Kansas City? But we’re not in Kansas anymore!

Saturday, April 17

After being rejuvenated in Nerja, our next stop was Sevilla. We had booked this hostel way back in March because it’s right at the beginning of their big festival called Feria de Abril (Festival of April). Since Nerja is teeny tiny, there wasn’t a train station so we had to take a bus to Malaga and then take a train from there to Seville. We woke up to rain, rain, rain. We packed up our things and then trudged through the rain to the bus station (aka, a stop on the street with a kiosk selling tickets) and waited for our bus. We were about half and hour early so we sought shelter under one of the covered benches to wait on our bus. It finally came and we threw our backpacks under and then hopped aboard. We guess Malaga is a pretty popular place because our bus was packed full. At one stop, there was apparently a disagreement between one of the riders and the bus driver about this older lady that tried to get on. They were speaking way to fast for Katie to get what was going on, but from what she could understand, she was guessing that the bus driver wouldn’t let the lady on because she didn’t pay or something but the man on the bus was telling him he should let her on. Or maybe she’d missed the bus she was supposed to be on and was trying to get on this one or something like that. Basically, it was two men yelling at each other and the lady was crying and it was a big ol’ mess. Finally, we got to Malaga and were lucky to find that the bus station was right next to the train station so we didn’t have to go too far in the rain.

We made it to the train station to find that the place was amazing! It was like a mall, train station, movie theater and bowling alley all rolled into one! We were sort of sad that we only had about half an hour after making our reservation to spend in the train station. Well, since we have priorities, we decided that we would spend our half hour in line for Burger King. We didn’t expect for it to take that long but we should have learned by now that fast food places are only fast in the States and Paris. Since we were running short on time, yet again, Katie went ahead to hold up the train if need be while Rachael waited for the food. Rachael made it to the train just in time, but not before hurting her already bothered shoulder. She popped a few ibuprofen with lunch and hopped right back on that travelin’ horse. When we got to Sevilla, we collected our things and hopped off the train. We saw signs for Kansas City Avenue and Katie was very confused until brilliant Rachael remembered that Sevilla and Kansas City are sister cities. Now you know everything!

We made our way out of the train station and used the amazing iPhone to find our way to the hostel. It was a nice hike, but we finally made it. We plan on taking a cab back to the train station! We learned that the hostel has a neat tapas tour that they do where they take you to three different restaurants where you try different tapas and drinks. Sounds like our kind of tour! After we put our things in our room, Rachael grabbed a quick nap before the tour while Katie decided to go exploring. We met back up and freshened up before our tour. We met some new friends on the tour, most notably Natalie and Blaire, a young Australian married couple who are currently living and working in England. We ended up being good buddies with them by the end of the night.

At the first tapas restaurant, we had sangria and lots of unidentifiable but delicious tapas. Our favorite dish was potato slices cooked and slathered with amazing garlic mayonnaise. Talk about yum! The second place we went had two different kinds of sherry, which is a specialty of this region. Our favorite dish at that place was a toss-up between this interesting cheesecake kind of stuff and a really delish tender beef dish. At the third place, we had sangria again and several different seafood dishes. They also served interesting sandwiches with chorizo and cream cheese. At this point, the tapas tour ended but it was also the beginning of the pub crawl. Well, they talked us into it! Blaire and Natalie said they’d at least go to the beginning of the pub crawl so we decided to do the same. It got off to a slow start, but we ended up spending about an hour at 3 different bars before ending up at a discotheque for some crazy Spanish dancing.

We only spent a few minutes at the last place before the four of us split a cab back to the hostel. We made plans to have breakfast together the next morning and then we all went to bed.

XOXO K&R