Scott and Elise's European Adventurer

Since our last update life has been much more relaxed and stressfree. We hung out with the kitesurfing hippies for a day in Tarifa, spent a night in the cosmopolitan town of Cadiz and are now chilling out in Seville, where we returned the car.

Cadiz

Cadiz

Tarifa
Tarifa

Seville is a busy town which rivals Barcelona with the number of tourists. Everywhere you turn seems to be tourismo central.

We decided we wanted to experience a little bit of Spanish culture by seeing a bullfight. We are in Seville the week before their annual Feria festival so there is a fight on everyday at the moment so tickets were easy to get.

It definately was a very interesting cultural experience. We weren´t really sure what to expect....but effectively it a show of bravado by the matadors and his team of men. The bull doesn´t really stand a chance. We knew the bull gets killed in the end, but we didn´t realise that was what the whole show was about...the eventual killing of the bull to the claps and cheers of the crowd.

We took a few video shots of the bullfight which we´ve attempted to load to this blog...so hopefully you can view the file below.

We thought Aussies were harsh judges of their elite sports people, but the Spanish I think are worse. For one young matador (only 23), he didn´t do very well and dropped his red cloth thing a few times, and when trying to kill the bull in the end by stabbing it, it took him 3 attempts. The crowd don´t like this as apparently it is more pain for the bull (what the??), and didn´t give this guy one clap or cheer. It was like he was shamed and walked out with his head hung.

We decided it was time to go out to experience some Spanish nightlife last night, and so headed down some crowded streets where the bars were filling up. We stumbled across one bar that had a band setting up at midnight. It was a 4 piece band that included a rocking celloist and lapguarist who I named Migual (cause of his very spanish looking moustache). We were expecting some Spanish music that we wouldn´t understand a word of, but to our suprise when they started singing it was Rock´n´Roll sung in English. Gailo would have been proud of us up dancing to Blue Suede Shoes and Rock around the clock. Before we knew it the band was packing up and the time had somehow got to 4am when we had to navigate to maze-like streets back to our pension! No easy feat....we´ve been lost about 6 times trying to get back to our place....and we´ve had a map.

We were planning to do a day trip to Cordoba today, but didn´t fancy doing it on 3 hours sleep, so we´re going to go tomorrow.

On Sunday we fly up to San Sebastian....our last stop on the Spanish leg of this tour.