A walking tour through Seville

Friday, November 29, 2013 @ 5:56 PM in 2013 Europe

Day 156

Even though I went to bed around 1:30am, I was woken up by someone packing up in the hostel room around 8:30 and couldn't fall back to sleep so I got up. I figured since I was up early enough I'd do the free walking tour that leaves from the hostel every day at 10:45am.

The tour lasted about 3 hours and took us around Seville's old town as well as some of the newer areas. It went over the history of the cathedral, the history surrounding all the new world discoveries (everything brought back from the Americas in the 16th century passed through and was taxed by Seville making it one of the richest cities in the world), as well as some of the newer buildings that were built for the 1929 expo. Tobacco was also refined here and there's the 2nd largest building in Spain here in Seville that was built for tobacco refinement. Now the building is part of the local university.

The tour guide was named Medi and was from Tangier. I talked to him about it for a little bit and even he said that a week in Tangier was too long. He left for Spain because he didn't really like living in Morocco and does the free walking tours with 3 other guys now. He was a pretty good tour guide with lots of enthusiasm about what he was talking about. He's also a splitting image of Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat character. He said he was even an extra when they filmed part of the movie The Dictator here (another Sasha Baron Cohen movie).

After the tour ended I was pretty hungry so I came back to the hostel and ate lunch and I've been here since. For dinner tonight the hostel guys are making cashew chicken so I'm excited for that. Hopefully there might be some spiciness in it but I'm not going to get my hopes up. I'm not sure what the deal is but there are so many Americans here. They all seem to be students who are studying in Madrid and go out to different cities on the weekends to see Spain and party. It's just strange to be surrounded by more Americans at this one hostel than I've run into anywhere else.

Edit: I also went out and walked around at night for the first night of all the Christmas lights being lit up. There were a ton of people out walking around and it was funny to see the orange trees full of oranges covered and lit up with Christmas lights.

Teaser photos: