Que Suerte
Originally uploaded by autarken

We just returned from the Plaza de Toros in Seville, having witnessed our first bullfight. Maybe it will take a while to absorb, maybe I’m just reeling from the thick cloud of cigar smoke we were engulfed in, or maybe it’s the combination of sangria and Spanish sudafed, but I don’t have all the words right now to describe the fight itself. I think I’ll wait til later when I can upload video (don’t worry, I’ll spare you the gruesome stuff, but you will get to see a bullfighter trampled!).

What I will say is that we had a pretty lucky day. Woke up early, caught a trouble free 6:30am flight from Barcelona to Seville on Vueling’s MTV airplane and quickly found our hotel in central Seville. Quick nap. We got some breakfast and explored the city, working our way slowly (it is hot! 37 celsius, 98.6 fahernheit) along the water until we came across the Plaza de Toros. The museum was a dud (one in Ronda 8 years ago was more interesting) but we found out there was a fight tonight! Well, not a full professional fight, those are earlier in the season, this was a sort of training exposition where young bullfighters get to prove themselves. The Plaza de Toros in Seville is a pretty big deal… Kim likened this to watching a AAA game in Yankee Stadium. I was curious if we could catch one of these knowing that the main events would be over by the time we got to Spain, but none of my research online revealed this event… I was going to play it by ear and maybe catch one of these training events in Jerez de la Frontera this weekend (I thought they were all on Sunday). So we felt pretty lucky to be able to catch one tonight. After a siesta we returned when the ticket office opened and got our tickets, not the cheap seats but not the most expensive either, 9€ each. We were pretty surprised to find out later these were almost front row seats!

At this point I guess I could mention that I caught a cold in Picassent (all those late nights?) and have been hopped up on whatever is in the antihistamines the pharmacist gave me plus my inhaler (oh yeah, asthma has been bad here)… so when the sangria we had with dinner tasted of anise and Kim gave up on it, leaving me to finish it (I could say I didn’t want to be rude, but it was tasty) I was feeling pretty good before the bullfight.

We stopped at a 2nd tapas bar on the way to grab a coke and we ran into friends of the family we had met at Emily and Ernesto’s wedding! Dan and Teresa from Sonoma were eating dinner with Teresa’s nephew, Carlos, who works for Vueling and lives in Seville. If that weren’t coincidence enough, they were also going to the bullfight and sitting in our same section!! They invited us to sit with them and treated us to some dessert sherry (more booze! which was super tasty by the way) so now we were feeling like the whole day was extremely lucky.

As I said I’ll save my thoughts on the fight for another post, but needless to say today was full of sensory overload.

Buenas Noches.
—

mobile mail sent via phone