Part IV – Seville

Tuesday, March 13th

We left Lisbon in the morning and drove through the rest of crappy Portugal. Actually, the scenery was nice but Lisbon left a bitter taste in my mouth as did the fucking toll system they had for their freeways. I have not idea what we paid total, but I remember the short drive from Lisbon to the Spanish border was 18 Euros. It felt good to be back in Spain though.

We drove for a while until we got to the town of Sanlucar, just outside of Seville. It was kind of shitty being so far away from the action but Kathi’s sister and her nose for budget places sniffed this place out. It wasn’t all bad though as it was a four-star hotel. The only reason it was so cheap was because it was so far away from every thing.

We made it into town in the afternoon with plenty of time left to go exploring so we unloaded our stuff and went into Seville. Seville was awesome. We didn’t do any real in-depth stuff though, we just strolled about looking at things and taking mental notes of places we’d like to come back to and spend some real time in. I did decide something in Seville though: Germans are one of the certainties in life. What I mean is, you’ve all heard the expression, “the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes.” Well, you can add, “and you will run into fuckstain Germans wherever you are on vacation.” I likened the Germans to the world’s herpes and Kathi’s sister wasn’t amused. They talk shit about how little Americans see of the world and slap themselves on the back because they travel so much, etc. but that’s easy as shit when YOU NEVER FUCKING WORK! Lazy god damn Europeans.

Wednesday, March 14th

We drove back into the city and wanted to check out the Real Alcazar but there were so many people in line that we decided to put that off. We stumbled around looking at the sights and got lost trying to find a wrought iron cross that was supposed to be all bitchin’ and stuff. We finally located near (what else?) a group of Germans and the reason we couldn’t find it was because it was a rinky-dink little thing. It looked like something one of your semi-retarded relatives would give to you after they made it in shop class. We went back to the Alcazar which didn’t have long queues anymore and took a look around. I tell you… being royalty back in the day must’ve been the bees knees. We killed a whole bunch of time in the Alcazar before heading to the Cathedral which was absolutely enormous. You probably could have played a football game inside this thing and I’m not even remotely joking.

Afterwards we visited a couple of squares that we’d missed the previous day and then headed back to a little place we stopped at the day before for churros. This time we wanted something to really eat so we settled in for our first taste of paella, which was, like almost everything else we ate in Spain, delicious. To top it off, our table was right near the waitress station and one of the girls there had an ass sculpted by Michelangelo. It was one of the rare moments where an atheist is forced to consider, however briefly, the fact that perhaps there is a god.

After eating and putzing around for a bit longer, we hit the road again and headed for Madrid. Again, we were plagued by shitty street marking. At one point, Kathi’s sister drove us up the wrong way of a one-way street. This time however, I kept silent because it was absolutely unavoidable because the craptacular street markings. I loved Spain but they really, really, need to work on that.

We eventually made it to our hotel and the dude that checked us in spoke every language known to man. When we got there, he was speaking in French to some stupid frogs that were also checking in. He then hollered something at the help in Spanish and then to me in English. When he say Kathi’s sister’s German I.D., he started speaking to us in German. After we got settled in, we had to move our illegally parked car to a real garage and on the way back to the hotel, we saw two people fucking up against the wall in the alley. They probably thought they were being all sly and whatnot but really, they weren’t. I considered taking a picture but decided against it. I kinda wish I had though…

It was quite an introduction to the city though.