Day Two

Domingo, 18 de Enero, 2009
On Sunday morning we slept right through our alarms, and luckily Ally woke up at 11:00. Checkout was at noon, so we packed up our stuff and went on our way. The hostel people let us leave our stuff there for the day, which was great. The plan was to go to the Train Station (Atocha) and buy tickets to Seville for later that evening. It was great to be outside! The fifteen-minute walk to the Atocha took us by the Prado museum and the botanical gardens. It was a balmy, busy morning, and it was great to look around and smell the air and listen to Spanish. Ally and I began speaking Spanish to each other then. We had absolutely nothing on us, just money belts, and it felt great after lugging our stuff around for twenty-four hours. The Atocha is beautiful. It’s a massive, brick, gorgeously architected building. We went in, and to our surprise there was a massive rainforest in the middle of the first floor, much like the tropical room at the Smith College botanical gardens. It was incredibly hot and humid in the Atocha, for the sake of the rainforest. We made our way to the line to buy tickets. There are multiple speeds of train in Spain: the AVE is the fastest, and most expensive, followed by the Altera. Those were the only two offered on that day. The Altera was sold out, but the AVE was only eight Euros more. We bought tickets for 5:00. After that, we headed to El Rastro. El Rastro is the biggest flea market in something--Europe, Spain, the World, I don’t remember. When we finally got there, after getting pretty lost, we were bummed because the Rastro would supposedly close in ten minutes. As it turns out, it stays open an hour later than our guidebook said it would. There were people selling everything--usually on blankets on the ground. I soon spotted the first Spanish rooster for my collection. Close to it, there was a tiny fruit stand. Ally and I bought a kilo of mandarin oranges for a Euro. At this point I was walking with a bag of mandarins in my right hand and a ceramic rooster in my left. Hey, it’s better than a map and a camera. We continued and found the bulk of the stands. Our ears beat our eyes to our first Spanish street performer: a very interesting looking man in a maroon velvet jester costume playing accordion (the Amelie theme song, no less), while riding a very tall unicycle.


We kept walking, and I spotted the perfect tourist bag. I bought it, and it came with great conversation with the venders. Three people ran the stand: a middle-aged man and woman, and a young man. We had a great time talking to them, about the bag (made of cotton from Madrid!), about mandarins (we learned a lot), about Seville, etc. This was the first real conversation we had in Spanish with random Spaniards. I also bought some red plastic earrings to replace ones I recently lost. Ally and I made our way to the Plaza Mayor. It was exciting, because when we were getting near it I started to recognize places from my visit to Madrid in 2006. The Plaza Mayor was as magnificent as ever.
We walked around a bit, and marveled at the performers in costume that included Yoda, Minnie Mouse, and two Poohs. I really wanted to return to the shoe store (Lobo) where I had bought my red polka-dotted Flamenco shoes three years ago. I was pleased that I remembered exactly how to get there from the Plaza Mayor. It was unfortunately closed, since it was Sunday, but it was still exciting to see the shoes (or the kid version, at least) in the window!
I also remembered that I had bought big red plastic “Flamenco” earrings and a necklace in a tacky souvenir shop near the Plaza Mayor during my last trip. In the past three years, I managed to lose both. Despite my usually lacking sense of direction, I was extremely proud to find this exact store in a sea of tacky tourist shops. They still had the earrings and necklaces exactly where they had them three years ago, so I finally replenished.
At that point, it was time to return to the hostel to get our stuff and head to the train. We wandered through La Puerta del Sol, where the construction from three years ago was still going on, and we managed to find the hostel with no difficulty. We loaded our stuff back into the elevator and retraced our steps from that morning to the Atocha. I got great pleasure out of the sound produced when my suitcase rolled across crosswalks: the sound was smooth on the painted white stripes, and rough on the black pavement. The three rolling suitcases between us made for quite the rhythm section. We made it to the Atocha, and went straight for the food. We got two Bocadillas de la Tortilla (Ally’s first Spanish Tortilla!) para llevar, and proceeded to the primer piso, which was of course up a floor. They had these contraptions--the love-child between escalators and moving sidewalks--that were moving ramps. The only problem was that gravity was against us, and had they not been so crowded I feel like we could have dislocated our shoulders because of how hard the suitcases wanted to roll down. The train station is great--it’s so clean and well organized. We found our way to our gate, and guessed one of the two lines (correctly--phew). We descended another ramp and walked all the way to the second-to-last car and found our seats. It was worth the extra eight Euros to get the fancy train: it was very clean and comfortable.

