Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sevilla Week 2 Bullfight and Gypsies

Rana's friends Tien and Annie came to visit the other day and we had a blast. We literally whisked them out of the train station and directly to a bull fight. Yeah a real bull fight. (You can see, just faintly, the excitement on Tien's face.) So Bullfights,you've only seen them on cartoons and such but this was the real deal. We watched 5 bulls go down and thought we had seen enough carnage for the day though there were more on the docket. It was an amazing cultural experience.


That night we ate at an amazing tapas bar called Casa Paco. Everything we ordered was fantastic. Honey baked goat cheese, bacon wrapped dates, tri tip in mustard sauce the list goes on. What was more was the waiter was really tall and really cool, his name was Jose. Annie took a bit of a fancy to him, as the English say.

The next night we went to the Carbonaria which is a free gritty flamenco show posing surreptitiously as a bar. It's very Gypsy and quite fun. The Carbonaria also features cheap drinks, first and foremost Agua de Sevilla which is like a long island iced tea with pineapple juice. We started with pitcher of that puppy. Only a few sips in and we started to loose it. The show was amazing, ok it was alright but the 4 pitchers of Sangria that followed were amazing. If you were wondering this is what three girls look like after 4 pitchers.
After the show, just as we were about to leave, a man sat down at the bar piano. He began to play Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and some other Motown stuff. He had everyone singing along and taking requests for two hours. Annie was particularly helpful with her killer karaoke skills! Turns out Roderick (In Spanish he introduced himself as, Rodrigo!) was a VP of Urban development somewhere in the south (South USA), on town in Business. He spoke great Spanish and played the piano like a master.Crazy.

Tien and Annie left then to hang out with another friend in Cadiz which is further south on the beach. Rana and I spent the rest of the week exploring. We went to an amazing Flamenco show based on the life of Frida Kahlo.
This is just the theater pics weren't allowed inside. We checked out the Alameda de Hercules which had live music and fun almost every night. There are four columns (two at each end) that are identical. Atop each sits jolly old Hercules. This does make it a bit tough to find your way home in the night time when you don't know at what end you are. We also checked out these guys in doggy jail. These poor dogs lived right by us and always looked so sad. I wanted to bake them a doggy biscuit with a hacksaw inside so they could escape but I scrapped the idea when I was reminded of their almost total lack of opposable thumbs.

Finally before going to Barcelona Tien and Annie came back to visit us. We decided to go to the Plaza de Espana which is an impressive plaza shown below. Ok well that's about all I have for today. Hope you are all well!
Hugs Devo

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