At the end of the week the weather started getting warm and beautiful! On Thursday night some of us went to the river for "botellón"which is when everyone goes to the river or plazas to drink wine and socialize. It was around sunset and the banks of the river were filled with people, sitting in the grass having a good time. We spent the next day at the Maria Luisa park, starting to plan a trip to northern Spain to go hiking in the Picos de Europa (!!!).
Saturday I went with some friends to Itálica, an ancient Roman city located right outside of Sevilla. It was built for the wounded soldiers at the Battle of Illipa during the Second Punic War and is the birthplace of the Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Built in 206 BC the ruins are now some of the best-preserved Roman ruins outside of Rome. The layout of the ancient city is still intact and as you walk the "streets" you can see the bases of buildings, pillars, mosaic floors, statues, and aqueducts. Most impressive was the amphitheater that was able to sit 25,000 people, one of the largest in the Roman world. As you walked into the amphitheater it looked like some futuristic war zone, with giant boulders tossed to the sides of the entry path. Apparently when Sevilla was later being built, they removed a lot of stone from the amphitheater and used it for building. You can still walk through the tunnels underneath the seats of the amphitheater and see the dens where lions were kept before gladiator fightings.
Today we went to Matlascañas, the closest beach to Sevilla, about an hour and a half south. Everything was going wrong at the beginning of the trip. It was cold and rainy when we woke up (unusual for Sevilla), I fell off my bike on the way to the bus station and hurt my shoulder, and the bus we were supposed to get on was full. Everyone was in good spirits despite the unlucky start and we got on a bus to a different town close to the one we were trying to get to. It was a pueblo bus, and it stopped at all of the small pueblos between Sevilla and the coast. It turned out to be a cool way to see the smaller towns in the area instead of the bus hopping straight on the highway. Once we got to the end of that bus line that we had about an hour until the next bus came to take us to the beach. We wandered around the pueblo a little bit and bought some more food for our picnic. The fog burned off and it turned out to be a beautiful day. We got to the beach and ate lots of good food on our blankets, told stories, and relaxed in the sand. It was a really fun day, and although my shoulder still feels messed up, it was one of the best days I've had so far in Spain.
