Andalusia : Bouncing in Seville

So after my graduation that took place in Madrid, I decided to treat myself by travelling the south of Spain, aka Andalusia. This was going to be my last trip before going to India, so I really wanted to make the best of it. Moreover I had shared my travel plans with a few of my batchmates, and guess what! I got a travel buddy for my upcoming Andalusian adventure!!! Chen Xian, ladies and gentlemen!! My partner in crime in Andalusia!

So after the final farewell after my graduation, I headed off to Andalusia, the hot gem of Europe. The trip started with Granada, halted at Malaga and concluded in Seville.

Seville happens to be the largest city of Andalusia and the fourth largest in Spain, situated on the plains of river Guadalquivir. It is also the hottest major metropolitan area in Western Europe! So far the temperature in our Andalusian adventure had just been rising! Aaaaah how I missed the year long cloudy Northern Europe! Nah, just kidding! I would never miss Northern Europe, not when I am in Spain! As we reached Seville early evening, we stepped out of the car right into a furnace!! 'Hot' was too less of an adjective to describe Seville! Walking to the hostel amidst the heat wave was a real struggle! Our hostel in Seville was pretty good. Having stayed in a dump in Malaga, literally anything else seemed like paradise! We got our beds, kept our bags and freshened up for the adventure ahead.

Our roommate in the hostel was (hold your breath!), a 80 year old traveler!! Originally from the US, she had been living at different places in the world for the past, I don't even know, how many years! Quite a life! And a pretty interesting character too! Chen was too tired to go out, so I went out on a late night stroll by myself. The heat wave was killing me. Nothing stays forever in Seville, except for the goddamn heat! As soon as I found a bar, I got a beer! Beer had already replaced water in Andalusia. Walking across the city, you needed a beer every now and then! I did myself a favor and rushed back to the hostel. Its not so often during my travels, that I prefer to stay indoors than outdoors. This was definitely one of them.

Next day we went for a free walking tour in the morning. Though this tour was a little technically advanced. Our tour guide carried a WiFi router! Wow! So now if the our tour guide turned out to be the boring one, we could very well just find the city info using the WiFi. Fortunately, that was not the case, as our tour guide ended up being a pretty decent one with more information we could find on the internet! We started with the most popular site of Seville, the Alcazar. And you'd have probably seen it, even if you have never been to Seville! How? The Dorne kingdom in the Game of Thrones, that is the Alcazar! It is said that during one of the shoots, a security guard of Alcazar failed to recognize Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister) and refused to let him in. Even Jamie Lannister had to stand in a queue for a ticket to the Alcazar, to go in for the shoot! We went to the Cathedral, a UNESCO world heritage site, the Torre del Oro, the city hall, the palace of San Telemo etc. etc. etc. Basically really cool places, with mainly the same old Arab architecture. The tour ended in Plaza Espana, one of the most gorgeous garden squares I had ever laid my eyes on!

We spent a good hour to check out the work of art that Plaza Espana was. Later we dragged ourselves through the scorching streets to a close by bar. Beer was a life saver in Seville. Since the bar was pretty empty, and since we weren't brave enough to step out in the sun again, we just dozed off in the bar. Siesta! We were already getting accustomed to the Spanish lifestyle.

After our little siesta, we mustered all our strength and came out in the open again. Cursing the sun, we made our way to the Alcazar again and got in the ticket queue. Since the ticket queue was an easy 20 minutes of waiting, I headed again to a close by bar to get a beer while Chen stood in the queue. I came back 5 minutes later with two beers. There's nothing like sipping beer while waiting in a queue, in burning noon. By the time we got our tickets and entered the Alcazar, I was already drunk like a monkey. I went in the Alcazar all happy, clicking photos of random walls, random people passing by and random security guards. Suddenly I wasn't even interested in the Alcazar anymore. I lost Chen, and went on walking carefree in the spectacular Alcazar. It was like a smaller version of the Alhambra palace we saw in Granada.

As I got sober, I left the Alcazar and made my way back to the hostel, because the goddamn sun! I took a quick nap and started my late lunch. While at lunch I met this absolutely stunning Brazilian girl, who was working in the hostel in exchange for free stay. Soon we were friends and once Chen was back, all four of us (a German girl from the hostel had joined our little group by this time) decided to go to a popular Seville Flamenco bar, 'La Carboneria' for a few drinks. Flamenco bar? I was quite confused too, but there exists bars in Seville, where live flamenco goes on. Interesting right! It was even more interesting watching it happen while we had our beers.

