My first night in Seville was stupendous: picked up at the airport by an amazing Couchsurfer named Esther, with hours of great conversation– which included a mini-tour of the city as we tried to figure out where in the world my hotel was.
I’m not sure I ever would’ve found it without her: the “Sevilla Center Apartments” turns out not to be an actual hotel with a reception desk but someone renting out the rooms in an apartment, to strangers if they don’t rent the whole thing, and has a lackey deal with the guests. Supposedly the owner was supposed to email me the correct address — since the wrong one is listed on the website (“Easier for taxis to find”) — and phone number. I guess one is supposed to call when one arrives at the wrong address, and then the lackey will come get you.
Seeing that I had neither phone nor phone number, I was grateful for Esther and her resourcefulness — first she called her dad, then we asked at a local bar, and they looked up the number on the Internet.
We got some super-tasty tapas: spinach with garbanzos, a local specialty that looks a lot like Indian food and is delicious, and montaditos de pringá, which apparently is “every kind of pork stew served without the stew-juice on a hamburger-type bun” and was also delicious.
Then we met up with a couchsurfing meeting, called “reunions” here, and drank beer out of exceedingly small bottles. At first I thought the Spanish are just lightweights but apparently it is so the beer doesn’t get warm. Genius!!
I went home to my very dark room and slept until…. 3 the next afternoon! Oops! Lack of external indicators of time and jet lag will do that to you!
I finally left the house about 5, bright and sunny like midday, except that the entire city was closed, as if it were the Sunday of a holiday weekend and everyone’s out of town, or maybe those haunting first few minutes after an alien invasion…
So I’m walking along these ancient corridors of twisting, deserted streets when I look up and it’s just like, “WOW, what’s that??”
It’s a huge, waffling, wavering art sculpture and I can only imagine its the “Mushroom Sculpture” that Jess told me about.
Everyone has their opinion about it. At first it was just making me seasick, but in the end, I think it’s pretty cool.
