Day 8: Adios Andalucia!

On Easter Sunday, we awoke in our comfortable, modern, no-frills hotel room to a pealing of the church bells in Seville. Christ has risen! Despite all of the Semana Santa experiences we've had, hearing the bells ring was the clearest reminder to me of my salvation and redemption... at once joyous, profound, and eternal. I imagined another believer, perhaps hundreds of years ago, sitting in the church square where I sat that morning, listening to those same bells, and feeling the same gladness.

For breakfast, we walked down to the riverfront and ordered ourselves a plate of churros y chocolate. The chocolate was thick and decadent, and the churros were light and crispy, sort of like the Chinese you-tiao. Funny how every culture seems to have it's own version of fried dough.

It was beautiful sunny day, so we took a leisurely walk along the riverfront, basking in the warm glow upon our vitamin D-deficient, Seattle-ite skin. We paused to watch some men fishing down by the water, and were surprised to see one guy struggling with his line. His buddy came over with a net, and after a bit of splashing, pulled a huge, yellow-scaled fish out of the water. After weighing it and measuring the length, they threw it back into the river.

By noon, it was time for us to make our way to the train station, to catch our fast, AVE train from Seville to Madrid. The Estacion Santa Justa is sparkling and modern, not to mention highly efficient.

Though the train ride was smooth and comfortable, I was unfortunately feeling slightly feverish by the end of it. Luckily, there's no better place to sleep off a fever than a city that you've already visited! We checked into our small pension, both popped a tylenol, and slept off our colds for 3 and a half hours! (Jack had a runny nose.) We felt worlds better when we awoke, and funny thing too... it was time for dinner! For our tapas crawl tonight, we headed to the La Lateina area of Madrid, where one long, narrow street brimmed over with trendy tapas bars. We found three that served up some innovative fare, and I found my new, favorite, Spanish wine- the Rueda, made from verdejo grapes. Yum!

We headed back to the hotel a bit before midnight, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the country, in the middle of our trip. Tomorrow morning, we'll be traveling up to Santiago de Compostela and the Galicia region, in the northwest of Spain. Supposedly, it's green, lush, and rainy there... like Seattle!