Sevilla

Sevilla was one of my FAVORITE places! It was SUCH a neat city and we saw SO many fun things while we were there! We took the high speed train to get there and spent a day and a 1/2 and two nights there. The train station in Madrid has a little rainforest inside! It is so crazy! You are walking along in an airport type setting with terminals, etc. and all of a sudden you walk around a corner and there are TREES and a pond and turtles and birds! It's crazy! Here are a few pictures of the train station rainforest:
This looks like "angel rays" (that's what my mom and I call them :)) so I had to get a picture!
Tim relaxing on a bench in the rainforest in the middle of a train station... odd concept, I know!
Me trying to hide my belly again! :)
This is part of a huge pond with TONS of lilly pads or whatever those green things growing in the water are? Can you see all those turtles? There are a few birds as well!

Alright, enough of the train station rainforest! On to Sevilla! (pronounced siveee-a :)) When we arrived in Sevilla we took a taxi to our hotel. It's a good thing our taxi driver knew where it was because when we got out he said (in Spanish of course) "just go up that street and go around two corners and you will see it" STREET??? What street? It looked more like an ally way or a sidewalk between two buildings! We would have NEVER guessed we would find our hotel in there!
Here is the "street" we walked up to get to our hotel... CRAZY! Apparently they made most of their "streets" that small in order to make shade between the buildings because it gets SO HOT there in the summers!

They have a big river that runs around the city... or at least the part of the city we saw :). We went for a walk along the river and saw some fun things going on.
Tim thought this looked SO fun! He keeps wanting to go kayaking and you all know he LOVES basket ball! So, this is both of them combined! I wonder if this is a special olympic sport??? It reminds of wheelchair b-ball :)


We looked across the river and saw HORDS of people! We decided to put on our zoom lens and see what all the hullabaloo was about. There was a boat in the middle of the river with a bunch of boys on it. They would run up this soaking wet plank in an attempt to get to the end of it where a milk jug looking thing was waiting to be knocked off. It was QUITE hilarious watching their attempts! They had some pretty silly looking slips off the plank! At last one guy finally made it to the end! Everyone just sort of stood there thinking..."now what" when he knocked it off then everyone just went back to whatever they were doing before the silly show!

Can you guess where we went next??? We went and got our tickets for the Bull Fight!!!
This is the door you enter to buy your "ticket"... I said to Tim, "um, I think that is where you buy alcohol- tequilla???" Tim assured me that that means "ticket" in Spanish :)
This is the booth where you buy the tickets! Fun, huh!?
The bull fight didn't start until around 9:30pm so we headed out to find some dinner. I got some yummy chicken and a salad (that had COLD corn on it!... the concept sounded nasty but it was actually quite good and I really liked it! They also pickle everything...well, everything you put on your salad! Carrots, beets, olives, etc! Odd!)
Here is Tim's meal! Dippy eggs, fries, green peppers and HAM! There was NO WAY I was ordering any sort of ham or beef because this is what we were greeted with when we walked in...
and this is what was staring at us while we ate! :D
Yeah, it was right down the street from the bull fighting arena, can you tell?
Here a picture of part of the outside of the bull fighting ring.
Here is my matador!
The bull fight was quite the show... at first! First, some horses came and paraded around.
Then all the matadors came out and paraded around in their fancy costumes (and got their pictures taken as if they were movie stars... which maybe they sort of are in Spain???)
Then they started warming up and getting ready to put on a show for the audience and THE BULL...
Then the famous bull made his entrance!
And all the matadors ran and hid behind the hole in the wall! :D It was kind of funny... but I don't blame them ONE BIT! :)
Then some of the matadors would come out and play around with the bull. The ones that had a pink cape were sort of like the under studies that would wear the bull out and stick these sort of long prongs with colored ribbon wrapped around them into the bull. Then the head honcho matador came out with his red cape ... and SWORD!
WARNING!!! DO NOT LOOK AT THE NEXT 5 PICTUREs IF YOU HATE THE SIGHT OF BLOODY BULLS!!!


The matador stuck his sword in the bull and the bull went down to his knees. Then one of the matadors with a pink cape came with a little dagger and whacked him in the nape of the neck and killed him instantly :(

They drug him away to be made into meat :( The first of the bull fight was so fun and exciting but the end was not so great! :( We watched one more but that bull was a fighter and WOULD NOT DIE! The matador got trampled, lost a shoe, got a bloody nose and black eye and got bull blood all over him. After the second one I had to leave! It was too gross for me!

When we left the arena or ring or whatever you call it we stopped by this little square on our way to our hotel. It reminded me of the place Belle on The Beauty and the Beast lives when she sings with her book at the beginning.... with the fountain... remember? :)

There are lots of pictures of the cathedral behind me in the daylight which I will show in "part 2" :)