Sevilla: Sightseeing part 2 and an unforgettable flamenco show

After another horrible night – thanks to people leaving and snoring during the night – I again woke up as if I had slept absolutely nothing during the whole time. We also welcomed the arrival of some new roommates. Actually most of them were older people, doing the Camino de Santiago, so they stayed only for one night. For those, who don’t know what I’m talking about, the Road of Santiago is one of the most famous Christian pilgrim ways that ends in Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain, where rumor has it that the apostle St. James was buried. There are many different routes: you can start the camino in France, but also in Sevilla.

This morning, we left the hostel almost at 12 o’clock, with a bag filled with food “stolen” from breakfast. We had our list with ourselves and the plan was to visit all those places that we could not have the previous day, and to return to some of those where Medi, our tourist guide did not left us enough time to spend. The funny part is that eventually we ended up following almost the same route, just without guidance but being able to stop and take photos anytime or grab something to eat along the way.

Our first stop was at the Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza, the famous bullring in Sevilla, which is undoubtedly one of the most visited tourist attractions of the city. One time when we were passing by the building, there must have been a bullfight, because there was a very long queue in front of the place. Fortunately, the majority of the Spaniards I know are against this tradition and find it a cruel entertainment. Nevertheless, I was still very interested how it looked like from inside, but in order to enter, one has to pay. Not much though: with student card, it was 4€, without it 7€. But I decided to skip it and we headed towards the Torre del Oro again.

Then, we crossed the bridge called Puente de San Telmo in order to check the Plaza de Cuba. Since it wasn’t anything special, after a couple of minutes we returned to the other side of Guadalquivir and started to walk towards the Puerta de Jerez. There we took a couple of pictures and then continued our walking tour to the direction of the Palacio de San Telmo and the university building. As I have commented it before, we were following a very similar route to the one we did the other day, so we actually saw Medi and the new group in front of the palace.

The next important stop was the university building, which we entered. It looked nice, very fancy, but nothing out of the ordinary. However, I still believe it must be very cool to study there, not only because it is one of the best universities in Spain, but because you get to experience the life of a sevillano filled with sunshine, passion and the feeling of being on vacations all year long.

The university was followed by the Plaza de España, which left me just as impressed as the first time. I forgot to tell you in the previous post that by the walls of the building, there are the so called Province Alcoves representing the different provinces of Spain; while the four bridges represent its four ancient kingdoms. I would highly recommend everyone to leave a proper amount of time for visiting this place and to make the most of its beauty. We, for example, wanted to buy an ice cream there and just sit down on a bench, but we had to go for it a little bit further, to the Parque de Maria Luisa. The latter is an enormous park with orange trees, Mediterranean pines, ponds, fountains and animals. In other words, a little paradise inside of the city. Furthermore, at the southern end of Parque de Luisa, you can enjoy the beautiful Plaza de América, which is another must see. Besides the fact it is another marvellous square, it gives home to the Museum of Popular Arts, the Archaeological Museum and the Royal Pavilion. If you look it carefully, it has a very similar style to the Plaza de España, which makes absolute sense as soon as you find out that it was built by the same architect, Aníbál Gonzáles.

By the time we finished taking pictures of the Plaza de América, we became very hungry, so the next project was to find an affordable place to eat – and something that is not called 100 Montaditos. Earlier this day, when we were visiting the university building, we discovered that on one of its sides, there is a long street full of restaurant and tapas bars, so our aim was to get back there. Although we had to walk a good half an hour, we found a restaurant with a special daily offer: we could choose a starter from 4 different ones, a main course from 4 different ones, a drink and a dessert for not more than 9€. At first, I was a tiny bit sceptical about the portions, but we were served enough food to get full by the end of the meal. We asked for paella with sangria, Iberian pork stew and a tiramisu for dessert. The food was really delicious, though the dessert was not a real tiramisu. And worth than that was our waiter, who for some reason did not exactly treat us like costumers. In exchange, we did not give any tip.

After lunch, we continued the sightseeing with the Cathedral of Sevilla and the Giralda that was right next to it. The cathedral, also known as Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, is one of the largest in the world. It was registered a World Heritage Site in 1987. Although my friend wanted to enter the cathedral, we were quite tired, so we went straight to Plaza de la Alameda de Hércules. Well, it wasn’t exactly “straight”. The Alameda de Hércules is basically on the other side of the city, and in an area full of narrow and winding streets, so it took a while to find it. Thank God that at this point, we had already bought a map, otherwise we could have easily got lost.

When we arrived to the “monument”, I was a little bit disappointed: if I had known before that I was circulating for an hour in the city for two Roman columns, I would have clearly said a big fat no. Anyhow, we had already made the effort, so at least we took some mandatory photos and then left from the place. We were planning to return to the hostel as we had reservations for the flamenco show in the evening. However, before doing that, we needed to buy some things in Corte Inglés for next day’s trip back to Salamanca. In there, I bumped into a bunch of flamenco dresses and felt an inexplicable need for trying one on. I was just about dress up in a plain black dress, when my friend started to repeat that she could not find her camera. Blurred by excitement, at first, I was not really paying attention to her, but when her face started to get very serious, I knew that she had lost it.

Therefore, we spent the next hour with going back to the places we had been to since we left from the Plaza de la Alameda de Hércules. Of course, it took some time to find the same streets, but fortunately a local man helped us. Soon we turned out to be the luckiest people, because we found the camera in a shop we entered on our way. Despite this, my friend still needed some time to cheer up, besides our feet were hurting badly again, and on top of all of this, we were really close to being late from the flamenco show. So we decided to take a taxi back to the hostel. It cost us more or less 4€, so it was not a high expense, but in exchange, we did not miss any part of the show.

And here comes the highlight of the day. The flamenco show took place in the Museo del Baile Flamenco, established by the dancer, choreographer and actress Cristina Hoyos, situated in the Barrio de Santa Cruz. The show started about 10 minutes later than planned, but what we experienced in the next hour was worth all the money and waiting. There were four people performing: a male guitarist, a male singer, a female dancer and a male dancer. I remember that the woman was called Raquel. We saw five different performances, each one being a flamenco style; including different dances and guitar solos. The whole show was simply breathtaking! All the artists were excellent and they could make the reality stop around us and focus only on the moment. I had goosebumps throughout the whole time, and at the end, half of the hall was applauding standing. It was an incredible experience, which cannot be proven more than by the fact that we spent the whole night talking about it. It was a perfect completion to our trip in Sevilla.

After this, nothing interesting happened that is worth mentioning. We went to sleep quite late and woke up quite early the next day to arrive to Plaza de Armas, where our next BlaBlaCar driver was waiting for us. During the whole road I was replaying the most important and unforgettable moments of Sevilla and I felt a little bit sad to leave the city behind. But everything comes to an end, doesn’t?

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