2/7/19
It’s hard to believe it’s 8pm as I sit here on my hostel bed with a pounding headache. The sun is still shining, it’s almost 30 degrees, and we won’t have sunset for another two hours. 14 hours ago I was woken abruptly (yet again) for breakfast - potatoes, a hash brown, courgettes, carrots, a bread roll and jam, and a life saving cuppa black coffee. We were 10 hours into out second overnight flight from Singapore to Frankfurt. I thought Germans were known to be particularly punctual, yet both Lufthansa flights sat for half an hour in delay on the ground due to an order from traffic control. The pilot explaining over loudspeaker what was going on in an overly long-winded manner was truly something. A bretzel for our quick 2 hour layover in Frankfurt was a necessity but after seeing the same pretzel store about five or six times throughout the airport, it became a little gimmicky.
We arrived in Seville around 12:30 pm to an empty-warehouse-esque airport. Germans in holiday mode standing far too close to the luggage belt, not allowing anyone else a view of their own luggage. We hopped on the crowded bus heading towards the centre of Seville, walked through a maze of alleyways in the heat with our heavy backpacks, just to turn up at the wrong hostel. Apparently Seville has two hostels with exactly the same name...please explain. There’s nothing worse than dropping your backpack in relief, back all sweaty, to find out you have to pick it back up again and continue the walk to the correct hostel. We’re sharing an eight-bed dorm with four other women - three Canadian’s and one Australian. They’ve spent the last hour or two “fixing up” and making themselves look “fuckable” (!!!!!!) and as I was “napping”, all I could concentrate on was the process of it all, and I've never felt more distant from that whole idea.
We finally left the hostel in search of food, realising it had been 8 hours since our last meal. We settled for a delicious burger place before going for a wander through the town -
navigating the alleyways and stopping to take photos every 15 seconds. The magic here is in the detail. The colourful charm of the historic buildings, the nostalgic pink flower bushes, and the Spanish locals sitting outside tapas bars drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. Somehow, they make smoking look romantic.
An old man with a sun hat on was obliviously crossing the street. The cars rolled down, tooted at him to move, his hat flew off onto the street stopping the cars in their tracks....oh so dramatic, I had to try not to laugh.
We stumbled across a beautiful pink building which happened to be Seville’s Museo de Belle Artes. €1.50 took us inside on a self-guided tour through the the extravagant gallery, based around a few ground-level gardens.
So far, Seville has shown us the history we miss in Auckland. We carried on towards and eventually along the river and then back to the hostel, daydreaming along the way of living here. No one was around....it must be siesta hour, and my pounding headache told me sleeping during the suns hottest hours is probably the way to go. How naive we were to think we could handle it straight away. I lay down to rest, lying horizontal being a much missed feeling during our 45 hour journey here and two nights sleeping upright. I was so tired but for some reason couldn’t get to sleep, listening to the other travellers chat and get ready for their big night out. I maybe got 10 minutes of sleep before I decided to call the efforts quit and wait it out until later. I got dressed and swiped some make up on my face while Tash and Jaz slept, unaware that it was already 9:30pm. Eventually they woke. I was ready and had made some loose plans for dinner - to rock up to one of the vegan friendly restaurants I’d googled and hope for the best. We waltzed down alleyways, grateful for the now mild temperature and in awe of how many more people were out and about late night on a Tuesday. Habitas is a small family run restaurant that offers lots of vegetarian and vegan options, with the classic older Spanish man owner with click-together glasses who got a little stroppy with our lack of Spanish skills (fair). He brought us bread and three packets of breadsticks - very plain but strangely addictive and a nice gesture. We ordered as best we could, not knowing what half of the things on the menu were and curious but not quite curious enough to try something different. As we ate, the fact that we were in Spain together settled in, and I think at this point we all finally started to relax and enjoy it, even willingly paying for the breadsticks the owner had brought out as a ''freebie''....cheeky.
We arrived in Seville around 12:30 pm to an empty-warehouse-esque airport. Germans in holiday mode standing far too close to the luggage belt, not allowing anyone else a view of their own luggage. We hopped on the crowded bus heading towards the centre of Seville, walked through a maze of alleyways in the heat with our heavy backpacks, just to turn up at the wrong hostel. Apparently Seville has two hostels with exactly the same name...please explain. There’s nothing worse than dropping your backpack in relief, back all sweaty, to find out you have to pick it back up again and continue the walk to the correct hostel. We’re sharing an eight-bed dorm with four other women - three Canadian’s and one Australian. They’ve spent the last hour or two “fixing up” and making themselves look “fuckable” (!!!!!!) and as I was “napping”, all I could concentrate on was the process of it all, and I've never felt more distant from that whole idea.
We finally left the hostel in search of food, realising it had been 8 hours since our last meal. We settled for a delicious burger place before going for a wander through the town -
navigating the alleyways and stopping to take photos every 15 seconds. The magic here is in the detail. The colourful charm of the historic buildings, the nostalgic pink flower bushes, and the Spanish locals sitting outside tapas bars drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. Somehow, they make smoking look romantic.
An old man with a sun hat on was obliviously crossing the street. The cars rolled down, tooted at him to move, his hat flew off onto the street stopping the cars in their tracks....oh so dramatic, I had to try not to laugh.
We stumbled across a beautiful pink building which happened to be Seville’s Museo de Belle Artes. €1.50 took us inside on a self-guided tour through the the extravagant gallery, based around a few ground-level gardens.
So far, Seville has shown us the history we miss in Auckland. We carried on towards and eventually along the river and then back to the hostel, daydreaming along the way of living here. No one was around....it must be siesta hour, and my pounding headache told me sleeping during the suns hottest hours is probably the way to go. How naive we were to think we could handle it straight away. I lay down to rest, lying horizontal being a much missed feeling during our 45 hour journey here and two nights sleeping upright. I was so tired but for some reason couldn’t get to sleep, listening to the other travellers chat and get ready for their big night out. I maybe got 10 minutes of sleep before I decided to call the efforts quit and wait it out until later. I got dressed and swiped some make up on my face while Tash and Jaz slept, unaware that it was already 9:30pm. Eventually they woke. I was ready and had made some loose plans for dinner - to rock up to one of the vegan friendly restaurants I’d googled and hope for the best. We waltzed down alleyways, grateful for the now mild temperature and in awe of how many more people were out and about late night on a Tuesday. Habitas is a small family run restaurant that offers lots of vegetarian and vegan options, with the classic older Spanish man owner with click-together glasses who got a little stroppy with our lack of Spanish skills (fair). He brought us bread and three packets of breadsticks - very plain but strangely addictive and a nice gesture. We ordered as best we could, not knowing what half of the things on the menu were and curious but not quite curious enough to try something different. As we ate, the fact that we were in Spain together settled in, and I think at this point we all finally started to relax and enjoy it, even willingly paying for the breadsticks the owner had brought out as a ''freebie''....cheeky.
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