Seville

(Fri. and Sat. Oct. 16-17th)

Two weeks before Morocco and a week after my birthday in Bilbao I went to Seville with my friend Kat. It was weird traveling with only one person for once. It was pretty warm there and we found out that during the summer it's Arizona-hot there. But it was a nice kind of warm since Barcelona was starting to get chilly (meanwhile I think it had already snowed in Chicago, South Bend, Minnesota).

When we arrived at the airport, we were greeted by a beer advertisement in the airport.

We headed off towards the hostel, and found probably the only modern building in the city:

And we DIDN'T find the Macarena, but I suppose could have if we'd walked this way...

It took us a while to find our hostel because we were trying to follow the directions from their website rather than just find the address, which ended up being easier. It was on a plaza with a giant pavilion structure thing being built. Monstrous, with a canopy going over the road that connected between two towers. The canopy covered the whole plaza which will be a market, and above will be a restaurant. We walked around and around it looking for some random side street, when it turns out the hostel was right on the plaza. Nuts. It was warm and I was getting sweaty.

We finally found the place which had it's own little bar and a tiny lobby where many Brits hung out. Most of the time all the British guys were hitting on the one British girl, who I ended up seeing the next week at our hostel in Madrid. I think she recognized me but made conversation by asking where I got my food rather than hey were you in Sevilla last week. Whatever.

We headed out into the city which was much warmer than Barcelona but still not too bad. Lots to see and a day and a half to see it. We had about four hours before we were getting together with the sister and brother of my friend Dave Esch's sister's new husband. (Stay with me- Dave Esch's sister married a Spanish guy; his brother and sister live in Seville and the brother is an architect). My dad met them at the wedding this past summer and told me we should meet. So we did via few emails back and forth in broken Spanglish on both sides :)

One of the first things we saw while walking around was this little trash thing. I'm almost positive its a trash compactor thing. Pretty cool if you ask me. Hand-cranked.

We made our way through a few pedestrian streets with shopping all over, like every other European city has, and got through to the main-ish street that went to the city park and past the cathedral and such. Which I think is what you're seeing in the distance. There was a tram running down the middle of the street. It was a wide street.

Here's the main street. Everything seemed to be very white. Just to the right here on the building is...

My architecture studio! My initials! It's been waiting here for me!

Here's the cathedral. Basically the one main big monumental thing to see in the city. There were horses and buggies giving rides around there and stuff.

This was some palace that converted to a five-star hotel. I think.

Cool tree roots. That is all.

This was like a wooden room, stuck on the side of this building that I think is a school now but was a palace. It looks like a giant cloistered room for having confession or something. Ornate.

We soon did what we do in every city. We headed for the giant downtown park on the map to see what it was all about. And like in every city, it was pretty great! It had some Mosque-y thing (this is the south of Spain, things were very ornate and Moorish/Turkish because of influence the invading peoples of many years ago from Africa).

The park, as we could see on the map, was full of water fountains and little destination points, all very decorated. I think we tried to see them all :)

Water fountain. Nice cause it was hot out, bad cause the water looked kinda skank.

The main event- a former palace (surprise). This was in the park too, with a giant plaza in front, with a water fountain (surprise) and a moat separating palace from plaza (actually QUITE a surprise!).

Bridge over the moat...meticulously decorated, of course.

All around the palace were little niches, which you can barely see at the base of the columns, and each niche was for a city in Spain, and the cities were arranged geographically. You can see where the moat goes also, but unfortunately it was dry, or we could have canoed I guess, to...the other end of the moat? According to post cards...

Here's a bunch of the niches. Had to be over a hundred of them. Ornate. Of course.

Zooming in closer you can see the niches on each side, with benches, and a mural or something.

This is for Alicante, where my friend Ryan lives, who visited me in Barcelona. It has a map, on the ground, of the region, showing where Alicante is. Crazy!

The cathedral again. It was more like a big cloister and monastery and stuff.

A cool old iron bridge. Cool.

After one afternoon of hustling around, we headed back to have a short rest before it was time to meet up with Jordi and Meri. We didn't wanna take naps, figuring that'd be dangerous, so we went and got our complimentary drink at the bar in the hostel. Those beers almost knocked us out, we were bushed :)

We sat for awhile checking email and such in the tiny lobby below the open atrium that went up to the glass ceiling a few floors up, with balconies around from all the little hostel rooms. There was a small hot tub and I think a pool, up on the roof, next to where the kitchen was, where free breakfast was served (basically just cereal and toast, maybe juice- standard hostel fare, but hey its free). Up there we sat and ate sandwiches for lunch when we had finally found the hostel. A nice rest.

