Sevilla at night

After an extended delay at the London airport that consisted of 1) Iberia Airlines not telling us the gate until 20 minutes prior to departure, prompting a stampede of Brits and Spaniards to an inefficient and worthless bottleneck checkpoint; 2) Everyone in the aircraft (i´m serious) watching the safety demonstration while I read my newspaper; and 3) while taxiing on the runway, a loud screeching/clunking sound that i swear was the airplane wheels running over a large metal pipe, forcing us to stop the plane while the stewardesses ran around the airplane like decapitated chickens and did nothing to assuage our fears, we finally took off without much fanfare and left the dreary English countryside for the Andalucian sun.

Sevilla was exactly like I imagined Spain would be like: narrow, cobblestoned alley-streets with soft yellow lamps lighting the way for Vespas, walking tourists and the occassional French Connection/Bourne Identity car chase scene going past. I´ll have a picture tomorrow from right outside my hostel, but this computer won´t let me put anything up. I walked around at about 11 pm, and most of the restaurants had tons of people sitting outside in tables, drinking wine and eating tapas. Most of them, however, were tourists, from Spain or otherwise. I even ran into a girl I went to high school with, but I turned down her offer to come party on the river with a bunch of other exchange students because it seemed like a token invite and her description of where to go consisted of ¨someplace down by the river¨. I wasn´t too confident that my carrier pigeon sense of direction was capable of finding her, since I couldn´t remember her name either...

My room is the size of a standard broom closet, and yet somehow there´s a sink in it. I also managed to swing a hot shower with good water pressure down the hall, and despite a tube of shampoo puncturing itself and then after making a hole in the ziploc bag that was supposed to prevent this from happening, proceeded to leak all over my clothes...

Tomorrow I´ll look around the city for a current converter (despite my mom buying three for me, none of them work) and then head for Cadiz...