Anything is Possible, Except When it's Not

           

Palace Gardens in Sevilla

     Spain: the final country on my long trip! We began in Sevilla, making sure to be there for the Feria, the yearly festival usually in April following the holy week. The entire town of Sevilla comes out dressed in their flamenco best and hangs out in tents on the fairgrounds all day, eating and drinking and dancing (a lot). We met with Sofia’s aunt Palmida who was kind enough to allow us to stay with her. Before we knew it, we had set down our bags and were whisked off to the Feria. We got there around 3pm and were set down in the family tent. It was great to be able to be there, as we learned that you have to know people in order to sit in one of the tents. If you don’t know people, you end up in the public tents where apparently things can get a bit rough.

            So, in what I’ve found to be the typical Spanish fashion, we were stuffed with amazing traditional Feria food, the best being this awesome pork marinated in whiskey yuuummm, and given unlimited amounts of the traditional Feria drink of 7up and wine. We sat and ate and drank, then I tried to learn the four Sevillana or the Sevillian Flamenco dances. It was a blast! We went home around 11 or midnight and slept well.

The Feria!

I got to try on a Flamenco dress!

            The next day Sofia and I met up with my friend Sara who was studying in Sevilla. Sara showed us all around town. We went to the Catedral where I saw the burial place of Christopher Columbus and got a great view of Sevilla from the tower, then we walked through the Moorish palace that Ferdinand and Isabella had occupied and used as their own Catholic palace center with its amazing gardens and beautiful arabesque décor. After this we grabbed a great lunch of tapas and wine, got delicious gelato, and wandered through the shopping area. We got some great fun facts from Sara and learned a lot about the city and about Spaniards. They don’t seem to work, and they criticize people in Barcelona for working all the time. But how do you afford life in Sevilla without a full time job? It’s a mystery that I guess remains unsolved for now.

The Moorish Palace

Dome in Palace!

Blurry picture of me and Sara

Me and Chris

Sevilla

            Finally we went to the Plaza de Espana which was built for a World’s Fair type of event in Spain. A fun fact about this plaza is that George Lucas filmed Naboo scenes in this building! Once Sara told me that, I definitely recognized the long halls of the structure from the movies and had to mimic the actors as I too wandered the gallery, yelling “the trade federation” and “the republic”! After taking some photos and getting misted by the fountain we continued on our way, lazily making our way to the riverside for some beer. Sevilla is a very pretty city, and it was great to see it and learn its importance, which was huge to the history of Spain. After the beer and some unpleasant olives, Sara made her way home and Sofia and I walked back to her aunt’s place.

Plaza de Espana

Me and Sofia along the river

            The next day we planned on leaving, but wanted to do a bit of shopping before we headed out. I got a nice dress to wear for my imminent birthday and then we quickly went back, grabbed our stuff ,thanked Palmida, Sofia’s aunt, and got to the train station. Our plan was ambitious. We wanted to go to Cordoba that night, sleep there, and then see the famous mosque in the morning and then immediately jump on a train to Granada. We actually were able to do this! We saw the mosque at 8:30 am, which had become yet another beautiful and interesting mix of a mosque and a church, and then we made it to our 11am train to Granada!

Cordoba's Mosque

Beautiful windows

            Granada may have been one of my favorite place. It was definitely my favorite in Spain. This city has it all! It has an amazing palace complex called the Alhambra, it has gypsy caves in the hills, it has beautiful forests, and it is 30 minutes away from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which were still snow capped! The Alhambra (which was another Moor fortress that became occupied by Isabella and Ferdinand and the Catholics) was really neat and impressive to see, but my favorite thing in Granada was the mountain cave museum. These were man made caves in the mountainside that had been used by people for generations! There was a whole museum about them and you could walk inside and see how people had lived. For the most part these had housed gypsies, but any person who had been exiled or had been persecuted had built and used these caves. Sofia and I enjoyed seeing all of the domestic objects that they had in the caves, and we actually really learned a lot from the museum! They had information on the plants, animals, and ecosystem of the area in addition to the information on the people and the culture that had resided there. We learned about the flamenco tradition that had sprouted in these cave communities and about other cave dwellings in the world. It was a great museum!

Domestic?

Cool sculptures

Interior of basket weaving cave

Me and Sofia and the Alhambra in the back

In the Alhambra

Alhambra Gardens

I'm a Rose, get it?

