It started with what would've been a hectic Monday without the visitors I had coming to town. I had two papers due in my two classes for the day (taught by the same professor, no less) as well as the required discussions that go along with each. Needless to say attendance was required. This was made more interesting by these aforementioned visitors. As I may or may not have mentioned to some of you, my good friend Mary (a senior at St. Mary's) had come to Spain the previous weekend to spend her spring break here. Seems like a rather odd (albeit sweet) destination for a spring break, no? Fear not, there's a story...
It starts two springs ago, when Mary arrived in Spain to study through the SMC program in Sevilla (a city for which I've already professed my love in this blog). I've talked to her about it a lot, especially after I got accepted to ND's Toledo program, and from all I've heard it was truly a life-changing experience for her. So, when our good friend (and her roommate) Kate got accepted to spend her sophomore spring in Sevilla as well, Mary got pretty darn excited. Fast forward a little bit, and she finds out her younger brother Bobby will be studying in Madrid the same semester. With those three fantastically awesome people in the country she loves, all at the same time, it was just too much to resist. So she spent the first weekend chilling in Madrid with her brother (Kate joined her too), and then they, along with Bobby and his girlfriend Katie, came to Toledo on this fine Monday morning to visit little old me. Right, back to the story.
I was actually pleasantly surprised at how early I finished that second essay (3 a.m. Monday morning), which was lucky, because I got a relatively good amount of sleep before waking up two hours before class to meet everybody for some coffee. It was great to see everyone again. There were hugs, a couple of tears, and, of course, churros (though no chocolate this time...quite disappointing). Sadly, though, I had to run back to class at 11:30, so I left everyone wandering the city for a few hours.
After essay number one of the day had been turned in, I tracked the crew down and took them to one of the many great views Toledo has to offer; the Puente de San Martín (St. Martin Bridge) on the eastern side of the city. From there, we walked around the outer walls, everyone just catching up about who was where and what was what. Good stuff, I assure you. About that time, everyone got hungry, so we tracked down a place to eat. I had a great authentic Spanish meal...of steak and eggs. Hey, leave me alone; at least it wasn't Katie's pizza or Bobby's hamburger. At this point, it was about 3:15, meaning I had to run back and turn in my second essay of the day.
My academic day finished, I met up with the group and attempted to find the mythical Pride Rock, which supposedly gave a fantastic view of Toledo from above. It involved, from what I'd heard, leaving the city, crossing the other major bridge opposite San Martín and climbing the hills outside the city. We could go either left or right once we crossed. I chose left. Turned out I was wrong, and we just ended up walking up a hill for a while and not finding a view. But hey, we all know I'm directionally retarded, right? Thankfully, no one was too upset about anything, so we headed back home and introduced them quickly to the family (and, of course, the puppies) before seeing them off to the bus station.
My Tuesday was considerably less interesting, but Wednesday things got fun again as TJ rolled into town to finish off his spring break in Spain. Of course, he chose my busiest day (four classes) to show up. What a guy, huh? When I finally did finish up, I took him out to O'Brien's introduced him to a few people. Fun times. After my one class Thursday, we walked around Toledo as I showed him basically the same things I'd shown Mary, Kate, Bobby, and Katie. What can I say? I'm lazy. Afterward I brought him home and introduced him to everyone (he managed to win at both ping-pong and FIFA against my brothers) we left to catch the 1 a.m. bus to Sevilla where we would be reunited with Kate and Mary for a weekend of warm sunny fun.
The bus ride was, well, the same as it was the first time...long and full of lots of light sleeping. When we arrived, we worked out by trial and a little error to orient ourselves and set out in the direction of Kate's host family's house. Of course, it was only a twenty minute walk so when we got to the general area it was still 8:30 a.m. and thus way too early to a) check into our hostel or b) call the girls to tell them we were in town. Luckily TJ, as he was a bit too happy to point out, has learned a lot this semester about how to waste time. So we did just that, killing a solid two hours enjoying the surprisingly warm Sevilla morning. The girls finally did call us back...and told us to wait an hour and a half while they got ready. I won't say it, but y'all know I'm thinkin it.
We got to the church a few minutes before our 12:45 meeting time and waited patiently. About ten minutes in, TJ proposed a bet: over/under 12:55 they'd show up. I took the under...the over won when they finally did get there just past one. This would be a recurring theme (love you girls, mean it...).
