Significant New Experiences

The new things I've experienced while in Spain have been numerous and I have compiled a list of the significant ones so far. Since being here I have tried:

Sea food beyond my comfort zone which included kalamari and weird looking but surprisingly tastely muscles and shell fish, squids. Sardines and many other things which I forget the names of.

Temperatures of over 35° which just turns me into a sticky potato :-)

Siestas or sleeping in the day I must say when successful they are great, but more often than not I just fall into a deep sleep and feel groggy when I wake. Ill continue to work on this.

Running, I've gone for a few runs just round the village and up some.pretty steep hills and its something I can definitely see myself continueing back in the UK and where ever the wind takes me beyond there.

Olives. Being as though Andalucia is the biggest producer of olives in the world (acording to what I've heard) when I arrived here I made it my mission to like them by the time I depart. Since ordering a small portion of them with most of my beers I think its safe to say that I now truely enjoy the taste.

And the final thing on the list was I bought my first bottle of wine and with the same attitude as with the olives I thinks its a worth while thing to acquire a taste for, however I think I'm along way off still, but there's plenty more time for that :-)

I couldn't find pictures to represent all of these, but this is what I have.

La fiesta de tapas

This weekend in as nearby village they were celebrating the Fiesta de Tapas (festival of tapas) where drinks were cheap and a free plate of tapas Acompanied each one.

It was also 36° so the kids were all running around throwing water at each other and the adults which I'm afraid to say included me were veging and babbling in Spanish in the shade desperately try to keep energy expenditure to a minimum. Overall it was great fun and lots (and lots) of tapas was consumed.

Seville

This weekend was an interesting one. I spent the last three days in Seville where I saw a lot of sites.

On Friday night I arrived very late and was hanging out with a group of Portuguese folks who were very merry indeed. Then in the evening I went out with a french couple, two Greek girls and three girls from new Zealand where we went for a walk along the "river" which has actually been sealed off at one end making into into a canal, this was very interesting with nice looking bridges and plenty of busy tapas bars open all the way along.

On Saturday I took the walking tour with the hostel where a very eccentric polish girl who knew a surprising amount about the history of Seville but managed to keep the group engaged and didn't fail to amuse took us on a three hour tour of many of the main sites, most notable of which was the plaza Maria Louisa which was an amazing park full of lush greenery and plenty of small pathways leading into the trees, this was actually the first time I've seen proper grass since I've been here. At the end is a huge semi circular building which could not fit into a regular picture and therefore I had to capture it using a panoramic. I was also informed by fellow travellers that this place was used in star wars episode 2 attack of the clones, and at that point I was hit with a profound sense that I had been there before, I look forward to finding the scene and seeing which parts they used and which parts were made with blue screens and other film wizardry.  (since writing this I have discovered the video and if you are interested in which part of the film the scene is, just simply search YouTube for maria Louisa star wars and there is a one minute video for you to enjoy)

On Sunday I spent the day with the three french girls with whom I was sharing a dorm room, and we made a trip to Real Alcazar, which is the royal palace, from when the city was in its Moorish era and it was so incredibly huge that even being conservative I came out with well over 50 pictures, all I thought were to good to miss. This was a 3 hour trip and I would say we probably only managed to see just over half of it, after this hunger lead to us making a quick exit and looking for the nearest non touristy , that is without a menu with english on, tapas restaurante.

And on Monday I went up to the top of the local attraction, which I just called the mushroom and got a nice panoramic of the very flat city of Seville.