updates!

sorry about the delay.. but i have arrived in berlin and the internet cafe next door is cheap (and its raining so i dont mind wasting an hour here), so hopefully i can get all cought up..

7/4- fourth of july, seville style!
so there were no fireworks. but our true american colors did show - caitlin and i bought some fo'ties and drank them in the center of a Plaza. when we got there we realized we didnt have a bottle opener so i had to squat down while all dressed up to go out and bust the tops off on the side of a bench...very classy. a man who was setting up his makeshift bed on a bench nearby even started laughing at us. if the homeless population is laughing at your ghettoness, you know you are classy...

then we met some sevillan municipal workers as they came to clean the park. i am having trouble remembering their names, but im pretty sure one of them was named after some sort of desert. flan, perhaps? unsure of the legality of boozing on public monuments, we made a lame attempt to shade our drinks. they laughed... and then we chatted for a while. later on in the night, we would run into them again. and the people we were with (other americans) found it odd and hysterical that as the garbage truck came by and the people jumped out to clean a street, caitlin and i were greeting them by name!

6/5 - cadiz
an awful travel day.. we checked out of our hostal in seville (which i ended up really liking and would recommend) and headed to the bus station. after a long, hot walk, we still had to wait a half hour for a bus. and then a long wait for a train and a long train ride. when we finally arrived in cadiz. i called the hostal to get directions and they recommended taking a cab... it would be 4 euro. so we get in the cab and start going.... 25 minutes later we are on the expressway headed back towards seville! wtf?! at this point we were certain there has been a misunderstanding and pulled over to call the hostal again. well, there was a misunderstanding - a misunderstanding about where the hostal was and what train stop to get off at. apparently our hostel was in a suburb of cadiz called el puerto de santa maria, where we had just passed a half hour before on the train... bummer.

when we finally arrived (30 euro later) at Costa Luz (more like a motel than a hostel) we threw on our suits and headed straight for the beach!
then out to explore the downtown area, filled with restaurants and clubs and bars and ice cream stores! very cute little town, with fun for everyone. in fact, the thing that stood out most to me about El Puerto de Santa Maria was how safe it was! it may be because i am used to traveling in third world countries, where beach towns are sometimes the worst places for petty crime, but this was nothing like that. i kept expecting to turn down a street and have to turn around, or to babysit my purse instead of heading into the water, but there was no need for that here. not once was i in any questionable situation, even though i was in a completely foreign town. it was really refreshing!
another thing about the town is that there were very few international tourists... it seemed to be more of a vacation destination for spaniards (like lake geneva for many chicagoans). it was very family friendly, but also with plenty to do for people my age.

6/6 - happy birthday mom!
today we spent all day at the beach! (and caitlin is a whole mix of different colors ...some white - where the sunscreen was applied, much RED - where she missed, and some brown - where the freckles have just blended into each other)

then outtt!

7/7 - we had planned on heading to granada today, but apparently the only trains out of cadiz go to madrid, seville, and cordoba.. so cordoba it was then! but the train didnt leave til 530 so we had lunch, went on an ice cream hunt (for as many ice cream stores as there are in the town, none of them were open during the middle of the day at the peak of the heat...) until we finally had to settle for ben and jerrys (american, but delicious!), and then we headed to the station a couple hours early (we had already checked out of the hostel and didnt have many other options).

at the train station, we were entertained for literally two hours by a series of events i cannot even explain. words will not do it justice.. i will post pictures when i can. but essentially, there was one very large, very unattractive, very neon-clad, very close-talking, mullet-sporting guy that kept harrassing people and asking for money (including us). and every ten minutes or so this old man would march inside waving a cane and screaming at this boy to leave everybody alone. he would sit down on a bench for a couple minutes until the man left, and then start again. this went on the whole time, one time the old man almost hit him with the cane! hahahahahahaha.
and a couple times he squeezed through the turnstile with another passanger and made it out to the platform. then the old man would come running and the boy was dragged back outside! haha but other than the old man everybody was oddly low-key about the whole situation, laughing at him, and not threatening to call cops or arrest him or even kick him off the property all-together. soo odddd. like, was this just a big skit? are we on candid camera right now? hahahaha i cant explain how funny this all was, especially for caitlin who couldnt even understand what was being yelled.

on to cordoba!
our hostel was arabic themed, but we spent very little time there. when we arrived we threw our bags down and went out for tapas, the best tapas we had the whole trip! so good. and there had been no vegetarian food in cadiz, so i had been craving the grilled veggies that i was finally able to order.

ok now i need a break from the computer... i hope to get up to date in the next couple of days.

cheers! (or greets! as my german friend keeps saying)