Let's make the best of tonight, here comes the rest of our lives

SATURDAY

Breakfast was DELICIOUS... again (sorry, I have to mention every time we have a good meal.  It's part of my personality)

We went to the Sevillian cathedral/mosque – it was HUGE and labarc barc got really excited about being a tour guide but she didn’t actually tell us anything important.  There was a ton of Muslim influence in the architecture because there's so much history with Arabic/Christian rule, but it makes the buildings beautiful.  We were scheduled to go to a palace after the cathedral, but it was the one day where I had forgotten to bring my student card, and I didn't feel like paying 8 euros to get in so I left.  I had planned on walking back to the hotel to take a nap, but then I got really excited because I was by myself and I felt independent and there were lots of stores on sale... whoops.  I got a dress for 8 euros and I’m wearing it right now.  Legit.

I ended up just walking around and looking at the city and it was a lot of fun.  I wound up at the Plaza de Espana - its a relatively new plaza with a huge government building surrounding a lake and right next to a huge park.  It's beautiful, but it was weird because for some reason it was the day of weddings in Sevilla.  I passed 8 brides taking their wedding pictures in the same location - I'm pretty sure they were having a competition to see who could take the prettiest pictures. And then they all were carried away in horse and buggies... how cute.

I decided it was time to head back and I thought I knew where I was going but I realized I actually had no idea.  I stopped at a hostel and got a map... we were staying at the Hotel Americana, so when I saw the Plaza Americana on the map I assumed that's where our Hotel was as well (even though the area didn't look very familiar, I just figured I didn't have a good memory).  I walked about 30 minutes to get to the plaza - turns out it's a round-about with a little statue in the middle.  No hotel in sight.

I went to a kiosk to figure out where I was, and the guy showed me that I had walked off my map and I was about an hour and a half walking distance from our hotel.  So much for my new and improved sense of direction.  Normally I would have just walked back, but I had spent the past 3 hours wandering the city and I didn't want to get lost again and it was SUPER hot.  So I took a taxi and I had exactly the right amount of cash to get back.  Can you say convenient? 

I had a dream that night that I caught a bunch of taxi's in different locations.  Probably because I felt legit when I walked into the street stuck out my arm and just snapped, and the taxi stopped next to me. Things you can't do in Roswell.

I got back to the hotel and I was super exhausted so I took a nap and then Shivani and I went to Corte Ingles and bought sandwiches.  As we were walking out there was some kind of comedian street show going on - we couldn't understand what they were saying but most of it was mimed and they were just juggling and moving in crazy positions with their bodies.  I heard someone calling my name and I looked up and Emily was sticking her head out of the window of our hotel room watching the show.  I don't know why I thought it was so cool, but it didn't feel like real life. 

Emily, Shivani and I got ready and walked back to the park outside of Plaza de Espana for dinner.  We brought our sandwiches and sat next to a pond underneath a kiosk thing and listened to "Best Days" by Graham Colton (listen to it - it sums up our trip).  It was GREAT. 

It started getting late so we left to go back to the hotel, and for some reason we decided to follow my directions?  We walked for about 20 minutes, and I was excited because I knew we were going the right way because we kept passing things that I recognized from my walk earlier (while I was completely lost in the city).  Emily finally made us stop to get a map and once again, we had walked the completely wrong direction.  Sorry guys :]

We got back and got dressed and went out along the river in Sevilla again.  

Summary of our night (from Shivani's perspective) - "Everyone wants to be us".

WT Tip #17:  Always have some spare money for a taxi.  And don't assume that just because your hotel shares the name of a Plaza means that it is in the plaza.