The Rain In Spain Stays Mainly In The Plain

Sorry, My Fair Lady, but you've got it wrong. The rain in Spain stayed mainly in...every single city this weekend. Including the lugar of my most recent jaunt, sunny Sevilla. Bummer! Luckily it only rained twice when we were actually outside walking around. The other showers conveniently fell during meal times when we were tucked away inside a warm, dry cafetería.

Other than the sporadic lluvia, Sevilla was quite enjoyable. I'm rather obsessed with the architecture. Everywhere you look there are painted ceramic tiles! Entire bridges and even the walls of buildings are covered with bright blues, greens and yellows and I do not understand how they have survived the elements. Any art expert out there/Mrs. McCarty, please explain this phenomenon to me. How are these ceramics so resilient? I would think that years of extreme heat and sun (and even occasional rain) would do some damage to these beautiful works of art, but they seem to be unharmed. It's a miracle, and I love it. I'm hooked. When I grow up I want to have a "Spain room" in my house. It will have loads of these ceramic things...painted ceramic tiles on the floor, painted ceramic dishes and vases, painted ceramic mirror frames...everything. And also it will have a faux roof with curvy shingles. But seriously, look at these ceramics! They are incredible.

We found Toledo in the Plaza de España.

The Bacon Wallet enjoyed it too.

According to my "Let's Go Spain!" book, you can't go to Sevilla and not go to a flamenco show. So of course we had to go. It was.......interesting. The flamenco singing was not at all what I expected. As soon as the woman started singing, my thoughts immediately flashed to my sister's obnoxious singing at home. Eileen, you could have a wildly successful career here in Spain as a flamenco singer. This video features a male singer, but his singing style is very similar to what we heard. No videos allowed for us until the end.

After getting over the initial shock, the show was really interesting. The guitar player had a few solos and he was awesome. At first I closed my eyes to listen to the music, but then I realized he was doing some crazy things with his fingers so I had to watch! They were moving faster than I thought was humanly possible. It was so cool. And the dancers were amazing too. Their feet were swishing and stomping and clacking all over the place and after every number they were out of breath.

I'm embarrassed to show this video because of its massively poor quality, but this is the best I could do. You can barely hear the guitar--by far the most impressive part of the show--and even the dancing is not as good as it was during the heart of the performance. Unfortunately they only allowed photos and videos at the very end. In any other situation I definitely would have attempted some illegal shots, but I didn't want to get kicked out (or deported!!!) so I played it safe.

One thing I'm ashamed to say about this weekend is that in the city of the birthplace of tapas, I never actually ate tapas. But let me explain myself. Friday night when we went out searching for dinner, we passed an Italian restaurant. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Spanish food. But after an entire month of solely Spanish food, bruschetta and pasta sounded like the most appetizing thing on the planet. So we caved. We ate Italian. Tapas fail. Saturday night, we were determined to get tapas. I mean, there are tapas bars on literally every street in Sevilla. Why couldn't we just pick one? Well, here's what happened. It was dark. It was raining. It was after 10:00, and we were hungry. We were hurrying down a street, trying to escape the increasing downpour, when out of the corner of his eye, Mickey made a clutch observation: a momentary flash of gold helmets coming from the TV inside a nearby restaurant.

That's right. THE NOTRE DAME GAME WAS ON IN SEVILLA. Decision made. We ran into the restaurant and asked for a table near the TV without even looking at what restaurant we had chosen. When they gave us the menu...oh, were we in for a surprise.

Italian.

Oh well, what can you do? We had to watch our Irish play, especially since we were winning! So we ate Italian again. Tapas fail...again. I'm actually still wondering who requested that game on the TV, because we were definitely the only ones interested. Our subtle touchdown celebrations went largely unnoticed by the rest of the patrons.

Here is one thing I've noticed about my weekend traveling. Without a doubt, I absolutely LOVE seeing new places and I love exploring unfamiliar cities. But always at the end of the weekend I find myself a little homesick for Toledo. It's comforting to see the casco histórico as we roll in after a 7 hour bus ride. It's nice to see my apartment building from the bus stop in Polígono. And it's especially wonderful to have a comfortable bed to crash in after those lame hostel beds which probably don't even actually qualify as beds.