Hive On Tour: Celtic City

Day 5 – Tuesday – Woke up very early. Like it was still dark – It never gets dark in Spain! Yet here we are. I think we had to get our bus at 7. We brought loads of bread, ham and cheese with us. I think the bus took like 5 hours or something. At some stage, we got stopped at a tollbooth - Armed police came on and started shouting at Aidan. He had no idea what the guy was on about. Some Spanish man came up and translated for us. He was asking if we had drugs haha. Coming from Gibraltar which is near Morocco...i.e. drug capital of the world (apparently). We told him no, and he went away. Crazy bastards. We made it to Seville early in the morning, and set about finding somewhere to stay. We found this place. Very strange place. Fuck it tho, we were tired and hungry, and we just wanted to relax. You needed to ring a buzzer to get in. We then got our keys, me and Craig got single beds each... Dom and Aidan had to share a double. We went for showers – While Dom was in the shower, Aidan switched on the light- This caused the circuit to trip – We asked the girl about it, and she was shocked that we didn’t know that having switching on a light while the shower was on trips the circuit. Fucking ridiculous. Once we were all ready, Aidan and Craig needed to find a Laundrette (obviously). The first challenge was getting out. The door wouldn’t open, and our key didn’t work in the door. Apparently, if you want to leave this place you have to ring the bell, and someone comes down to let you out. They then take your key from you. When you come back you have to ring the bell to get in, and they give you your key back. Very strange. Also a potential fire hazard no? So we set out. No luck finding a laundrette...

We then went to have a tour of Seville. What is there to see? We don’t know. We wandered about for ages, through orange gardens, past cathedrals, etc etc. Why is no one speaking to us! This was probably one of the worst days on the holiday, for me anyway. We had spent the past 3 days or something like that speaking to no one, and we were all hating each other. Seville was lovely, but it was so hot – 44 degrees! We were going to go into the cathedral, but Craig hadn’t brought his student ID so we didn’t bother... No big loss really, but it was something to do. We did a tour of the bull ring. Worst tour I’ve ever been on. Basically some woman who sounded like a gay Spanish mouse rattled off the script in Spanish, and then In English. She had evidently learnt the script and nothing else. No punctuation or anything. It was shit. Aswell as that, I had some Spanish people next to me, and once she had finished the Spanish section, they started talking about it, which meant I couldn’t hear the English section. Bull fighting is pretty brutal – All the odds are stacked against the bull, and on the off chance that the bull kills anyone – They then kill the bull and its entire family.

After that, we went for some lunch. I had some Gazpacho. Cold Soup. It was strange, but pretty cool. I can’t remember what I had for main course – I think it was decent though. Lots of zumo de naranca. We found the (big) river, and decided to hire a pedalo. I love it how we try and pretend we’re doing a sightseeing tour, but we always spend most of the time looking for a beach, or some form of water. We went out on the pedalo. Just about got destroyed under a ferry, but it was all good. Decided to moor the boat and jump into the river. Some teenage hoodlums told us the water was covered in glass, and we should go further up. We did. Did some jumping in. It was awesome. The water was manky, but it didn’t matter. So refreshing. Dom somehow managed to cut his leg up. Great fun though. We headed back in, the Olympic gondola team were practising for the Venice Olympics... slightly strange but funny. We got in the way of some canoe training. As we came into port, we went to moor the boat to the side of the cafe we had rented it from. We were a couple foot away from where we should be, so the cafe owner stuck his hand out to me to help pull us in. Now I assumed he had a good hold of something onshore, so I just pulled. He very nearly fell in. To the point where he was balancing on one foot. It was so funny, but I bet if he had fallen in he would not have found it too funny (Imagine coming home to your wife after a day at work... ‘how was work honey?’ ‘I fell in the river!’. Unless you work as a diver, I think that would be pretty unusual. I would never expect to fall in a river at work). Second attempt, this time I let him pull me. That worked better. We headed along the river a bit and had a bit of a snooze on some grass(mingin grass – covered in shit). There were some hot Americans there, but they didn’t speak to us. Why is no one speaking to us! We headed along the road, I started to feel Sun stroke coming on. I told the guys I needed some water, but they just ignored me, babbling on about a laundrette. I got some juice, sat down and just felt totally fucked. These fucking nippy girls were chanting a really annoying song in Spanish. Eventually I started to recover. Close call. Doctor Aidan to the rescue again...ha. Back to the hostel and refreshed ourselves, using the immensely complex process of entering the hostel. I hate these hostels where there’s no one to speak to! We decided we have to make a concentrated effort to just stay in actual youth hostels from now on.

We went out for a drink/trying to find an internet cafe. Aidan was too scared to ask for directions so we just aimlessly wandered about for a while. Turned out there was no internet cafes, but we found a square which had free wifi. It didn’t work, but fuck it. We came across this square where hundreds of people just stood there drinking very small beers. Almost pointless drinking it. Just give me a pint! Still no one spoke to us, but you could see us getting strange looks. I guess that’s a start. A couple beers later and we headed back to the flat (hostel flat). This place had air conditioning, which was at least good. Although woke up in the middle of the night and it was absolutely fucking Baltic. Better than being hot...i guess. We were in bed so early.

So to sum up, Seville was fairly dull... A beautiful place, but we didn’t know anyone to speak to and it was pretty boring...since we all hated each other all day.

Tomorrow – Onto Granada, home of the Alhambra palace and mountains – I loved Granada. We may actually speak to people....