Meri and Jordi knew where our hostel was so they found us. It was pretty clear when two local-looking people walked in looking around curiously that they were probably the ones we were supposed to meet :) It thankfully wasn't too awkward, because my bad Spanish was matched by Jordi's bad English, so I think we had a mutual situation thankfully. We started chatting, went for a walk until we got to a place they took us for a sandwich and some sliced meats. Jordi explained how the sliced ham in Spain has star ratings like a hotel, and is priced accordingly. That I found interesting. And I found out what the black ham was that people had been raving about- its actually a black pig.

So here's me, Kat, Meri(xell) and Jordi the architect, who has a family, and is an architect.

After the small dinner he took us to the coolest hotel in the city, an oooooold building that was renovated into a brand new posh hotel inside, with really cool design, an interior courtyard going down to a reflecting pool, and a restaurant and bar on the roof. Which was cool since the roof was a whole series of small roofs all connected by stairs and walkways. Great views all around, like this view of the cathedral!

All in all we had a good time and they were super hospitable. Now I need to meet their brother Alberto, who's married to Dave's sister :) We slept well that night, even though of course right as we were falling asleep three people came in the room and turned on the lights and started talking. That's why I always go to bed in hostels with headphones under my pillow and hoodie hanging over my headboard.

The next day was even busier because we felt like we had a lot to see, farther to walk to see it, and then a train to Granada that afternoon. So we headed down to the river and followed it around for a while, checking out bridges like this one on the way. I like bridges.

Across the river was some tower that I dunno how it was standing, honestly. Look at it! And what the heck is it? Probably a five-star hotel. Weird though.

Farther down the river, what I originally thought was one bridge turned out to be two. A Calatrava bridge in the distance, looking much like his bridges everywhere else in Europe, but still cool. And of course white and spindly.

This oddly enough wasn't a bridge but a roof. Looked like a concert venue or something but it was just a giant roof held up by cables. Wanted to go see it but didn't have time.

Looking back at the first bridge.

The second bridge. Like a fisherman's hook at the end.

After we finished our riverwalk (there really was a riverwalk, where people ran, walked, walked their dog, graffiti-ed, etc.) we headed back inland towards the other graphics on our map- the easiest and most reliable way to see important things in a city. Aim for the animated icons sitting on top of the map that look like probably something interesting.

And thus we found this huge old remnant of the original city wall.

We saw a bunch of other stuff like some plaza named after Hercules, where some band was playing jazz on stage, I guess it was a little festival or something who knows.

Back towards our hostel we went back down the dense shopping streets, much busier since it was Saturday. Very lively. Love it. Why, America, why don't we have these.

So we wandered around a bit, following where it looked busy and interesting, took some pictures. A random courtyard in a hotel or something.

A hotel looking like it was in Roman ruins. Maybe it was.

The cathedral again. If you didn't know better you'd think that tower was part of a mosque!

On our way back to the hotel we hadta get some lunch, and I decided I'd spend my money on a pastry. I always say I don't care how I get my calories. I'd have a Blizzard for lunch if there was a DQ nearby. So I got a giant cakey pastry covered in chocolate and filled with custard. And it was like a 1.50. Fantastic. Here it is, on the right...it was like a quarter of a cake.

We headed back to the hostel then and grabbed our stuff and headed to the train. It was a nice train, where Kat slept and I of course worked on pictures just like these ones, trying to stay on top of things so that I wouldn't hafta be blogging about Spain in October in Chicago in February. Oops.

San Sebastian

(Sun. Oct. 11th)

Sunday morning of our Bilbao weekend we got up, ate free breakfast at the hotel again, stole more bread meat and cheese to make sandwiches for lunch, which was strictly prohibited, and got on a bus to San Sebastian- a coastal town 45 minutes from France, that has lots of gloomy days and rain, but also apparently has the best tapas in Spain, and thus by default the best in the world.

We went there just for half of one day, by the time the bus there and bus back to airport happens. Went to see a museum of sorts, a giant rolling lawn filled with the sculptures of a Spanish architect Eduardo Chilleda. Large, rusted steel (Corten steel, which is treated so it rusts on purpose, which seals the steel from further weathering, and looks cool). Interesting stuff but pretty abstract. He also had some sculptures in a cool barn thing that were alabaster and marble and such. It was raining and chilly.

