A.La.Sevillana.

This weekend was a girls weekend. Me and Linda (might be referred to as Fernie so don't be thrown off) went to Sevilla, in the region of Andalucia in the south of Spain. A few months ago I went on a trip to Sevilla with my students and fell in love with Spain all over again so I decided that before I leave this country I must return. It was nice to go with my bestest friend in this crazy country. Like ta hear it, hear it go... Early Friday evening, we arrived in Sevilla and were picked up by my awesome friend Alejandro who works for my same org. in Sevilla. He picked us up, took us for a walk around the city center and then we went "de tapas" which basically means going around to different places and having tapas and drinks and moving to the next, and the next... We hung out for quite awhile. Fernie (Linda) was sick so she returned to our hostel to sleep. I stayed out enjoying the city and chatting with Ale and his friends. When I returned to sleep, I was unpleasantly disturbed out of sleep by some random loud hostelers that made me almost lose my mind. I had to pray and then find my iPod because they were about to GET IT in a reallllly not healthy way! The next day, I told Linda how horrible they had been and threatened to hurt them in their sleep if they had a foreign boys gone wild party at 6am again and one of the nosey bastards was listening in...when we returned from our morning stroll and chopping off all of Linda's hair...they were being moved to another room.

This tree is so huge and the last time I was in Sevilla I didn't take a picture of it. Since it will be my last trip to Sevilla for awhile, I figured I should try to capture the grandiosness (is that a word) of the tree. Hope you get the idea...

That tree was not on its own. The trees here are mammoth-like in size.

Because I am an 8 year-old boy in a 28 year olds body (at times) I wanted to climb the tree.

Because I'm clumsy, I decided to just jump off of it instead.

This street is full of carriages of beautiful horses. This guy started smiling at me so I figured I'd get it on film.

El rio Guadalquivir...we decided (Alejandro, my Sevillian friend, suggested) that we should have lunch on the banks of the river so we took his advice and had some tapas and headed to boat rentals...

We decided to get the boats that you pedal like a bike because the last time we tried to row ourselves, I rowed us into a really smell embankment and I couldn't get us out. Better that it's a team effort and not strictly an Allison effort because we might still be in the river.

Fernie, not pedaling very much, just looking very chic with her new haircut.

Somewhere between pedaling and relaxing in the sun I managed to drop my phone into the water. It was recovered quickly BUT wasn't looking good for quite awhile. I have a serious problem with keeping a phone...sometimes it falls down elevator shafts, other times it gets stolen by cleaning women (along with my hot pink PINK bra) from hotels in Brazil...other times, it floats under my feet in the pedal boat in the Guadalquivir River.

We decided to walk to get ourselves a yummy treat (we worked up a bit of hunger from all that pedaling) and ran into this protest against bull fighting. The week before Feria de abril also known as the April Fair (very important part of Sevillian culture) the bull fights begin for the season and the people below value animal preservation over cultural support of public killing of animals.

This plaza de toros (bull fighting ring) is what was causing all the commotion. You have one line of people in front of it taking pictures because they are excited about the fighting and you have another group who is furious and hates the idea of such public killing.

I'm a fan of flowers, a lot more than I ever have been. One day I'll have my own garden so it won't be so bad if I pick my own flowers and put them in my hair...

Fernie and Lambie's Big Adventure

Now we all know I just wouldn't be me without a photo shoot.

A Linda classic

Plaza Espanya

So Sunday was kind of a gloomy day but we made the best of it by wandering around as much as possible. We stumbled on something about Hercules which was a strange little area but had a cool little area that was like a fire hydrant in the summer. Unfortunately, it was off and on rainy and not warm on Sunday so we didn't really need a hydrant...but when it warms up, that will be awesome.

This was a horrible wall. Fortresses were supposed to keep people out a long time ago, not two cute young ladies who are trying to find a nice afternoon meal. We got lost the minute we stepped inside of it and we couldn't find anywhere that had patatas bravas, croquetas or chorizo. It was Sevilla for crying out loud!!! We ended up having Japanese as our last Sevillian supper and headed back to BCN.