My third time being reunited with friends this week was again a fantastic event. More tears, more hugs, and, if I remember right, at least one hiccup. Wait, no, that was another time. Never mind. Anyway, the girls decided to show us the school all the SMC-ers go to in Sevilla, and that was cool. Classrooms, computers, the usual bells and whistles...good times. Then we stopped by the local indoor market and got smacked in the face with the smell of freshly gutted fish. I was still kind of tired from the bus ride at that point, but I'll tell ya, that sure woke me up. We also found a shop selling all three flags TJ was looking for (Spain, Andalucia, and Sevilla)...only they were doing it for 18 Euro a pop. Yeah, we'll keep on shopping, thanks.
From there, we went to the Plaza de Toros to check out what's up. More on that when I go back again in April...Mom, get ready. Then we chilled by the river for a while and a good old-fashioned guerrilla photo war started. God, I love these things. I love it even more when all parties enjoy participating and don't have to be forced. As it got on to about 2:30, Mary and Kate told us they had to be getting back home for lunch, so we headed back in the direction of our hostel/their house. On the way, something random and seemingly impossible happened. As we walked, I looked down and my eyes caught a quiver of blue among the brown of the sidewalk. Then, literally at the same moment, Kate and I pointed and made some sort of noise of excitement, and then I took advantage of my long arms reached down and snagged the two 20-Euro notes sitting there on the ground. After a momentary victory dance, I agreed to split the 40 with Kate as she had clearly seen it too. TJ claimed to have as well, but I was skeptical. Still, I said I'd spot him ten, as I was footing his bill the entire weekend (there'd been some confusion on fund transfers with his folks, so he was running short at the moment). What a benevolent soul I am.
For lunch, TJ and I decided we'd try a place called 100 Montaditos, a place that lets you pick from a list of 100 little finger sandwiches with anything from ham and cheese to sausage and Brie to melted chocolate and almonds. Yeah, it was good. REEEEEAAALLY good. We later met up with the girls and took TJ toward the really touristy area of town. We were going to go into the Catedral, but it ended up being closed (nice planning, Kate), so we took TJ to my favorite place in Sevilla: the Plaza de España. Unfortunately, we took the long way (I'm blaming Mary this time, to be fair to both locals), but got there nonetheless. I was disappointed to find that construction had grown and now not only could I not see the Toledo section of the wall, the fountain in the middle was gone too. Stupid Sevilla. I made the girls promise we'd come back tomorrow.
Tired and hungry, we went to a favorite place of Mary's for some dinner. On the way, we saw a Scottish pub called The Clan, of which TJ and I made a mental note. When we got to the place, I was pretty starving, as I assumed were the others. Of course, TJ and I ordered dinner, the girls split a milkshake; I guess we didn't understand that real dinner for them would be at home in about half an hour...we were confused when they finished the shake and got up to leave. Oh well, at least my cheeseburger was good. Having some time to kill before we had to meet Mary and Kate to go out, TJ and I went back to the hostel to chill for a while. I almost napped, then decided it would be better to just lay there for a while. I'm weird, leave me alone.
We met up with the girls at around 11:30 (over/under bet was set at 11:15) and caught a bus to get us near to a bar we'd be going to to meet a few Spanish friends Mary made when she was here. They took us to O'Neill's, possibly the most American pub we'd seen in Sevilla. The group of Spaniards we met (eventually five of 'em) spoke varying degrees of English, so the whole night was a very confusing jumble of the two languages. I did feel kinda bad for TJ, being the only one to have not taken a Spanish class since high school. By the end of the night, though, he didn't need much help as he, Kate, and I talked in a corner while the Spaniards all surrounded Mary while she told what I guess was a VERY long joke. We gave her her moment gladly though...she was just basking in the glory of speaking Spanish again. One nice consolation for TJ, though: his second pint of Murphy's (yeah, we're creatures of habit) came in a sweet Guinness glass with a logo that called it "An Official Guinness Pub." He and I had almost the exact same thought at the exact same time: "Oh yeah, this pines to be stolen." Dude's turned me into a klepto.
As it got on to 3 a.m. we all felt tired, so we bid the Spaniards farewell and, after our hopes of an open kebab place were dashed, we walked home and went to bed. Originally the girls had told us they wanted to meet at 9:30 the following morning. We scoffed, but were still a bit nervous. By the time we got them home, though, they'd given us 11. We set the over/under for the actual meeting time at 11:30. Betcha can't guess which side won...
