pâtisserie and a huge gothic cathedral. plus a crazy québecer and a kiwi.

the bus granada-sevilla was...a bus, i bought a book of sudoku before leaving (which i quickly got bored of and dozed off). i sat next to this stylish blonde girl who was reading a spanish magazine with a small translating dictionary..."the client" was the movie of choice for the 3-hour ride, and it was subtitled in english (dubbed over in spanish), lucky for me...not a bad film, susan sarandon and that kid who probably didn't have a career after that movie, and that guy from ER who had cancer played the lawyer's assistant. oh yeah, and tommy lee jones in this hilarious role as a gospel-blabbing DA from louisiana. i was laughing, clearly an anglophone, and when i got out my printed out pdf to walk to oasis sevilla, the blonde girl asked me if i needed help getting there. or maybe she asked me if i was american, i can't remember the exact order of events...

needless to say, she took me on a long-ish walking tour of the city! she is german, from munich, a primary school teacher by trade, in sevilla for some months to learn spanish as well as assist in a primary school to teach kids german. it was about 25ºC when we arrived in sevilla, and she said that i had completely lucked out, that before she left for granada for a week's vacation it had been rainy and not-nice. she showed me some of the major sights and gave me scraps of history...the university, the cathedral, alcázares...it was sunny, warm, not many people on the streets, and i really got a feeling of the city. it looks big in the let's go guidebook, but it's not actually all that spread out.

she was incredibly kind, like lili said later, a kind of guardian angel. i found the hostel quite easily, she pointed me in the direction of the best pâtisserie in sevilla (yum, as i would find out later) and told me to turn the corner. an amazing start to a short venture in sevilla (and the last phase of my trip)!

i checked in to oasis, which i thought at first was closed for construction but they were just working on a building next door, and talked for a while with the swiss guy working there, he thought i was from québec (yes, jonathan, at first i was a bit miffed. i don't have a québecois accent, do i?). basta. i took my stuff up in the elevator to the 2nd floor (also room 6) and unlocked the door to find shirtless jonathan from montréal checking his email on his laptop! (not a girls' only room, i quickly concluded) we chatted for a while and we went down to meet a bunch of oasis-ers for a tapas and flamenco tour (one of the apparently regular nightly events that happen at these oasis hostels. heads up to anyone traveling in portugal - there's an oasis lisbon!).

on the walk i met a couple of australians and a lovely double bass player from milan named alessandra (goes by ale, who i hope has not dropped off the face of the earth). i ate some delicious beef stew and a chickpea dish at the first place and then had chicken curry and a big glass of sangria (mysteriously, my glass kept refilling) at the last place. we got to the flamenco place (la carbonería) a bit too late and were only able to catch their last set. it was a trio of performers: a female dancer, a guitarist, and a male singer. the dancer was tall, intimidating, and had an amazing dress that worked well with her passionate stomping and shadowed brow. the singer had a jaw/facial hair issue - he basically just looked crazy when he sang. he had a rough, gritty voice, that went well with the guitarist's articulations. (correct me here, o michael beharie and justin riberio, for i know not how to explain flamenco guitar)

after sticking around for ale to finish her beer, we tried not to get lost on the way back to the hostel (the streets were deserted at 1 am - strange for spain, as everyone seems to stay out til 6 or 7 am) and crashed. i rose early-ish to get some breakfast in the kitchen upstairs (waffles, toast, delicious chocolate spread, and milk) and also to get ale's contact info (although she rolled out an hour later than anticipated). we experienced a blackout from the waffle iron, although we thought at first it was the coffeemaker. i also met sydnah that morning, who is originally from queens, went to morgan state (pretty local to me), and is currently teaching english à la darcy in a suburb of paris. hopefully we'll prendre un verre demain.

i returned to my room to check out my map and guidebook to lay out a plan for my day and got into a conversation with a rather pasty irish guy who was still in bed in pjs. after having traveled for over a month, this guy was apparently so horny he even went so far as to proposition me right there, in a pretty decent hostel, while i am clearly not drunk enough to consider it nor forward enough to slap him in his half-wakeful state. puke. i bounced as soon as i had a vague sense of trajectory.

i walked around for a bit in town before seeing the massive queue for the cathedral, and i hoped (and was right) that most of the human traffic was due to tour groups. the line moved pretty quickly and despite my lack of student id card (i had locked my wallet in my safe back at oasis) the lady gave me the student priced-ticket. the cathedral was IMMENSE, people, just absurd. i read that it's the 3rd largest cathedral in the world, and the largest gothic cathedral. i have a certain disdain for christian iconography at this point, but this was just impressive. i didn't even bother to listen in on tour groups as i did in alhambra. they had beautiful orange trees in the garden outside.

i was dismayed that alcázares was closed on monday, but i got over it quickly because i had seen alhambra. i tried to find these beautiful gardens down my placa españa that sharonne had gushed about after eating a greasy sandwich and an ice cream from a random place near universitad...i found them eventually. parc de maría luisa. gorgeous. i wrote a postcard to clio there, which i ended up writing too much on and had to wait to get back to france to send it because i had no room to put 2 spanish stamps. i like traveling by myself a little bit because i can find my own chemin, sans souci pour les autres, and be totally in control of my situation. if i make a mistake, it's mine, and if i take time somewhere, it's mine to take. selfish, maybe, but i love it.

i walked down by the river (it must have been 28º or 30ºC) and ignored the one weird guy who tried to talk to me (i don't speak spanish anyway), eventually making my way back up to casa sierpes, a big shopping street not far from the hostel. i looked for shoes (on the prowl for sandals), but no dice. i bought breakfast food at a supermarket (pear yogurt, muesli bars, orange juice) as my flight was leaving at 7h45 the following morning for paris. i located the celebrated pâtisserie and bought 2 pastries, one that looked like a pain au chocolat (to save for the morning) and one that looked deadly and delicious that must have been filled with chocolate mousse. i took everything back to the hostel and ate a pear yogurt and the mousse pastry while recounting to one of the aussies i had met on the tapas tour the story of the horny irishman. blech. who does that?

i was sun-scorched and exhausted by that point, so i crashed for 30 or 40 minutes before meeting 3 washington&lee guys (all shirtless, wearing jeans, having just arrived in spain from the states that day). jonathan was on his computer and told us about the va tech shooting. too strange, especially for these guys who had just arrived from virginia for their study abroad...

monday was paella/sangria night, where everyone ate out on the roof (there is also a small pool) for 5€. ching-min (taiwanese flutist living in paris studying at the école normale) and i talked shop for a while, and i chatted with lili, this totally awesome kiwi teaching at a liberal primary school in zurich. it was a peaceful, humbling end to my amazingly awesome trip.

then it was back to paris early early and the rer back from orly to a less mediterranean parisian view of notre dame with machaut motet nº17 on my mind...