Sevilla 3-Getting to Priego

I spent my final day walking around as much as possible. I went back to the cathedral with Cecilia and Erin (the girls I’m living with). Going back to the cathedral meant I could explore it in depth and see parts I hadn’t seen the day before. After that we walked along the river a bit and went to the Plaza de España, a semi-circular shaped building with separate sections for each province. Each of the little sections had a tile map of the province on the ground and a vignette dedicated to the province. After hanging out down town we walked back to the hotel and got ready for our goodbye dinner.

The dinner was pretty terrible. It wound up being a cocktail hour rather than a sit-down dinner, which would have been okay if the food hadn’t been terrible. Most of the stuff was either meat or ham based and I really can’t stand eating either of those. Finally they brought around shot glasses of gazpacho and I think I downed six or seven of them. On my way to the bathroom I noticed people eating salads. The vegetarians had managed to get the restaurant to give them salads with caramelized onion and roasted asparagus on them. I got a hold of one of the coveted salads (people were seriously staring at me asking how they too could acquire a salad). It was actually pretty good – a million times better than the other food being served. The rest of the night was pretty blah…people I’m never going to see again and don’t really care to see again.

Friday morning we woke up and went to breakfast. Shuttle buses took us to the bus and train stations. Cecilia, Erin and I went to the bus station with a bunch of other girls. Finding our buses was a bit of a challenge, but once on board the trip to Córdoba wasn’t bad at all. When we got there, we only had to wait a half hour before our bus to Priego left. During that time, I ate a sandwich of atún con tomate (tuna with a light thin tomato sauce which beats tuna fish salad with mayo by a mile). I ate it on our bus which wound through the streets of Córdoba. It took two hours to reach Priego because we passed through a bunch of little towns and had to stop to let people off.

We got to Priego in the middle of siesta hours. In Andalucia everything shuts down between two and five. During that time, people have a large lunch and take a nap or relax before going back to their daily activities like work. Siesta time means nothing is open and there is nothing to do. We were basically stranded in an empty bus station (which was super tiny anyway) with no idea where our hotel was or how to get to it. After asking the men at the adjacent bar (some of whom were policemen from the adjacent police station), we called a taxi to take us to our hotel, which was way outside Priego. The first taxi we called was out of town. The pay phone ran out of money before we finished our call so he called another taxi. We didn’t know this and had called a third taxi. This meant that two taxi drivers showed up along with a man from Cecilia’s school (Vincente; he came to offer her an apartment) and two girls (one American, one Polish), also from Cecilia’s school, to welcome us. There was a lot of confusion for the first few minutes and by the time we got to our really far hotel, we were stressed and tired and angry to be so far away.

After a long complaint email to our program, we got back into a taxi and went back to Priego to start looking at apartments. Friday evening we saw two places. The first was Vincente’s apartment. It had three bedrooms, a bathroom in the process of being redone, a large kitchen with an oven (rare here) and a living room with a balcony. Each of the rooms faced the street and had a large window. The apartment was light and airy. The second apartment was closer to the bus station and our schools, but it was somewhat older and did not have an oven. The beds were much older as were the couches. This apartment had really nice views, but the living room was open to the hallway and the entrance meaning it would be difficult to heat in the winter. They don’t have heating here, you have to use a space heater. We didn’t really love the people who owned it. Vincente lives up the street from his apartment, meaning he can be there in 5 minutes, and it has an elevator, which is nice.

Friday night we wandered around with Christine (also from our program) trying to find a place to eat. We found a pizza place full of locals. It was down one of the narrow “streets” in Priego’s center. Many of the roads are way too narrow for some cars and only accessible by foot or moto. Cars try going down them…It’s pretty interesting to watch. Our pizza was amazing. It was nice to eat comfort food after such a stressful day. Christine and I split a fish pizza which was topped with shrimp, mussels, tuna and anchovies. This place had a lot of “different” pizzas which we appreciated. It was also super cheap. After dinner we returned to our hotel and went to sleep.

Saturday we woke, ate breakfast, and went back into Priego. We found the library and ran into Erin (another girl from NY here teaching) and Evan (from Indiana). Then we checked out some internet and phone prices and walked around town more. We called other apartments, but could only get in touch with one other person. We saw that apartment after wandering the really old parts of Priego. This apartment had the same number of rooms as the others, except it was in the middle of a block and did not have a lot of light entering it. The kitchen was REALLY old. Cabinets were falling off and it was just gross to be in. The owner, who lived in the campo/country side, had owned the place for 20 years, but had only rented it for one year of those years. This place was pretty dark and it would have cost a lot to heat it in the winter. It had the best location, but it just wasn’t worth trying to live with awful saggy couches and cabinets that were falling apart in a kitchen too gross to use.

We wandered town figuring out where we should live and finally decided on Vincente’s place. We called him and he said we could move in Monday. We walked to an old fountain to rest and then went and saw where Erin, Aleks (the Polish girl) and Jessica live. They live in a two-story condo/house the same distance from the center as we live. Their place was cute, but will probably be harder to heat than ours. We then went grocery shopping to get stuff for Sunday, when everything is completely closed. For dinner, we met up with Erin, Aleks, Evan and Christine and had shawarma! I knew there would be middle eastern food in Andalucia, but to have kebabs and shawarma in Priego was quite the discovery. There is also Chinese food here…I’m somewhat skeptical of it though…

We ate our meals in a plaza before heading back to our hotel.

Sunday afternoon Cecilia and I laid by the pool for a little while before getting Erin and walking to a neighboring village about 3-4 km down the road. The locals gave us weird looks for walking around in gym shorts and sneakers, but it was cute to see this little town. I’m pretty sure the kids there get bused to Priego to go to school because there were no schools and few shops/restaurants. The houses were white and the roads narrow, steep and curvy. We got back to the hotel and ate the food we had purchased at the grocery store on Saturday. The rest of Sunday was spent showering, packing and preparing to start work Monday morning.