Seville is the home of flamenco, and after seeing a professional performance, we were excited and nervous to try it ourselves. We walked about 15 minutes to get to the Flamenco Dance Studios, a collection of tiny rooms rented by dancers for practice. We met Maria for a flamenco lesson. She confirmed our suspicions that most flamenco is improvised in the moment. We had fun learning about the and makeup of flamenco, and a little bit of a dance.
We had a pretty walk back to our apartment to pack during the hottest part of the day. We were definitely starting to understand the Spanish custom of siesta.
We couldn’t possibly come to Spain without going out for paella. The waitress warned us that paella is made to order and takes 25-30 minutes, but we were prepared with a card game. The food was worth the wait.
After dinner, we went on a mission, walking through old town searching for the baby birds we passed on our walking tour.
We passed a group of women playing music, and relaxed in a square.
I was really really excited to do a horse drawn carriage ride. We said hi to the horse before we set off through the town. The sunlight was golden and it just felt magical to me.
From there, we walked toward Las Setas, a giant mushroom that is the largest wooden structure in the world. We stopped for churros, Spanish style. They had no cinnamon sugar, but were served with a cup of chocolate to dip them in.
We had tickets to see Aurora, the nighttime show at Las Setas. The whole enormous structure lights up with changing colors, and we got to go up to the top and walk through it. The coolest thing was seeing the modern lighting display with so many old monuments, churches and cathedrals in the background.
On our walk home, we passed by a beautiful old church that was just sitting there like it was cool.
In the morning, we left our apartment and put our luggage in lockers while we went to Plaza de España. It’s a huge complex built in 1929 for an exposition. It had little tiles bench sections for each of Spain’s 49 provinces. The whole semicircular building around the edge was tiled, and there were performers dancing and playing guitar.
