the opposite of barca

sevilla. oh wow oh wow wow wow. i am obsessed! i literally fell in love with the place. it might even be more beautiful than barcelona. sevilla is so so so old and so colorful and just magical. this is going to be a long one so prepare yourself...

they still ride horse carriages around the town! there are sooo many trees and flowers and i guess they plant a lot so that there is lots of fresh air, because they place the buildings so close together to create shade because it gets really hot in the summer. it actually works! they have over 35,000 orange trees and they are beautiful, but the sad part is they can't eat them because there is too much pollution :(

all of the buildings are different, every single one. every address, street sign, etc. has a different style. all the buildings are a different color. pink and yellow are the ones that stood out the most. there is a huge canal that you can go kayaking or canoeing down and it is so pretty! there were flamenco shows and bars everywhere because that's where it originated. they are known for their tapas and they definitely lived up to that. they might have had the best food i've ever eaten in my life.


there was the biggest cathedral in the world, right across from our hostel. it was MASSIVE! so so big and detailed and fairy-tale-like. the inside was crazy, they had so much room i feel like they just tried to fit so much in but with no floor plan. things were just thrown in there. and there were all these little secret rooms with treasures and tiaras and statues and gems. and they had like five altars and organs whose pipes ran all the way up to the ceiling. chris colombus' tomb was inside. they said they did a DNA test on it to make sure it was him, because santo domingo claims they have his tomb. supposedly 144 of his bones are in there. which means some aren't, which means some could actually be in santo domingo!


















there was a super high tower that we climbed up and it took like 20 minutes, but the view. oh the view was magnificent. it was so bright and colorful and you could look out and see the tops of castles and inside the bull ring.

the people were super nice and there were like no young kids there. it was definitely a small quiet town. at night everything closed early. but we wandered and we ended up finding these tiny little bars that had no signs outside or anything, but when you got in it was a huge party. live music, everyone singing, and the decorations were unreal. so much character and personality.

we found this one place the first night that had all the young kids probably that lived there. it was packed and SUPER cheap. they had tapas for 1 or 2 euro, which is unreal! and it was the best food ever! and the bartender loved us and kept asking how we were and what we wanted and let us sample some things.

we took a bus tour and a few walking tours that were definitely worth it. we heard so many little stories about the town and where things came from and why things were the way they were. like the narrow streets. they were all one way and i don't know how you could remember which one went which way. some had no sidewalks! some couldn't even fit cars. there were no traffic lights or anything like that.

 the bus tour took us around to all these little different plazas. and each one represented a different country. sevilla is known for it's mixture of ethnicities and you could definitely tell how everything was influenced from different cultures. every plaza the bus took us to had a building with the name of the country. and they were all completely different. america's was really modern but it was actually really beautiful. super big. but then we went by guatemala and it was like a shack. but it was painted really cool. the picture above is of the american plaza.

the most jaw-dropping thing was the details inside the churches. we went into one that had a gigantic altar made entirely out of gold. there was one that looked gaudi-like. there was so much going on inside it was hard to take in! so many gems and grooves and carvings and colors it was wild.

the weather was gorgeous and perfect. i don't think there was a single cloud the entire time we were there. nothing could have been better! i could seriously see myself living there when i'm old. it's like paradise. i felt like i was in a book the whole time...
if i think of some more details i'll race back on to share!