The entrance looked very modern.

It was raining on and off, kind of somber, especially since the artist died recently and this was like the last thing he did with his life. Seemed like a sort of graveyard of artwork!

Here's one of the giant sculptures up close...so I guess there were outdoor sculptures in stone as well as rusted steel.

Many of them, as you can see, were as tall as or taller than people!

In the barn thing, this archway was a great frame for a picture. And I like pictures of other people taking pictures.

The inside of the barn again, where his works of art were exhibited- love the huge wooden beams holding the whole thing up.

Dave and John like taking pictures- I like taking pictures of them taking pictures.

These were tiny mockups of the much larger sculptures- these were small enough to hold in your hand, generally.

Outside again, you can see the giant hand kinda sculpture.

Nice clean new Audis make me want one. And I was still thinking about birthday presents, so I couldn't help myself :)

From there we went to the city. Much larger place than I expected, right on the ocean, with an island out in the water. Still rainy and wet, randomly poured once after I decided to leave my umbrella in the bus. We walked out to the water to see more Chilleda sculptures, which were cool.

This island looked cool in the misty distance.

This was the hillside. Amazing vertical layers of rock!! How did they get like this? That's quite a fault to shove rock up into this position. It looked fake. Chilleda decided it was a perfect area for his sculptures...

Here's the opposite side of the rock, with the steel sculptures in the distance, right where the surf crashes up on the rocks. Pretty cool place, even in the rain. I'm wearing my trusty 60s Polaroid camera case, which was my man-purse for the semester. I feel a little naked without it now.

Then we got about an hour to run free real quick and get some of the worlds best tapas. Dave and I, Nate and John, found a place with great stuff that I can still taste. And lunch wad only 6 euros (9 dollars) so for tapas in San Sebastian I can live with it. Most were sandwiches or things on toasts, like a giant slice of salmon on top of crab salad o toast. Or a bunch of baby eels, which I did not eat. Chris wouldn't like all the seafood over here in Spain :)

Nate and Steve are still a bit wet, enjoying their sandwiches in the mirror. Hi Nate.

Here's what the little bar looked like, with tapas spread all the way down- grab what you want, throw it on your plate, pay for it all.

Here's my little egg bacon lettuce toast sandwich, with the egg yolk peeking through- a nice touch. And a tasty sandwich. The quiche (I like pronouncing that how its spelled) was good too.

After tasty treats we went to see a theater by a Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, who in retrospect I should have known of. He won the Pritzker Prize at some point (the Nobel equivalent, of architecture, given by the Pritzker family who resides in Chicago and who's house was built by my professor).

The theater was an opaque glass box with a solid wooden box inside. A few windows punched out to give views of the sea. Theater space was huge, with the undersides of the seats covered with wood and fabric such that if the seats are folded up (because they're empty) they still have the same acoustic reflection and absorption as a person- so the theater always sounds the same. Ingenious!

Here's the exterior of the theaters, but still interior of the building- circulation space.

You can see the inside of the ribbed opaque glass box well. Cool staircases rising up...

One of the few windows to the outside, a framed view of the breakwater and beach.

After a short guided tour we were free again. To go bouldering on the breakwater :). It took most of our time to ramble out there and back on the rocks. Really fun. Bummer part was the rain starting, which kinda killed 30% of the surfaces for climbing, since all the smooth ones got really slippery. The button of my umbrella suffered a casualty.

Me following Nathan out...in the distance somewhere is John and Dave.

Shawna following me. See how big the rocks are! It was a blast. But if you fell you could end up down between the stones...way down.

John is posing for the picture. That's before he doffed his shirt.

Looking back gives you an idea of the cube of the theater, with the few windows looking out of the building, and the beach in front of it.

Sooooo, we got kinda hot from our bouldering- and I decided it was worth a picture. I mean why not. Nathan's kinda red though :)

And then suddenly it was time to get on a bus to the airport and head back to Barcelona. It's funny because we started actually being bummed about going to BARCELONA because we associate it with school and because we don't do ad many touristy things there, we just live in our quiet industrial neighborhood and do school.

Here's a little I-forget-what-they're-called-right-now that was cool looking. Pergola? No that's not the world. Brain freeze.

And a view of the cityscape of San Sebastian in general. Wish we'd had time to explore more. Every place has something to offer to a architect interested in learning.