So Sevilla is great so far. I got in about 3 and found my hostel within about hour. I did get a little lost on the way, but I stopped two guys for directions. One of them got his iPhone and punched in the name of the street I was looking for and told me right were it was. Made me kind of jealous when I saw it in action. The hostel sits facing a small triangle of a courtyard that is filled with open-air cafes. In fact right now I’m writing this in one of those cafes, and drinking a beer as well. ☺ There are some things that just seem right, beer, computer, open-air… just seems right to me. The hostel itself is pretty cool as well, it has that “hostel” feel that I mentioned in a posting a while ago. You walk in to what is basically a lobby, the guy working in the reception walks up and shakes my hand, says, “hola…hello.” The Rolling Stones are playing through speakers, and like I said, it just had the “hostel feel.”

Hmmm, what can I say about Sevilla when I’ve only explored for about 5 hours. I’ve seen quite a bit, but there is so much more that I need to see to give an informed impression. What I can say is that so far this is the best city I’ve been to in a while. I often use the word, beautiful when I talk about cities, so I don’t want to use it here. So that leaves me at a little bit of a disadvantage of a proper adjective, let’s just say that it is one of the most beautiful Western style cities that I’ve seen in a long time. There are narrow alleys that lead you along until you turn a corner and a cathedral comes into view. There are streets/alleys so narrow that they hang strips of fabric across the street to make shade below. Shops line nearly every alley and street, people are everywhere, some slowly walking along, while others seem to be on a mission to get somewhere.

I walked for about two and a half hours away from the hostel, I walk fast so I probably covered a lot of area, but I ended up coming up to a large park. I talked about the Parque de Retiro in Madrid in an earlier post, the one here is about the same size, but much prettier. Horse drawn carriages take tourists from one side of the part to another, the steady sound of their hooves can be heard nearly constantly. There are fountains nearly every 300 meters, some are large, some small, but the sound of falling water seemed to be everywhere I went in the park. I don’t think the pictures that I took will adequately show how absolutely perfect this park is.

So the last thing I need to talk about before I post this online is something that I haven’t wanted to mention because I know some people may feel that it’s in bad taste, but the women of Spain are absolutely beautiful. I’m not objectifying. Seriously, I’m not. They are beautiful though. It hasn’t been just in Sevilla that I’ve noticed this, it was in Madrid as well. To be honest, I don’t know how many of these women I’m thinking about are tourists and how many are actual Spaniards, but really they rate somewhere between Russia and Iran. That’s means on the “ken scale” that they are second, “Well done Spain!” :) Now the tough part, getting just one of them to even look at me. :(