La playa

Happy Día de Andalucía! I’m not quite sure what this holiday means, but I don’t have classes so it’s a good holiday in my mind. We just finished up with lunch and I’m slowly entering a food coma, but I told myself I would write a new post today, so here it goes.

If there were a word to sum up the last week, it would be LA PLAYA. For all you non-Spanish speakers out there, that means THE BEACH. This weekend started off with a day trip to Cádiz, about an hour and a half south of Sevilla. On our way to Cádiz (which is also the same city that Carnaval was in last weekend) we stopped at a winery in Jérez.

We had a quick tour of the winery and learned the fermenting process of wine and brandy. It was definitely a neat place, considering it wasn’t even our destination of the day. There were barrels signed by famous people such as Christopher Columbus’ son, the Royal family and even some American celebs. 

 After we had a tour of the different areas of the winery, we got to taste two of the famous wines that are made at this “bodega”. The first one was a white wine, VERY dry and bitter, and the second was a dessert wine (pictured below) and it was so sweet it tasted like you were drinking maple syrup. I liked the sweet wine more, but it was hard to even have a full glass because it was so sweet.

 We traveled about 25 more minutes south and arrived in Cádiz, a beautiful peninsular city on the south coast of Spain. The water was clear and turquoise and the sky was (as always) a perfect blue. We lay on the beach for most of our stay and then took a short walk through a park to get ice cream.

 On Saturday, my friend Bridget and I stayed in Sevilla while others went on local day trips. It still amazes me how social this place is. Now that the weather is warm enough for the Spaniards, everyone is out by the river all day long (weekends and weekdays). So we blended right in (kind of) and people-watched by the river. The funniest part was witnessing what little concept Spaniards have of personal space. We laughed at how close some people would sit to us and it was nothing to them.  Also the PDA is insane. People are basically on top of each other (in public) everywhere you look, and yet we’re the ones who get stared at

After socializing with some locals, we hit the hay early and got up the next day to visit yet another beautiful playa. We hopped on a bus to visit Matalascañas, a beach southwest of here for the day. It was the typical beach town and tanned and relaxed all day long. We even got on the local news for being in our swimsuits at this time of year! Bridget spoke some Spanish into the camera and we laughed at how different it was than the states. The cameraman literally swooped in and started filming us before we could even get our cover-ups on, and definitely didn’t ask to film us. It was funny though; I’ve never even been on the news in the states!

 I really want to try and get better at posting more so I don’t have to sum up everything simply by saying what I did. There are so many other thoughts and observations that go into these daily encounters and mini day trips. But, I guess it’s better that I’m out experiencing it all rather than trying to document it.

Well, we’re off to meet up with our group and hang out by the river for the rest of the day. It’s a short week and then I’m off to Barcelona for the weekend. ¡Hasta luego!