Party Animals

Image: Catedral de Sevilla

Alex and I are real party animals. We fit into Europe’s lifestyle immediately. You definitely cannot control us with a lack of sleep through the night before. We are party animals, no question. Let me tell you about our night. Well first, let me tell you about Spain.

Dinner isn’t until 9, maybe 10 p.m. They don’t go out until after dinner. Some clubs and bars don’t open until 12. The night life is very established, but it is very much at night. It is bright here until after 9:30. The sun comes up early at 7 a.m. or so. So now let me tell you about our night.

Alex and I walked to the Cathedral which is supposedly the second largest in the world. It was beautiful. Then we were walking around and realized how hungry we were. We were too hungry to sight-see anymore. So we head around looking for a place to eat.

Everywhere we seemed to go was either a dessert shop or a bar that didn’t have a visible menu. When we did find bars with menu’s they had some weird food. There were a few butcheries with meats that were too odd, or too specific to a part of an animal. Use your imagination. We lost interest quickly.

Finally we were finding the real restaurants. We should have been looking outside at the tables, not in buildings. The restaurants were all outside with nice tables and sometimes umbrellas or table cloths.

We didn’t want to have to spend that much money, so we looked more specifically for tables without table cloths and regular menus. We found a pizzeria. Somewhat reluctantly I agreed to eat there as it was my first night, fairly cheap, and not some ridiculous part of an animal.

The prices were the cheapest we found. The cheapest meal I saw all day, from every restaurant was 10.25 (in Euros). Someone warned me about this on the plane over here. He said, “the meals are about 12 Euros, but you get a fair amount of food.” Just so you know the conversion rate for 1 Euro is 1.27 US Dollars. So anything we see as a number ‘x’ the price will be greater than that in USD, the currency I most associate myself with.

Back to dinner. I ordered “La Pizza de Sevilla,” or a pizza with bacon, Frankfurt sausage (hot dogs), one other meat, and chorizo sausage. The chorizo sausage was my favorite as it had a bit of spice to it. The price was a “low” 12 Euros. This price did not include a drink. Beer was cheaper than soft drinks, which were not even on the menu by the way, so I had to get one to save money. And besides the latter part of my sentence, I am being totally honest. Beer was the cheapest drink choice. The beer was… well, I don’t know how to explain it. It was light in color, but heavy like a dark beer. I personally enjoy both beers, but not mixed, which is how the beer seemed. It was the heaviest, strongest, light beer I have ever had. I guess that’s better than having a light beer that tastes like water. Keystone, Coors Lite, just to name a couple. The pizza was fabulous. I paid my check which was about 20 USD. And Alex and I proceeded to walk around the town.

We found one place which was where everyone was hanging out. There was some statue in the middle, with a large, beautiful building behind it with steps which everyone was sitting on. On the other side was a standard assortment of buildings each with their own color paint and dissimilar architectures. Beautiful. Most of the building’s are like that. Well one of those buildings was open with a bar. There were at least 100 people walking around with beers. I can’t believe they had that many glasses. It was mainly young people. Alex and I had found a hang out spot.

We felt gross after traveling though so we headed back to the hotel to shower before we went out. We stopped by the Plaza de Toros (bull ring) on our way back but it was closed. We snapped a quick picture, decided we would come back tomorrow, and headed to the hotel to get cleaned up.

Well we got in the room and right before mentioning who I thought should shower first, I laid down on my bed. I wasn’t under my covers or anything. Then Alex laid on his bed, also just on top of the sheets. We exchanged a few words before falling asleep for the night. Our hyped up plan of talking to Spaniards ended without a chance. The night was over so quickly.

I vaguely remember hearing a loud, annoying noise repeating over and over. I checked my e-mail this morning to find out it was my dad calling the room. I didn’t know phones sounded like that over here, and I also couldn’t get up to answer the phone in the first place. I was physically and mentally exhausted.

To be fair, I had 3 hours of sleep the night of the 16^th and only 1 hour of sleep the night of the 17^th. Which to be fair again, I was on a plane for the night of the 17th and lost 7 hours of a time change in the process.

However short, it was an amazing night with wonderful sites. Also nearly everyone has been very friendly to me. I talked to a Real Betis fan for about 30 minutes in Spanish and English. He told me about the game this Sunday, which I must go to. Also I asked for directions a few times, always in Spanish. Everything here is in Spanish, it’s weird. I can’t figure out why.

Special thanks to Sarah, my friends, and my family who have all been very supportive through the passing of my sweet Grandma. Those of you who knew her have been blessed with one of the greatest pleasures of all time. She truly was an amazing person, and will continue to be as she lives through all of us in our hearts and actions. I love all of y’all.