My birthday in Spain!

As all of you know, (because so many of you actually read my blog) I finally turned 21 this past Saturday! Although I thought turning of age in a country where I already am of age would be anticlimactic, it was definitely one of the best nights in Sevilla yet. I celebrated Friday night, since at midnight was my actual birthday. A lot of my friends were unfortunately out of town this weekend, but I went with Franny to Plaza Alfalfa (where there is a big strip of little bars) to meet up with everyone else that I knew still in town. We actually rode the Sevici (public bike service in Sevilla) bikes that we had been trying to sign up for the whole week before! It finally worked and I was so excited. So anyway, rode our bikes into the center, and went to the first bar and got mojitos… not just any mojito though… the biggest one I have ever seen! Ha. Everyone I was with sang “feliz cumpleaños” at midnight. We went to a couple other bars down the street and then decided that it was time to go to the discoteca, Budda, to dance. It was so funny, fun and crazy… just like a birthday should be. It ended up being a late night and on the actual day of my birthday, I actually slept for most of it ha. Once I finally woke up, I went for a nice little bike ride with Franny (yes… we pretty much do everything together, but I swear I have other friends). Ha. After that we went to dinner to this really cool Italian restaurant we had found earlier last week. Getting there, we took a wrong turn (it was my fault) and unexpectedly ran into this really serious catholic procession. There were like 15 men carrying a huge crucifix on their shoulders, a guy with a megaphone praying, a fairly large crowd of people (especially for those tiny streets) and so much smoke from incense I could barely see. I’m not quite sure what the occasion was, but interesting to say the least. So we finally got to the restaurant (called Maccheroni) and eventually got seated. The waiter gave us a Spanish menu and an English menu just in case. The translations were quite entertaining. My personal favorite was one of the toppings on the pizza Franny wanted to order: rocket. We had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but decided to order it and find out. The waiter finally brought out our food, and Franny’s pizza literally was topped with a mountain of salad… not what we expected. That’s what “rocket” was. We were about to tell them that they hadn’t translated it correctly (arugula) but then decided it was just too funny. After dinner I just went home, since it was raining, and I knew I had to wake up early the next day for a little excursion to Córdoba. I had such an amazing and enjoyable birthday… thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!
The new 21 year old,
Chrisy