We watched the movie that was playing--a very serious film about a teenage boy who gets beat up a lot but never tells his parents--and looked out the window. There was not much to see, lots of piles of dirt. There was one perfectly constructed, adorable yellow and pink house in the middle of a barren wasteland that reminded me of 1950s bomb testing houses (which I only know about from the new Indiana Jones movie of course). We stopped at La Ciudad Real and Cordoba before arriving in Seville after an exact two and a half hours. The AVE promises a refund if it arrives more than five minutes late. We were down to business right when we arrived at the station. Ally watched the bags while I used the ATM. I watched the bags while Ally went to the bathroom. The bags joined us while we bought calling cards. And then we went to call our first taxi, where we had our first adventure.
It was very unclear how the taxis worked. There were two lanes of taxis, and people on the curb. People seemed to be just going up to them, so we went up to a taxi that seemed free. Nobody stopped for us. Finally, an English-speaker told us that we should have stayed at the front of the line. We returned to the front, but we think people were mad that we apparently cut the line. After that, everyone else behind us was getting taxis except us. Finally, a woman told us to cross the street, where a taxi had spotted us and was ready. I guess they pull into the second lane to load or something. The driver was sympathetic, and managed to fit all of our stuff into the back. He brought us to the top of la calle Farnesio, which our hostel was on.
Farnesio is a tiny street, if you can call it that, about four feet wide. There are three hotels next door to each other: Hotel Amadeus, which is very fancy and composer-themed, Hostal Buen Dormir, where we stayed, y la Pension Cordoba, which my parents are considering for their stay.

We went in the entryway, where there was an old-fashioned cast iron gate. The man in charge let us in. It was a very interesting looking place complete with the “blue-tinted floor” that my favorite travel guide Rick Steves had described. Our room on the top floor was right next to the rooftop terrace. After getting settled in, Ally and I went to find dinner. A slightly wider street nearby hosted sepetecientos restaurants and cafes. We chose “La Mezquita” because it seemed to be authentic Spanish food in our price range. This dinner was so much fun. We were more awake than the previous night, and so glad to have safely arrived that we could really enjoy ourselves. We had a delicious paella, a fish thing, and the first Sangria of the semester. It wasn’t very crowded, so we were the center of attention. All of the waiters and bartenders took a turn talking to us, trying out English, and answering our questions. There was a picture of snails behind us, so we asked how to say their name in Spanish. The waiter told us (I forget what it is) and added, “Snakes” in English to clarify. We hadn’t really processed yet that we weren’t going to get the check until we asked for it, so we were there for about two hours, just speaking Spanish to each other too. We finally asked for the check and left, with promises to return soon. At that point, Ally and I wanted to walk. We had seen an heladeria earlier, and headed in that direction to celebrate the balmy sixty-degree night. It turned out to be closed, a sad fate I have suffered many nights since when seeking a late-night ice cream fix. We continued wandering the streets of el Barrio Santa Cruz. It was very quiet and empty, and we wondered where the people were, even though it was Sunday night. We finally found one bigger road, alongside which was a bike lane separated by a short fence. We also made our biggest discovery at this time: La Sevici. La Sevici is a bike rental program. There are stations all over where the bikes are docked. One simply enters their Sevici card which liberates the bike, and they are on their way. You get thirty minutes free, and after that you have to pay an hourly fee. However, you can return the bike to any of the stations. We saw a million people riding them on the bike lane. They have headlights and everything! A year-long pass only costs thirteen euros, according to the CIEE handbook, but it takes four weeks to process, which is no fun. The other alternative is to buy a pass every week for seven euros, which is not preferable, but worth it. A friend and I are also going to look into buying cheap bikes for the semester. Ally and I kept walking, and although we knew we were in the right area, we were a little lost. It was okay, because we mostly explored and now we know that area really well. We returned to the room and went to bed, already enchanted by Sevilla.