Sister in Seville

I promised a post about Jennie's visit, but I just don't know if I can do it justice with a few hundred words. However, I will try...

On February 23, I took the overnight bus from Seville to Madrid in order to be at the airport in time to pick my sister up at Barajas. Her flight didn’t arrive until 10:30 am, but after the overnight bus, the next one didn’t get in until 1pm, too late. So Carolyn and I, (she was catching a flight from Madrid to Brussels) took the overnight bus together. I swore I would never do it again after the first time I did it, but lo and behold, I did it again. It wasn’t as miserable as I remember the first one was. There was even some entertainment when the Spanish tour group thought they left their friend in the rest stop, and it turned out she was on the bus the whole time!

So, we arrived in Madrid about 7 in the morning after about 25 minutes of sleep. Since I had to wait at least 3 hours before Jennie arrived, I spent my time café hopping (had about 3 cafés con leche in those 3 hours). I was waiting at the gate for Jennie to come out for what seemed like three weeks, the excitement was killing me. Then finally, I saw her and that’s when the fun began…

Both of us were pretty deliriously exhausted from overnight travel (not sure if its worse on a plane or a bus, but she did have the time difference to deal with too). I’m pretty sure when we got to the hotel we were running on adrenaline because somehow we mustered up the energy to walk around. We hit up some of the most important sites of Madrid, stopping for a coffee in almost each one. But then we crashed, for what I think was a few hours but felt like 5 minutes. We couldn’t sleep through the night because Conchi (host mom from my semester in Madrid) had invited us over for dinner and who are we to turn down free food. It was a lovely dinner but by the end we were practically falling asleep at the table.

We spent the next few days touring around Madrid (I’m still not sure if Jennie’s ever been there before). I finally got to go on a rowboat in Retiro Park (something I never got around to when I was studying abroad). Then we took our adventures south to Andalucía on the AVE (high speed train) to Seville.

Since Monday and Tuesday were a holiday at school, we took advantage of the time to take day trips. The first one was to Cadiz, a beautiful beach town approximately 2 hours from Seville. We only had a few hours there because the last bus/train left at 7pm. So in order to take full advantage of the time we had there we took the tourist bus. Yes, that’s right. In a city you can traverse in half an hour, we rode the tourist bus. And I don’t regret one second of it. If we hadn’t rode the bus we wouldn’t have gotten the awesome hats we did.

The next day we went to Ronda, a city/town in Malaga province. I may or may not have been there before I really can’t remember. We went with an auxiliary friend, Kaela, who taught in Ronda last year, so we had personal tour guide. Unfortunately, it was Día de Andalucía, which meant that nothing was open. Still, we enjoyed our walk around the beautiful (gorge-ous city).

We spent the rest of the time in Seville, because by the second half of the week we were tired of traveling. Also, there are a lot of things to see in Seville. We climbed to the top of the Cathedral, we strolled the gardens of the alcazar, we relaxed at the ancient Arab baths, we watched a typical flamenco show, we kayaked on the Guadalquivir river. Turns out staying in Seville was just as tiring as traveling. It was a good tired though. I had so much fun showing Jennie off at school, to the families I tutor for, my friends (both Spanish and American).

I even got Jennie to eat jamón, so all in all, I would say it was a huge success.