Aimée's Expat Adventures: Day 38

My last early morning in Rome…well, my last morning in Rome, period! SO CRAZY.

I got up to finish packing, which didn’t take too long. Katie and I were some of the first people downstairs, but it was nice not having to deal with elevator drama.

St. John’s bused us to the airport. Checking in for the flight was a little confusing, as we weren’t really given any instructions by Domenico, but all they really needed was our passports to pull up our flight information. My suitcase was a kilo overweight, but the lady didn’t say anything. I get away with two pounds over all the time, so I guess this was just another one of those times!

We didn’t have to wait too long to board the plane. We did manage to get in one last Italian breakfast, though (which was totally subpar. Shameful). The boarding process itself turned out to be……….something. For one, it was raining. So. As we started descending on the jetway, I thought we were just going to be boarding the plane from the ground, which was bad enough. But no. We had to get in a shuttle bus to drive over to where we had to board the plane from the ground. In the rain. As soon as I saw our plane was parked next to a Ryanair plane, I knew we were in for it.

The plane itself was really no different than, say, a standard United Airlines jet, and the flight was only about two and a half hours, but MAN was there some bad turbulence. Amazingly, though, I did not get sick, or even feel sick. Yay for me!

It was cold and rainy in Rome that morning, but it sure was hot and sunny when we landed in Seville, even at 5 pm. It’s gorgeous, though. Super dry, and just really perfect.

We got picked up at the airport by Raúl, who I guess is like our new Domenico. Or maybe technically our new Cristina…who knows. His English is really good, so that’s nice.

The bus ride took about twenty minutes, and then we were at our new home: Inturjoven Hostel. It’s actually really nice! Each room has a balcony, gets cleaned every day, and has nice furniture. We had no problems getting settled. The only weird thing that happened was that our inner door handle fell off as we went down to dinner. The door still worked, though, so we waited until morning to report it.

So in the hostel, dinner is provided in the cafeteria every Monday-Thursday, and breakfast is provided every Monday-Friday, which is nice. Our first dinner experience there was okay; I had fish sticks, fried broccoli, fries (we’re hoping it’s not going to be fried food every night), and an amazingly sweet and delicious green apple.

After dinner, Katie, Gina, and I went out in the hopes of getting sangria. Two of the SJU Seville semester told us about a cute place to go to just down the street, so we went that way. It was called Mercado Provenzal, and we were not disappointed. We ordered sangria, and got what we thought was some sort of fake sangria (red wine and citrus soda), but later learned what that really is (will be mentioned in the next post). Regardless, it was absolutely delicious. We had two glasses each.

We made our way back up to the hostel and then kept going to reach the big park just north of us. We walked through it some, and eventually arrived at Plaza de España, aka the coolest place ever. I really can’t even describe it. I’ll let the pictures do the talking! Also, I plan on coming back to take daytime photos, too.