            From Granada we went to Madrid! I had wanted to be in Madrid for my birthday, so it ended up timing fairly well. On my birthday we went to the Prado museum, which we enjoyed for about 6 hours. It was awesome. We saw almost every single room in the whole museum! There were a ton of works that we had studied, and a lot of Goya’s work. They have all of the black paintings which I thought was really really cool. These paintings had been found in the house that Goya lived in during the last years of his life. They used to be affixed to the wall, but has been expertly removed and transferred to canvas and taken to the Prado. A part of me wishes that they would have been left in place because the overall effect of the images has been taken away with their move. These paintings are fascinating and brutal. One of the most famous is Saturn eating his children. Goya’s art steadily became very dark over his lifetime, culminating in these works, which seem to reveal the cynical and twisted mind of a person who has seen too much.

            After the Prado, we were starving, so I treated myself to a Big Mac, not my usual “cultural” fare, but what I seemed to want on my birthday was the familiar and the comfortable, seeing as I had been without it for the past month and a half or so. Sofia got me a bottle of wine and a pack of gummy bears and I was happy and content. We watched How I Met Your Mother and happily went to bed early. THAT was my 21^st birthday. No pictures from that day actually...

            I woke up and wanted to make up for my slow birthday so that day we walked all over Madrid, seeing the beautiful squares and buildings that make up the city. We got a great lunch with a pitcher of Sangria and relaxed most of the day. One of the highlights was seeing a temple from Egypt that had been gifted to Spain! It was nice to feel close to Egypt again. We stopped by the Reina Sofia Museum and I got to see Guernica by Picasso which was amazing. There was so much detail that I had never been able to see from slides that I could appreciate then.  After all of our wanderings we went out to dinner as I had planned the day before, but didn’t actually feel like doing at the time. We went to this tapas place called El Tigre, which was packed with student age kids. You could get an ENORMOUS mojito and a huge plate of fried greasy tapas to go with it for 6 euro. It took us a while to get the attention of the bartenders since they were slammed with people but we finally got plates of food and our huge mojitos and we were very happy. After that we went to this churro place, where you get churro and hot chocolate (which is actually more like molten chocolate) and you dip the churro in the chocolate. It was so good, but we were very very full by then and couldn’t finish.

Plaza del Mayor

Sangria!

Ooooh fountain

Hey Egypt!

Huge Mojito

Molten chocolate

            The next morning we hopped a train for a day trip to Valencia. Valencia was really cool and would have been interesting to see in more than a day, but our objective was beach. We lay on the beach for a few hours, grabbed some yummy paella (mine had rabbit in it) and got right back on the train to go to Barcelona.

            In Barcelona we explored Las Ramblas, or the main tourist shopping strip, we made an attempt at hiking, which despite some navigating difficulties, turned out to be really nice, we went to the beach, we saw La Sagrada Familia, we saw other Gaudi buildings, and we ate A LOT. After traveling and being tourists for so long, our sight seeing energy had kind of run out. By then, a lot of what we wanted to do was eat yummy food and sit around. There were plenty of sights to be seen, but we didn’t end up seeing all that many. La Sagrada Familia was a must, however, and it was well worth the wait in line and the entrance fee.

            I had been there before, but it must have changed a lot in 6 years because I didn’t remember a lot of its beauty. The outside looks kind of busy, but it is really a unique and inspired design. There was an exhibition that explained to us how Gaudi had based many of his designs on nature. The columns and towers were like trees, making the interior feel like a forest. The stained glass was very beautiful and modern looking. The colors that were used and the way that they were installed was simply breathtaking. I loved being there! I want to try to go back in 2026 when the cathedral in scheduled to be completed.

La Sagrada Familia

sculpture

Exterior!

Interior!

Nativity scene

Stained Glass windows!

Me and another Gaudi house

            Barcelona is a wonderful city, and I was impressed by their parks and gardens and food. Everywhere you go there is a beautified public space, whether it’s a square or a park. It really makes for enjoyable living.

Before I knew it, my trip had come to an end. I was sitting in the airport in Barcelona, about to get on my flight home to New York. This whole experience has been life changing, not just because of what I saw, but also just the way I learned how to take care of myself, navigate places, ask for directions, budget my money, make quick meals, handle difficult or uncomfortable situations, or just learn how to let go of plans. All of these were important lessons that have given me greater confidence and sense of self.

In terms of what was my favorite, I guess I’d have to say Paris was my favorite place, mostly because I felt so comfortable there, like I could live there. Second place would be Florence and then Istanbul/Granada for third place.

I know now that I want to be a traveler all my life. I have only seen a small portion of these amazing cities, and there are thousands more cities and destinations left to see.  I have come to really like the feeling of being new somewhere, of figuring out the culture and the customs of some previously unknown place, but, now being back in Hawaii for the summer, I have also learned to appreciate the pleasures of home, familiarity, family, and consistency. I am happy to be in one place now, but I know that I’ll inevitably get stir crazy, and time will tell what that new adventure will be.

Thanks for reading!

   -Neandering Tempest