ronda

guess what this post is going to be about? wow, you are a genius. ronda! but first i´m going to talk about other antics since last post. thursday instead of having history with pepe we got a tour of la giralda (cathedral) and the alcázar (royal house). as you probably remember, la giralda is the largest baroque cathedral in the world, and it is beautiful. first we looked around inside, and then we went up into the bell tower, where you can see for miles and miles (cue ¨the who¨) and sights such as la real maestranza and parque de maría louisa. we had to climb 35 ramps, yes ramps, to get to the top, which was particularly hard on the knee (especially on the way back down), but it was so worth it. then we went to the alcázar. the best part about this by far was the gardens. pictures to follow soon, but i am not on my computer at the moment, so you´ll just have to take my word for it ;o)

thursday night, then, we went to parque de maría louisa with sean and one of sean´s friends, juan carlos. we went to the plaza de españa, pictured above, which you might recognize because it was in the 2nd star wars movie where anakin is walking padme home on naboo. yep. cool. a lot of it was under reconstruction, though, so we couldn´t see all of it. it was originally built for the iberian peninsula fair in 1929 (kind of like a state fair, but for a whole area of land), and each province of spain was represented by a different tiled area depicting something traditional about the area. unfortunately, sevilla´s was under construction, and there was a wall up with a life-sized photo of it so you could see what it looks like. but for some that just wasn´t good enough, so first sean and juan carlos boosted themselves up to take pictures for us, but it didn´t work, so then they boosted sam the gymnast up. haha, hilarious. and we did get our pictures and some amused expressions from the security guards who did not try to stop us.

then yesterday we were off to ronda! it was about an hour and a half bus ride, and we left at 7am, meaning getting up at 5 to leave at 6 to walk there. oi. that is what sleeping on the bus is for ;o) it is an old roman city, and it is quite gorgeous. it gets the name ronda from being surrounded by mountains, and surrounded by mountains it is. beautiful. again, pictures to follow soon.

we headed back to sevilla at 5, and then got ready to go out for dinner with sean and 3 of his friends. we met sean, josé, paco, and isabél for drinks, then tapas/dinner, then a discoteque. wow. what a good time. these spaniards sure know how to have a good time. much dancing and comaradarie was shared, and no, i do not know how to spell that word without my firefox telling me if i am correct or not. we didn´t get back home til around 4am, and i had to shower, so it was bed at 4:30, to get up at 7am to leave by 8am to catch the bus at 9am to granada!

which is where i am right now. we´ll head back to sevilla tomorrow night, but now it is 2:15 and time for lunch, followed by a trek into the mountains to see the gypsies in their caves (yes, mother, i will be careful ;o) ).

and btw, i have /some/ of my pictures uploaded. the first 150 are at http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll263/luckingk/sevilla%20week%201/ and some of the next 500 or so are in another album, but i have not had sufficient internet connection long enough to sustain a successful upload. i´ll try to do it soon! if you have any questions as to what pictures are, just let me know. happy weekend!
-kl