Hasta la vista!!!

As I am writing this I'm sitting on the plane taking me from Malaga to Birmingham :

This is my goodbye to Spain. I arrived about five months ago and a lot has happened since the moment I got my huge and heavy luggage out of the car to get them up three floor in the pension; but it feels like it was yesterday. I have met so many amazing and interesting people in my time here and I have seen wonderful places!


Recently I have done a little trip to Seville, where I visited Raf and Ned again and which enabled me to see some other places in Seville. I was actually really positively surprised by the Alcazar Palace. Having visited the Alhambra and actually seeing it every day has made me a bit smug and I didn't feel that I missed out in not discovering the Alcazar when we first visited Seville. Not only was it free, but it was truly beautiful! The gardens were astonishing and the palace itself shows a magnificent architecture. For any visit of Seville, I would definitely recommend this place.

Two days and an exam later, I went to Madrid with Biggi. We stayed with a couchsurfer, who luckily lived in Chueca, in the city centre. The wonderful location enabled us to discover the Spanish capital by foot. The perfect weather made the Retiro park such an enjoyable experience and after that we were off to the Prado. As we had booked the tickets online, we weren't aware of the fact that students from the European Union could enter for free, but the angry counter lady didn't want to refund us the money. However any expense in Madrid was justified by the fact that we were living for free...

The Rastro Flea Market wasn't as great as I had pictured it, as I was comparing it to Mauerpark in Berlin.(Yes, Berlin might also have made me a tad smug) There were mainly tourists and only a few stalls actually had good offers, like the 2€ jumper I purchased. I was also disappointed by the Plaza de Toros. The corrida building is very beautiful indeed, but not only was the (free) taurine Museum closed for works, the visit of the arena also cost 7 Euros, which was clearly too much. As we walked back, we stumbled upon a calligraphy exhibition in the Casa Arabe, which made up for the failure at the Plaza de Toros.

But let's get back to the good parts of the city, as indeed I found the stay extraordinary. We walked around in a more alternative quarter of the city, where the amount and diversity of bars and cafés were astonishing. The presence of street art reminded me of my dear Berlin and I instantly felt homey. I will always be a big-city-girl...

Cupcakes in Madrid

I am now left with melancholic thoughts about Granada - So many people and places I will miss, and of course Miguel's Spaghetti Carbonara ;)
 
It is time to start a new life.

Sprinting through Seville

Last weekend, I experienced what was less of a mini-break, but rather a 24-hour marathon through Seville... The four hours in the coach, driving through every single pueblo in Andalucia were a pain, but my two flatmates and I forgot about it as soon as we arrived in Seville. We walked along the river, admiring the colourful riverside until we got to the Torre del Oro. Not much of the gold is left, but, hey, old buildings are awesome!

I have to say that I was a bit dazzled to be in a big city again, with loads of cars and huge roads, but once we were in the city centre, it was truly beautiful. We watched a huge wedding coming out of the cathedral and joined the crowd of passers-by who was applauding and shouting their wishes. The shopping streets were full of people. What confused me at the start were the big linen cloths stretched across the streets from rooftop to rooftop. Desi solved the mystery explaining they meant to protect from the sunshine. A sunshine that we didn't get to see until Sunday, because rain had accompanied our coach trip and had stayed with us in Seville.

After we got the general flair, we took a taxi to go to our charming couch hosts... Raf and Ned unfortunately lived a bit outside the city centre, in such an obscure (!) place, that the taxi driver didn't know the address... After a bit of confused explaining, where I probably broke about 20 grammatical rules of the Spanish language, the man got us to the right area. Unfortunately he wasn't too right about where he left us and we walked in the pouring rain... but in the end we made it and had a chilled evening around a few bottles of beer and some serious catching-up!

The next day, the guys left to Lisbon, and we only made it to the centre by midday. This is when the sprinting  really began... from the still closed cathedral to the castle, where we decided that the queue was too long, back to the cathedral, which once inside was more than impressive. Through our eaves-dropping on German guided tours we understood, that the Catedral Santa Maria de la Sede, was the third biggest cathedral in Europe and in the World, after the St Peter's Dome in Rome and St Paul's in London. Indeed the building is breath-taking and the side chapels, which sum up to a number of 80, are all different and beautiful in their own way. We were also able to have a look at Christopher Columbus' grave, or one of them because apparently other places claim to hold some of his remains. 7 years ago, they cross-checked Columbus' DNA with his brother's and proved that the 150 grams lying in the cathedral actually belonged to the explorer.

The next step for us was the Plaza de España, a great piece of architecture, crowded with tourists but we didn't have much time. So we sprinted back the 3 km to the bus station to make it just on time for our coach to leave. At 9 we were happily back at home, looking forward to a good night's sleep.

The visit was too brief- Seville needs to be visited again!

I have miles to go before I sleep...