We saw a couple of performances and made our long tipsy walk to the hostel. The Brazilian girl went on a full on storytelling mode while we walked. Pretty interesting person, she was. Talking to her, made me want to go to Brazil right away! Did I say she was just too charming? Well, okay she was.

What was up for next day? BUNGEE JUMPING!! We found this pretty popular bungee jumping site close to Seville, and we were like, HELL YEAH! The only downside was that it was a little too far from Seville city. We took a bus, which dropped us in a small town after an hour long ride. A typical Andalusian town with pretty much just old people around us. Needless to say, we were quite paralyzed there with just 'No hablo Espanol' in our Spanish vocabulary. Google revealed the actual bungee jumping site was around an hour away on foot from that town. So we walked, with our thumb stretched out in hopes of getting a ride. But well hitchhiking was a distant dream, when an Indian and a Chinese tried to get a ride in Spain. So we walked and walked in that desert. Yeah, as we left the town all that was waiting for us to pass by was a big bad desert. To make matters worse, our GPS stopped working!! It looked like one of those 'Breaking Bad' deserts where Heisenberg made his meth. With nobody around, we just walked on a road hoping it was the right one. After walking for around 20 minutes, our GPS miraculously started working again, only to reveal we were walking on the wrong road all along!! Phew! We walked back, got the right road, got lost again, found the right path again and walked and walked and walked. By this time my shirt was around my head like those Arabs walking with camels. Now I knew why! I walked shirtless in the burning desert till we saw a river. A river!! What a relief! Soon after we saw a bridge over the river, and the bungee jumping ropes on the bridge!! Over an hour on foot in one of the hottest deserts we ever stepped on and finally we reached the spot! It'd better be worth the struggle of reaching there. We reached the bridge and the first thing we did was buy a beer! Yes, they sold cold beer there! Pretty clever chaps! As we gulped our beers, two guys just jumped from the bridge with the ropes. Oh the horror! Chen was reconsidering his decision to jump. But since we had come this far, we could leave without doing a jump. We were next on the list. As they strapped us with the ropes, my heart started beating like it never did. Could it be my last jump ever? That's all I thought about that moment! Anyways, we stood at the edge of the bridge with a GoPro in our hands, and heard the countdown. Three!! Two!! One!! We jumped off the bridge!!! I shouted like I never have in my entire life!! Except for when I did skydiving of course! As our jump concluded, they lowered us in the river and we swam across to the banks of the river. What a rush of adrenaline that was! I was high without drugs! We rested on the banks a bit before spotting a liana! We ran to grab it and like Tarzan we threw ourselves in the river again for a little swim. The water definitely helped in the heat. We walked back to the bridge and I decided to do a bungee jump again! This time I jumped backwards! This time it was a lot less scary of course, now that I knew what to expect. I swam across to the banks again and chilled for a bit. As we were done, we started hunting for a ride from some of the guys there with a car, because no way were we walking all the way back! Fortunately we found a couple who were heading back to Seville and were kind enough to give us a ride. And we dashed off to Seville with that Spanish couple to Seville, making small talk with our limited Spanish vocabulary on the way. We reached Seville and thanked the couple like we never thanked anyone!

Back in our hostel, we did just what you'd expect. SLEEP! Chen was already done for the day. Since it was my last day in Seville, I didn't want to just lie around when I could create some more memories. So I got up and headed out for another free walking tour in the evening. It was a little tour of Triana, the Seville on the other side of the Triana bridge. It was pretty decent. A good time killer to say the least. I went around to see some more sites in Seville by myself and later on met up with some people from couchsurfing. I had a couple of beers with them and bid them farewell. Seville was coming to an end as I went back to hostel to pick up my bags and say my final good bye to Chen. Chen was heading to Lisbon then next day while I was going back to Madrid. I caught my night bus to Madrid and sat back gathering all the memories I had made in this trip in Andalusia! Andalusia was definitely one of the top ten trips I had ever had the fortune of making!

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