Sevilla

Why the hell can't I plan ahead?

I woke up late this morning, which wasn't really late, but was later than I'd planned to get up. Some moronic girls monopolized the laundry room until 2 this morning and since I desperately needed to do laundry I had to wait. So when the weird Korean guy in my room started banging around at 10 this morning I knew I had to get up and get on the road, but I certainly didn't want to.

Anyway, since I was already running late, I grabbed a quick breakfast with Johann and then finished packing up my stuff so I could run to the Atocha train station in Madrid. They're in the middle of doing service on the line directly from my hostel to Atocha right now so I had to take a really roundabout way on the Metro, which tacked on about 45 minutes to my journey.

When I got there, I was told there were no 2nd class seats left on the 11:30 am train to Cordoba but that there was at 12:30, so I was forced to sit and wait for an hour in the train station.

Atocha is sort of a bizarre station. It has an actual botanical garden in the lower floor right below the departures gates, and therefore it's absolutely sweltering hot and very muggy in the station.

I was in no mood to carry my pack in the heat, so I put it down and used it as a chair and waited for my train.

I'm just sitting there listening to my MP3 player, cooking like a lobster and trying to smooth my bedhead out when I notice this camera crew taping me. I am completely camera shy so I stopped screwing with my hair and adopted my best deer-in-the-headlights pose, which apparently prompted them to come over and ask me if they could ask me a few questions. I just stuttered "No Habla Español" and they moved on. I wonder, though, does that mean I'm going to be on Spanish TV even if I didn`t answer their questions? What were they going to ask?

The times I wish I were fluent in Spanish are starting to add up.

Anyway, I make it to Cordoba, but the tourist information booth isn't open because of Siesta and I'm thinking that Cordoba is pretty well on my way to Valencia when I'm done in the south of Spain anyway, so I bought another ticket to Sevilla and waited for that train instead of sticking around there.

I slept almost the entire trip, which being only an hour and a bit, wasn't a ton of sleep, but I shudder when I think of how tired I MIGHT be without it now.

I get off the train and it hits me. Yes, I know I've mentioned the heat all along, and as someone who spends her winters actually dogsledding, I think I have the right to, but Sevilla is literally the hottest place I've ever been in my life. I mean it.

It is currently 37 in the shade.

I found a tourist information booth and asked her for hostel recommendations or directions to an internet cafe, and she wasn't very helpful so I just grabbed a map and headed into the city myself to find one or the other.

I must stress that this is a dumb idea. Really, really dumb.

I found an internet cafe but it took me over 2 hours in the heat with a 30 lb pack on my back. 5 minutes before I found the cafe, I was almost unbearably tempted to climb into a questionable looking fountain, and the only saving grace is that Sevilla isn't the middle of a desert and there are supermarcado's here that are not mirages. I've finished 2 litres of lemonade and a can of Red Bull since I left the train station.

So if I have one piece of advice for those people looking to stay in the South of Spain.. book your bloody hostel in advance. Now I know.

Call me lazy but I'm totally catching a taxi to my hostel and then I'm going to sleep until the sun goes down.