is your spot. The center of town is made up of narrow streets that wind around in little circles and spin off in all directions. About half of them are too narrow for cars and it´s been fun getting lost only to end up back where I started. All throughout there are these awesome little cafes and bars serving tapas and other local food. If I had no ambition, didn’t care about ever making money ever again, wanted to hang out all night with people from all over the world, and then sleep all day, Sevilla would be my utopia.

Ok, so Thursday night I rested from all the NYC to Barcelona to Sevilla travel, so let’s jump to Friday night. I started out in the center of town at a little tourist tapas restaurant where I sampled the croquetas and a little plate of paella…great stuff!

I thought that traveling alone would be tough for me, but so far I really like the decision to go solo. After chatting with the waiter a bit en mi espanol gringo, I did a little walkabout and entered a busy bar where people were spilled over into the street. While ordering a drink at the bar in broken Spanish, a tall blonde from Holland asked if i spoke English.

A brief chat later, Holly brings me over to her group of friends, quite an eclectic group at that. She introduces me to two guys from Italy (36-38 years old and in sevilla taking spanish classes), a husband and wife from England, and Holly 1’s other friend from Holland (Holly 2) who was so cute because she cried every time she laughed. We had a lot of laughs for that hour or so we were together, then all of us HAD to go with Holly1 to find some Spanish waiter who was going to take them out. We found this guy and started to walk in the general direction of some night club…but, in typical fashion I decide to call it a night and ditch everyone. I let the 2 Hollys and Spaniard walk ahead, then gained a conscience and actually decided to say goodbye to the Italians. They explain that the Hollys are eighteen and twenty years old respectively, and they would rather leave them also and go with me to the “next place”. Since it had been three days since I’d spoken English with anyone, I took them up on the offer and recommended the Irish bar we passed about a block ago.

We ordered a round at the bar, and again, a little blond next to me hears English and…turns out she’s from Kansas city…go Chiefs! At this point, I’ve pretty much given up on meeting locals since we are in the touristy city center.

So KC Angie and I start bantering back and forth…and I must say, she’s really really funny. Her friend Jennifer was entertaining the Italians, or maybe the other way around - guess they didn’t see the wedding ring ;-). The five of us are having a really good time and Angie and I are just taking turns making each other laugh. I must say, there were probably 75 occasions to throw in the phrase “that’s what he/she said” (ala “The Office”), but she picked the absolute best 4 times to use it and I practically peed my pants. Needless to say, we walked into this pub at 12:30ish, and got kicked out at closing at 5:00 am. It’s been a long time since I made it out that late, and I have no intention of making a habit of it, but she was just that much fun.

Next up, a slighly more mellow saturday night, then live soccer on sunday...will post more tomorrow.