SEMANA SANTA - Sevilla

After my ordeal with the processions, I was really looking forward to getting to Sevilla and enjoying myself. The main (and only reason for me) to go to Sevilla was to see the processions. They are supposed to be some of the oldest and biggest processions in Spain for Semana Santa. If you want to see some amazing processions, Sevilla is the place to be.

Day 1

So we land in Sevilla at about midnight and we are going to drop our stuff off at the hotel and go right back out to see the processions. Due to some sort of miscommunication issues, we had an extra member of our group so we thought we would have to sneak her into the hotel. Fortunately for us, the hotel paid no attention and both of the rooms had an extra bed (we thought she would have to sleep on the floor). We drop our stuff off, grab a city map, and leave. Of course that night it just had to rain. If there is even a little sprinkle the processions won't leave. The pasos are hundreds of years old and they are not going to risk them getting ruined. We wandered around for about three hours in the rain hoping the rain would stop and the processions would leave. Then, it started to rain harder and we found refuge in a Starbucks at about 3AM. We sat and waited for the rain to let up before heading out again. Of course no processions were willing to risk leaving now and we decided to just go back to the hotel and try again tomorrow. We finally step into our hotel around 5 AM and our first night in Sevilla was a major fail (not including the fact that my foot hurt really badly).

This is what the sky looked like that night : (

 Day 2
We woke up the next morning with all the hope in the world of seeing a procession. Until we walked outside and it was STILL raining. Then, it wasn't just rainy, it was cold windy and rainy... the worst possible walking conditions. Somehow, we once again made our way back to Starbucks after hoping a procession would leave. We first visited the main huge cathedral to see if any processions would be leaving. Unfortunately for us, no. Nothing. We decided instead of waiting for the pasos  to come to us, we would go to the pasos. They are housed in their home churches until it's time for the processions to leave, so we decided to visit the churches themselves. We spent the rest of the day visiting  churches to see the pasos in their houses.  We then headed to look for food and ended up at a Chinese buffet. It was sort of cool because you could put the meat and vegetables you wanted on your plate, tell them what kind of sauce you want, and then they will cook the whole plate of food for you. After dinner, we ended up walking along the river taking crazy photos. At one point, we decided to stage a "creep" session where we proceeded to do the creep on one of our friends. Good times.  We visited a cute little market, but I didn't buy anything. We took more pictures on a bridge, then we headed back to the hotel to turn in for the night.

Side of main cathedral

Main door (don't mind my giant pesky finger)

 Day 3
We woke up and KNEW that today would be the day we would be able to see a procession. But first, we decided to head to the Alcazar. It's pretty much a tiny copy of the Alhambra in Granada. Anywho, we waited in a sort of ridiculous line to get in, but we weren't disappointed. Although it's smaller, it seems as though it may have been better preserved. Personally, I liked the gardens here better than the Alhambra too. I think it just may have just been that I visited the Alhambra before the flowers bloomed, but if a place is known for it's gardens I just expected to see something better than what I saw. I took a ridiculous number of pictures here because it was just that gorgeous. After the Alcazar, we went to find food. Near the cathedral was a restaurant that sells calamari sandwiches, so we decided we would have to give them a try. We sat on the stairs of the cathedral and ate our awesome sandwiches and hoped SOMETHING would leave. Then... we heard trumpets. We gobble down the last bites of our sandwiches and rush around the side of the cathedral to the main door. Finally, after all this wishing and hoping, a procession was leaving. And not just any procession, but the one from the main cathedral. Our timing could not have been any more fantabulous. We had a front row view of the only procession that had left since Semana Santa started. Just our luck, as the main paso neared, the rain started again. The paso didn't even make it out of the plaza around the cathedral before it turned and went right back inside. Honestly, I think we're lucky we got to see anything at all, we could have easily been on the other side of the city when this happened. After the paso went back inside, the rain began again. We tried to take shelter under some trees, but it was futile. We were absolutely soaked through and through. At this point, a friend and I leave the group to find somewhere to sit down because my foot is killing me. A while later, we get a call that they're at a TexMex restaurant and we head out to join them. After dinner, a friend and I take a taxi back to the hotel (the hotel was a super long walk from the main city center) and we turn in for the night as the rest of our peoples gallivant around Sevilla til the wee hours of the morning (I'm exaggerating here, but whatever). I wanted to get a good sleep because we had a 7 AM flight the next morning to Paris.

Here it comes!!!

And there it goes...right back into the cathedral.

All in all, Sevilla was just a big wet cold mess. I'm sure I would have loved it so much more if I hadn't felt like a stray cat 95% of the time, but what can you do now? I really feel as though I shouldn't judge based on the freezing wet misery that was the weather for those 3 days, but that's kind of all I have to go on. Oh well, maybe later in life when I have some free time I'll give it another try, but that won't be any time soon.