Finally getting to Sevilla meant one thing: finding a new home! After 8 days of traveling around Spain, we were tired, our clothes were beginning to smell, and we were tired of living out of our backpacks. When we arrived in Sevilla, we wasted no time looking for a place to live. 24 hours after getting off the bus, we had looked at two different apartments and already decided where we wanted to live. The only real problem was that we couldn’t actually move in for another week. Unfortunately this meant living out of hostels for a while longer, but at least we could start exploring the city and get comfortable with our new surroundings.
Christmas day in Sevilla was something rather strange to us. In America this is one of the biggest holidays of the year. In Spain, however, it did not seem too different than any other Sunday as Sevillanos wait to give gifts until King’s Day on January 6th. On this day, they celebrate the Epiphany when the 3 wise men (hence the name referring to the 3 “kings”) bring gifts to the baby Jesus. On Christmas eve, we went to Midnight Mass at the Cathedral here in Sevilla, which deserves another post all to itself. Let us just say for now that the Cathedral here is the 3rd largest in the world (behind St. Peter’s at the Vatican and St. Paul’s in London) and it took 100 years to construct. Mass was lead (in Spanish and Latin) by the Bishop of Sevilla, and once mass was finished, the Baby Jesus is placed in the manger in the Nativity Scene. There wasn’t much hype or hoopla, and we just went home wondering what to expect next. Christmas day was a day of sightseeing for us. We wandered around town for a while and visited the Plaza España, which is extremely large, and then walked across the street to the Gardens of Maria Louisa, a green park in the middle of the city, which is much larger.
A few days later we decided to visit the Alcazar, or Royal Palace, where the Royal Family of Spain stays while in Sevilla. The Alcazar here in Sevilla is beautiful. It’s hundreds of years old and was built by Jews, Muslims, and Christians over the different eras in Spain’s history. Throughout the Alcazar, you noticed the devotion to water (in the form of fountains and reflecting pools) since Sevilla is like a desert in the summer months. The walls of the Alcazar were originally built by the Romans and served as aqueducts to bring water into the city center. We enjoyed the gardens behind the Alcazar the most. On the day we visited it was warm and sunny and the gardens made for the perfect haven from the noise and bustle of Sevilla.
The day before we finally moved into our new “home”, we decided to take a day trip outside of Sevilla. Our roommate recommended visiting the small pueblo (town) of Ronda. The 2 ½ hour bus ride from Sevilla was breath-taking as we traveled through the mountains. The highlight of Ronda is a huge gorge in the middle of the town. We hiked down the steep hill into the middle of the gorge in order to get a good view of the bridge that connects the old part of Ronda with the new. We stayed over night in Ronda at a hotel which actually had heat (most building in the south of Spain don’t)! The next morning we made our way back and were welcomed into our new apartment by Brad (our roommate) and Little Bear (his dog).
