Splorin'

One day, my roommate and I decided to go explore Sevilla a bit. It was dark and overcast when we set out (my favorite weather), and it rained later, but good lord was it beautiful. I mean, look at the cathedral in the clouds.

Look at it.

Look. at. it!

But anyway, whoever decided to plan Sevilla basically threw down a plate of spaghetti and was like "Now let's make this into a city, y'all!" (those exact words actually) so Sevilla is really hard to navigate which makes it perfect to just set out and find something new every time. It's always fun to just get lost on purpose and try to find your way back anyway.

After my roommate got some helado, we picked a random street behind the cathedral to walk along.

After we passed all the touristy stuff with the usual Sevilla postcards, fans, and bull t-shirts, we found some stuff that only the people that live in the city would go to. Like this really cool tea shop. Because tea is da bomb. They had baskets and baskets of amazing smelling teas. I wanted ALL the teas. 

After some more shop exploring it started to rain, and then we found ourself in one of the oldest parts of Sevilla, Alfalfa. However, we didn't know it was Alfalfa (even though the tight, windy streets should have given it away) until we found the playground around Cabo Loco, where we usually drink if we go that way. That sounds a lot more horrible than it actually is, but the bar is far away enough from the playground...

Anyway, right along with Paris, Grenoble, and A2, Sevilla is the most beautiful place I have ever seen when it rains. Magical things happened. For example, we found this amazing looking panadería, a student travel agency that we weren't sure existed but wanted to know more about (we saw their excursions online, but we didn't know if it was legit because there were no reviews), and we also found a Vodafone right as my phone ran out of minutes! It was just too perfect. 

But really, when you have those windy streets wet with rain reflecting minimal street lights and cozy looking bars all lit up, it's like something you only have dreamt about.

Later on in that week, I did the same thing alone, and I found an American grocery store! They had shelves of peanut butter, something that almost no one uses in Spain, and they even had Pop Tarts! I don't eat Pop Tarts because I'm a vegetarian, but it still made me think of home, so I was glad to see their gelatinous (wow that sounds gross) pop-tarty goodness. 

In a foreign country, sometimes you get a bit jaded because you never feel like you can fully express yourself and that everything's really unfamiliar (which is the beauty of it and whole point of going abroad), and you're just really out of your element. 

Although it seems kind of stupid, things like this make me feel a bit more at home and kind of gets me recharged and even more excited to be somewhere different.

And they had cool shaped ice cube trays. I mean, who doesn't love funky shaped ice cube trays...?

Anyway, if you haven't purposefully lost yourself yet (something I try to do in every city, even my hometown), I highly recommend it. You never know what you'll find.