Day 10, 11 - Madrid, Sevilla

---

Sunday 5/31
From Paris, I took the overnight train to Madrid, and on the train I met these girls from Kansas. One of them knew Michael Warady because she went to high school in Overland Park with his sister. Small world. In the middle of the night, the guy sitting across the aisle from me got arrested by these French policeman possibly because of his passport. When we got on the train, I thought it was bizarre that he handed the train conductor a piece of paper as his passport, and he was very fidgety. I slept through the whole incident and only knew about it because the girls from Kansas told me the story the next morning.

When we arrived in Madrid, I went with the girls to their hostel so I could leave my bag there during the day. We went out and walked around Madrid seeing some of the major sights downtown such as Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor. I found Madrid very urbany. I didn't stay long enough to get much more of an impression. There were several ham museums (museo de jamon) which I found interesting. And sadly, I wasn't able to attend a bullfight.

I left Madrid around 7pm and arrived in Sevilla around 10pm. Took me forever to find my hostel. Dragging my bag around and asking people on the street "Donde esta Plaza Encarnacion?" It seemed like everyone gave me different directions. Either they didn't know or they were bullshitting me.

Monday 6/1
The next day I went on a walking tour of Sevilla at 11am. It was pretty terrible. The guide was this French-Canadian woman who didn't speak English very well, but the main problem was that she barely knew anything about the city. The only reason she was a tour guide was because she decided to stay in Sevilla on a whim and couldn't find another job! The tour was about 80% of silent walking, and the other 20% of the time she would say things like "Look at this nice view," or "here we can see some nice rose bushes." Hahaha and even when she did try to tell us something interesting, she was very vague. "They filmed part of that one Star Wars movie here, that one scene… you might know it." I know, wtf? However, we did walk through some really amazing places in town like the Maria Luis Gardens and Plaza de Espana. I was completely blown away by Plaza de Espana. On the tour, I met this two guys who were staying at my hostel, Travis and Brian. They were originally from San Diego and now work in Barcelona at the offices of Mango, a popular clothing store. They had taken a couple of days off from work to drive around the south of Spain. The free tour recommended a tip if you liked it; our tip to the tour guide was, "Learn more about the city."

After the tour, we went for tapas with these two girls, Andy and Morag (Andy from Oregon, Morag from Scotland). The tapas place we went to, Jose Luis, was amazing! I had two tortillas (Spanish omelets), a croquette, and breaded veal. Really, really delicious and satisfying in the late afternoon.

We went back to the hostel and took a siesta on the terrace on the roof. The hostel had a pool, which was not the cleanest but still refreshing. I had an iced tea and my newly acquired book from a guy in my Paris hostel who had finished it (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). Overall, a very relaxing afternoon. I could definitely get used to the quality of life in Sevilla.

At night, I met up with Lourdes (yay!), her roommate Torri, and their friend Mary. We had a little bit of an adventure searching for the Lucky Strike Lounge. In Spain, advertising for cigarettes is illegal, so Lucky Strike was pretty smart about it and decided to build this sort of free club/lounge where inside they have tons of advertisements for Lucky Strike, free beer, free drinks, PS3s, Wiis, and of course free cigarettes. Depending on the night, they also have some kind of performance. The outside of the building though is completely nondescript with no signs anywhere or any indication that there is anything going on inside. Very amusing. We finally found it after a while of asking random people, including this one girl in her mid-twenties who said, "Oh, that's the place where my younger brother goes!" Haha

Eventually, we became hungry, and since Lourdes was missing food from home, we went to this Tex-Mex restaurant called Azteca. Similar to the US, the Tex-Mex food was cheap. However, the portions were definitely not as big as the ones in Texas. After dinner, we went our separate ways. I got back to the hostel to find people drinking in the lobby and the bar so I join them, and we soon move to a different location. I had some tinto de verano (summer wine), which was quite tasty, and some Cruzcampo beer, which was quite nasty. Andy and Morag were there, and I also met some cool Germans and some crazy weird Austrian girls.

---