We arrive late for another tour in Spain. We get a shortened tour of the city and late lunch because we spend a good deal of time La Mezquita, an old church/mosque that is now a catholic church again. After the tour we went to a restaurant. Apparently though it was more of an upscale place, and we are pretty certain it did not expect to get 14 some American tourists. The waiters were quite curt and rude, but the food was decent. We left a good tip, feeling bad about the state that we took the restaurant. We then departed to do some souvenier shopping. This is when I first discovered the fact that all porn and pornographic related material has to come in German or English. We saw video tapes, books, and cards. All of it those either was clearly legible because it was in English or was in German. German looks obviously different from languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. Interesting that Spaniards watch porn in a language they do not understand or at least they do not announce that their is any porn in Spanish.
We then met up as a group so that we could get back to the train station to resume our trip to Sevilla. The speed trains had no problems this time around. Our first night in Sevilla, we decided against going out as a group to a bar, since Sevilla is not exactly that tourist friendly. In fact it might rate somewhere on the level of Gary or Washington DC for crime. It is an industrial city that has went through some rough times, plus the whole gypsy element was kind of creepy. The night was not a total loss though, we all hung out in the big room, again the room with three girls in it. Most of the group played asshole while drinking some alcohol we went out and bought. Professor Whitehead and Professor Shannon stopped in for a visit after they had dinner. We were all drinking and smoking. Professor Whitehead wanted to have a little with us, but Professor Shannon could not handle the smoke so he left. Professor Whitehead proceeded to tell us about her encounters in Paris when she was a grad student and why Professor Shannon could not handle smoking anyomore. It was quite an illuminating experience.
The next saw us taking a tour of the city of Sevilla. We saw this cool bridge and something from Expo 92 when it was in Sevilla. At the building for the Expo we were mobbed by gypsies trying to sell us parsley or something small and green. We also saw the cathedral which was pretty cool. We then had most of the afternoon for ourselves before the flamenco show. Apparently I got separated from the other guys who got drunk and lost, then started playing the penis game. Well this is especially amusing when they started changing it to gross things that the Spanish speakers did not understand. Occasionally they ran across an English speaker that laughed at them. After that excitement we went to dinner and a flamenco show. Here I tried an olive appetizer. It was pickled or something; needless to say it was quite salty. Plus the professors bought some sangria for us. The show was really kick ass. Flamenco is a very interesting means of dancing. After the show we returned to our hotel rooms and turned in for the night since we were heading out early the next morning.