A Happy Night in Seville

I figured I would give away the gist of our Saturday night from the beginning, since so many of my updates have been filled with deep sighs and stories of things gone wrong. Thankfully, our first few hours in Seville proved to be good ones.

After reaching our hotel, Amy and I decided to nap away our bad attitude and wake up with a renewed perspective on Seville, even if she wouldn't have any picture to document it. Seeing that it was going to take every effort at that point to make us enjoy ourselves, we turned to handy Rick Steves. As much as we make fun of the cult-like following he has (especially with the older crowd) his recommendations have never led as astray and with not a lot of room for error, we wanted to make sure that our dinner was given as much of a chance as possible to be enjoyed.

So on we walked to the area between the Catherdral, Plaza Nueva and the River to find "Bar Restaurant Pepe Hillo." Rick promised a youthful setting and cheap tapas, which after being stuck in two hotel rooms for two days, eating crappy English hotel food, we needed company and a decent meal. When we arrived, it was about 9:00 at night and the bar was relatively quiet. Our waiter was a young guy who didn't speak a word of English, but we made due and quickly won him over enough to garner bottomless glasses of wine and an invitation out to the bars with the wait staff after the restaurant closed.

Amy and I managed to pass the time easily (time flies when your glass is being refilled) by chatting with locals who shared our table due to it eventually becoming very crowded as the night went on. I should also say, because we're quite proud of ourselves, that no one the whole night spoke any English, but we somehow managed to pull through with my high school Spanish and Amy's college Italian. I learned that there is a cartoon over here named "Katie" so my name was instantly funny to an older man who took a load off at our table, but he reassured me it was a flattering comparison, although he nearly didn't believe that it could possibly be my name. Amy of course won him over with her charms and we were able to joke around about his wandering friend who kept stopping by to eat our olives and talked about a nearby beach town, Cadiz.

Eventually, they closed the restaurant and Amy and I went to a nearby bar with the staff for what turned out to be more free drinks and a late night in Spain. In total, Amy and I shared beers and vodka carmello with 5 Spanish twenty-somethings at an outdoor table until we were ready to make the long walk back to the hotel.

More than the inevitable hangover, we gained a renewed interest in Spain and got our confidence back on Saturday night. After feeling like no one would be interested in talking to us or that we were cursed with bad luck, we made friends, spoke Spanish and drank too much -- pretty much the makings of any good night in Spain.

Terrible photo, but had to show that these are two children having dinner in what is a very crowded bar at midnight. Spain knows no bounds -- so many children were out super late. Being the Americans that we are, Amy and I were saying "what are they still doing up?! Those children should be in bed." I think we were saying that for our future-parent-selves.