Here's a summary of the rest of Espana:
1. I'm not the bragging type, but I consider myself pretty good at directions and finding my way; however, the streets in Sevilla are obnoxiously confusing. Also, the touristy map I used was missing about a thousand small streets.
2. Malori & I went on an epic, yet extremely ridiculous adventure trying to find a place to watch flamenco dancing. We started off by following my crappy map to a place I had read about earlier in the day. Then, as we were standing on a street corner extremely concentrated on our maps, some random Spanish guys helped us with directions. However, instead of showing us the nearby flamenco place we were already heading to, the guy told us that place was bad and drew dots on the map to where we should actually go to watch flamenco. Thus, ensued the ridiculous adventure. The flamenco place was about as hard as getting to something that is extremely hard to find. haha. Great simile- I know. After an hour and a half of walking around, we finally found the bar. It was a gem of a place. It looked like a total hole-in-the-wall type of venue. The walls sporadically had beautiful pictures of flamenco dancers and the place even had a really neat outdoor area. It was worth it! But... we decided to leave to get cheaper tapas before the flamenco show started. We found yummy tapas, but then we searched for the place for an hour yet again. I swear the bar moved or something. The only way we found it again was being guided by a British man on vacation with a fancy map. Then, once he lead us in the right direction he stopped and gave a10 minute "insightful" outlook on Spain. Basically, he told us to go to Barcelona and Madrid. haha. We were grateful for James, though.
3. The last full day I spent going to the Palace Alcazar, a beautiful historic palace with elaborate Isalmic decorated walls and gorgeous gardens.
4. At night, I went on a "Tapas Tour" with people from all the hostels in the city. We traveled to different restaurants in the city trying the different tapas the different places serve. I met a guy from Austin, TX, two girls from DC, a Brit, an Italian couple, and a French guy.
5. Later, I met up with Malori, her inter-cambio, and her inter- cambio's best friend for drinks. Her inter cambio is a Spanish guy who is learning English, so they meet and he practices English and she practices Spanish. We spent half the time speaking Spanish and the other half in English. I definitely struggled with my Spanish, yet I was surprised that I could still communicate. It was fun and interesting to talk about their culture and lives. Somehow we discovered both of the gentlemen watched "Bob Esponja" when they were younger. It took as a moment till we discovered they meant "Spongebob Squarepants." I love moments like that in which a cultural similarities and differences become apparent.
6. I rode the train back to Malaga and took a flight to Basel, Switzerland.
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