When we finally did meet up the following morning (*cough* afternoon *cough*) we decided we'd give the Catedral another go. Having been in there once, I didn't really do much besides walk around and appreciate once again just how friggin' big the thing is. It was cool to have TJ there, though...he was now able to check off the third largest Christian church in the world, leaving only number two: Saint Paul's Cathedral. I'm not sure why he hasn't managed to visit the one in his proverbial backyard, but hey, who am I to question?
After we'd taken a good amount of pictures on the ground floor, we (read: Mary and Kate) decided it was time to climb the Giralda tower and get a badass view of the city. Here we encountered a bit of an odd sequence of events. As I walked up the ramps to the top of the tower, I didn't give much though to the windows on my right because I knew that none of those views were anywhere near as cool as the one I'd get at the top. Somewhere along the line, I passed everyone and was at the top for about ten minutes looking for them (keep in mind this thing is about 100 square feet). Finally, I got a frantic call from Kate asking where I was. "I'm at the top," I said, "where the hell are you guys?" Right about then the emerged from the staircase, completely confused as to what had happened.
Okay, not as funny as it was in my head. But it was pretty funny in the moment, I promise.
Anyway, we spent the next half an hour or so snapping pictures (some traditional, others guerrilla) and enjoying the magnificent views of Sevilla. Finally, though, hunger won out and we descended into the beautiful mid-afternoon sun. Apparently Kate had never been to 100 Montaditos, so we figured since TJ and I hadn't hated it we'd hit it up again. Turns out melted chocolate and almonds on a little bun is just as amazing the second time...go figure. Once we'd filled ourselves up (and the girls had taken a page from our book and snagged some really cool Pepsi glasses), we parted ways; the girls wanted to go shopping for a bit and we, well, didn't feel that same need. Shocker.
I went back to the Plaza to embrace the food coma I felt coming on. TJ went off to do some errand that I can't remember, but I think it involved flags. Anyway, I walked into the Plaza, found a great bench in the sun and passed out with my iPod going. It was glorious. About 45 minutes later I woke up as TJ entered the plaza and took his own nap. I tried to fall back asleep, but when I couldn't, I just sat up and took funny pictures of TJ using weird settings on my camera (like this one...cool stuff, huh?). Once we'd both rested up enough, we went to a park nearby and grabbed some ice cream. When we'd finished and the girls still hadn't told us where they were, we grabbed some more ice cream (hell, we weren't complainin'). Finally, they told us that they'd gone home and that we were to call them "later".
Now TJ, smartass that he is, wanted me to call them and say "Hey, Later, it's Griff. What's up?" Yeah, I'm sure that would've gone over well. Regardless, we gave them half an hour and at 7 called them back. They told us they had some time before dinner, so we decided we'd meet for some churros con chocolate at a local cafe. Oh and how glorious those churros were. Kate certainly enjoyed them, anyway. Afterward, we let them get back home for dinner and we walked around a while, finally landing at (what else?) a kebab place for our final Sevillan meal. Since it was 9 at this point, we still had about three hours to get to the bus station, so we decided we'd track down that Scottish pub we'd seen the day before and grab a pint. And wouldn't ya know it...they had Murphy's! God, I love Spain.
Unfortunately, even drinking at a Spanish pace as I've learned to do, we finished with about two and a half hours to kill. What else was there to do but to find another bar with another pint? We eventually settled on P. Flaherty's because, well, we saw the Guinness and Murphy's signs above the door. Good times. Now two pints deep, we realized that it was 10:15 and, while we could probably have a third, we should probably not risk forgetting where the bus station was. And so we arrived around 11 and killed the next hour waiting for the girls to meet us. For some reason there was a little horse ride in the corner that kept playing "O Susana" and had I not been so tired I might've gotten up and kicked it. TJ, of course, found this very amusing. Finally, the girls arrived and we said our tearful goodbyes to Kate. At 1, we boarded our bus to Madrid and passed out. Once we arrived, I said goodbye to Mary as she boarded the bus to the airport, and then to TJ as he took the Metro to that same airport (methinks we could've planned that better, no?). An hour and a half later, I arrived in Toledo happy to be back with most of Sunday to recover, but also feeling the worst bout of homesickness I've felt since getting here. It wouldn't go away 'til Tuesday.
That's where I'll leave you guys for now. You're now just about caught up with real time (and that'll happen soon; I didn't go anywhere this weekend so there's not a ton to report). In the mean time, I need some sleep.
Paz y amor,
Griff
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