Episode 10, 5/22/2009 – Retail Therapy…It’s a good thing.

You may notice I’m skipping over the intense Seville Cathedral trip on 5/21/2009, simply because I realized that without pictures to guide me, my description would be meaningless, and also that I could go on for ten or more pages just describing what I have seen. In that case, I’d much rather explain the Cathedral on a person-to-person basis instead of writing about it. Know that is was the single greatest thing I’ve seen in Sevilla and it was absolutely speech-stealing in its power to marvel. Thus, I’m going to have to keep you in suspense, again. Mwhahaha!

I’ll skip to the next day, which was Operation: Find Gifts for Family and Friends. Being me, I made a list of all the people I wanted to buy gifts for (10+ people…that’s a lot). I went on my own to some larger department stores like El Corte Ingles and Media Markt (funny story: I have yet to see a consistent pronunciation of this). El Corte Ingles is hailed as being the Harrods of Spain, but I found it more like the Macy’s of Spain with a grocery store attached. The prices had Harrod’s ridiculousness but not the selection or the quality. It was mostly whack, so I was a little disappointed. Media Markt was Best Buy, but ironically, with cheaper goods than even in America. I bought a couple of things and then met with the group to go shopping in central city.

We went to Avenida de la Constitucion (as you’ll remember from my last blog post). Shops are pretty kitchy and touristy and some of us were too tired to continue on to the more elite shops further on. I found one or two simple things and we kept walking. Being that it IS Spain and something strange is always going down, we saw some cool and funny things. Religious processions are quite common, and we saw two passing through the center. These processions are easily recognized by their floats of the Virgin Mary, REALLY LOUD and obnoxious tinny brass trumpets, and people dressed up like KKK members….No, really. I’ll show you a picture. This particular procession (again, to the Virgin Mary) held up traffic for 10 or so minutes, but at least we got some good pictures.

The other interesting thing that we found was a wedding at the Cathedral. What a place to get married in! It was so nice and the atmosphere was so happy, I had to get pictures of the bride and groom. With my telescoping lens, I got some shots so good, I should have gone up to the couple and charged for prints. I’ll share some with you.

Shopping-wise I did find the absolute COOLEST shop called FNAC. It was like a Borders meets a Harrods meets a Hot Topic meets a Spenser’s Gifts, but much more expensive and high brow. It had an EXCELLENT selection of music, movies, videogames, books, pop-culture merchandise, and all very nice and clean and well-decorated. Everyone else was moving at a slightly different pace than my desire to spend 4 hours there, haha, so I resolved to come back another day.

After my group pooped out, I annexed to another group going out for paella for dinner. Paella, for all you Spanish n00bs, is a traditional dish of rice and meat (usually seafood), served in a steaming hot platter with spices. We went to this really bizarre restaurant called “Boston Burger” which had nothing to do with Boston or Burgers. In fact, when Christine tried to order a burger, they replied, “we don’t have them”. Very odd. The paella was only okay too…It was kind of a hack restaurant, really. But as they say, you live and you learn. Next time will be better. After putting the paella behind us, the group went out for desert and I went home.