Sevilla

We woke up bright and early for our first full day in Sevilla! A lot of Emory students have studied abroad in Spain, and a lot of our friends have said that Sevilla was one of their favorite cities, so we were all excited to see what the city had to offer.

The morning started out at the Plaza de America. The plaza had beautiful buildings and fragrant flowers surrounding the area but, I think everyone's favorite (or least favorite) attraction was the crazy amount of birds. We were unaware of how, more or less, friendly these birds were. All I wanted to do was throw seeds at the birds, but little did I know these birds weren't afraid to perch on the people who were holding seeds. These birds had us all laughing and screaming because as I grabbed a handful of seeds and began to toss them, the birds flew towards me and ate the seeds right out of my hands. As you can see below, I really enjoyed my time with the birds.

From the Plaza de America, we walked through some gardens to get to the Plaza de España, which was a huge palace that stretched for what felt like miles. The architecture was absolutely stunning and our tour guide let us explore the plaza for a while.

No one wanted to leave the plaza, but after our tour guide begged us to get back on the bus, we finally made our way to the next destination.

Our next stop was to see the main Cathedral in the heart of Sevilla. There were a lot of monuments and picturesque streets along the way, so we wandered through many alleyways to get there.

When we made it to the city center and the cathedral, we had some free time to explore as well as eat lunch.

For lunch, we walked down the main road and found a tapas restaurant. The restaurant had decorated the walls with music related items, so it only felt right to have lunch there. I might have spent more time taking photos of my food than eating it because the food was amazing. Below there are some photos of the tapas my roommate Gracy ordered, consisting of salmon tartar, Iberian meats, and an avocado stuffed with seafood. I ordered a seafood paella which was gone before you could say "delicious."

After lunch we returned to our hotel for some downtime and to get ready for our concert in the evening. A lot of students went to the rooftop pool and had a relaxing break before our concert. As for me, being the resident grandma of the group, I napped for my break! (I call myself the grandma being that I am one of the older students in the group that values sleep and treats all the younger students in a motherly way. No disrespect to all the grandmas out there.)

We left later in the afternoon to walk to the cathedral in which we were to sing our concert.

The space was smaller than the other places we had sung in, but the acoustics were beautiful.  Although we loved the huge cathedral in Jaén, I could tell we all really liked being in a small, intimate space as well. The video is of us singing the Busto Ave Maria during rehearsal taken by Leila!

After rehearsal we had some free time, so we walked to the gelato shop we passed earlier. The young woman working was so sweet and let us practice our Spanish as she practiced her English. Now that I'm writing this, it probably wasn't the best idea to eat gelato before singing a concert... but it was still a great concert! The Emory Spanish Study Abroad program started today so there were many Emory Students who came to our concert tonight, which was a fun surprise!

After the concert, the 3 priests of the church said that in the 20 years of this tour company coming in and arranging for different choirs to sing in the church, we were the best group they've ever had! Everyone was in a great mood after that comment. 

A lot of us are sad about leaving Spain for Portugal because we have a lot of amazing Spanish speakers that have been helping the groups out when we're out in the city on our own. Guess how many people speak Portuguese in the choir? I'll give you a hint: none. Nonetheless we're all excited to explore a new city and new country tomorrow! 

I just wanted to say thank you for following our tour blog!! Hope you're enjoying the posts :) Stay tuned for tomorrow's post about Faro, Portugal!

-Jenny Jiang

Jenny Jiang is a graduate from the Class of 2017 who majored in Film Studies.