Today ended up being quite a full day. The night before, we realized that we wouldn’t be able to take trains to and from Cadiz, so we decided to risk it a bit by taking a bus from Seville to Cadiz (not that risky), and then a BlaBlaCar back from Seville (a bit more risky). BlaBlaCar is like a carpool service, where drivers say where they are going, and you can pay a nominal fee to join them for the ride (for the 3 of us to go 2 hours from Cadiz back to Seville was ~$26). Benton had only heard of this from when he was in France.
Anyways, we took the bus to Cadiz, and got to spend the day walking around/at the beach. Benton got some ice cream on the way to the beach, and both Allan and Yilinn went for a swim (Benton didn’t want to get in the water because he didn’t want to “waste another set of clothes” despite doing laundry the following day 🤡). We also walked out to Castillo de San Sebastian which we neat (a fort out on a peninsula).
While at the beach, Allan devised a plan to:
Lie on his back for ~20 minutes until he felt like he might burn
Lie on his stomach for ~20 minutes until he felt like he might burn
Go in the water
Come out and cover up.
Allan’s result was more like this:
Lie on his back for ~20 minutes until he felt like he might burn
Lie on his stomach for ~20 minutes until he felt like he might burn
Go in the water
Come out and walk around shirtless for another hour
Needless to say, Allan was pretty cooked by the end of the day.
As mentioned above, we chose to take a BlaBlaCar back from Cadiz (backup plan was to get a cheap hotel somewhere and take the train back the following morning). Jesus (our driver) arrived right on time, and we were on our way. Jesus had a small dog, and was very entertained by Benton and Yilinn petting said dog. Allan got to ride in the front, and think really hard the entire ride about all the Spanish that he knows (Jesus didn’t speak much English at all). The hard topic was when Allan was explaining where he is from (Washington DC). This led to one question that was pretty answerable: “What is the difference between Washington and Washington DC?” However, the question that followed took Allan quite some effort to explain: “What is DC, is it like Seville (city), Andalucia (region), or Spain?”
Fifteen minutes into the car ride back, Yilinn mentioned that she had to pee, even though she went right before we left. About 45 minutes later, Yilinn decided that she probably couldn’t hold it the entire ride and asked Allan if he could ask Jesus to stop quickly to pee at some point. Allan translated as “She needs to pee,” and Jesus immediately swerved over, and stopped at an abandoned building and pointed to go behind the building. Yilinn went behind the building to pee, and peed for long enough that Jesus decided he might as well also go pee on the opposite side of the building. “That may be the most I have peed in my life” - Yilinn. We then left and the rest of the ride was chill.
Back in Seville, we had tickets to a La Liga ⚽ match, and we had just enough time to go to the Airbnb, shower, and then take an Uber to the game. We arrived just in time to see the first goal, and Seville ended up beating their regional rivals Grenada by a score of 3-0. After the game, we were starving and failed to really find food, ending up at Five Guys (an underwhelming ending to an otherwise crazy day).
Memorable thing/highlight of day:
- Allan: The stadium was absolutely rocking when we approached (you could hear the crowd chanting from a few blocks away).
