Hotel Melia Lebreros Seville

... show. We all had fish (gilthead and seabass) that were delicious &#8211; Philip pronounced it the best fish he&#8217;d had since arriving in Spain almost four years ago. <br><br>On Sunday morning, Philip drove us about 1 ½ hours southeast to his home in Zahara de la Sierra, one of the "pueblo blancos," or white villages. The whitewashed hill town, declared a national monument, is perched on a steep hillside ...

... packed full with eager folks, young and old, native or not (we were the nots) ready to get in on the international event of the evening.  Face paint was being passed amongst passengers, (an easy glue-stick type thing that would paint the Spanish flag in a perfect little rectangle) and the energy and decibel level was quickly rising.  I just sat back and soaked it all in!    We arrive to the stadium and oh man... what a spectacle!  Brits ...

... of deserted Seville. They certainly had had their share of New Years Cheer, so I was able to goad them on the street into singing a few Belgian drinking songs. To further the bizarre night, somebody appeared out of their window above the street yelling at everyone to be quiet. I looked at my watch - 10:30pm! On New Years Eve! I've heard of cultural differences, but this was ridiculous.<br><br>Of course, soon this grocery store had to ...

... I'm free.  I'm doing what I want.  I'm making my own schedule.  I've accomplished a dream and now I'm working at accomplishing another.  Next week I have a spanish class that will start.  I also have set up a language exchange.  That means I get together with this guy and we chill for an hour.  He only speaks english to me and then for the second half hour I can only speak spanish.  Luckily, I'm the only one in my group who wanted this ...

... like that. So I spent so much time writing this stupid paper and it was still awful. Lol, I got to 2008 words and just stopped. So this week has not been too fun so far cause I just studied most of the week, but now I have nothing to do this weekend so I'm super excited to relax and just go out with friends. My plan today is to go shopping, lol. The necessities. The weather here is actually getting pretty cool. I wear pants every day. The mornings and nights are cool but ...

... be expressed in words. It is simply enormous. Jaw-droppingly so. And filled with tons upon tons of gold from the New World on the altar, in the chapels, in the choir, and everywhere else. The Sacristy alone (the place where the priests get ready for mass) is literally bigger and more decorated than some churches back home. It's amazing because I found out on this visit that the cathedral is the third largest in the world... after St ...

... meat carved from the skull. I could say I'm used to gross stuff like that after China, but the truth is I've never really been bothered by it. I'm missing that class girl gene that makes me squeemish. We didn't stay long there, even though it was cool to see. As we started walking back, it started to rain, but Sabrina shared her umbrella with me. We went back to Plaza Nueva, essentially the center of town, and found this restaurant I had eaten at ...

... one was almost 2 hours later, and $16. I thought maybe I could take Super Shuttle, but they had an hour and a half wait and that's $35, and I usually get really annoyed with the drivers and the other passengers and traffic and it's just not worth it if it doesn't leave practically immediately and only when I have enough luggage to justify the door-to-door service. I thought about taking a cab to the subway, but it was almost as expensive as taking a cab all the way into the city so I ...

Hey Everyone! We have just left Madrid. It was a spectacularly big city. It didn´t feel nearly as humid as Barcelona and there was a lot to see just by walking around. On our second day there we toured the Royal Palace. Each room inside was more lavish than the last and it is no wonder that kings and queens were thought of as rich! The throne room was totally made of velvet and gold, the staircases were of marble and there was fresco´s on ...