Seville, Spain

In the beginning, God created the world by means of divine incantation, and on the sixth day, he created man to be regents over his creations.  He granted his first man a partner and planted them in a garden east of Eden, which was to be paradise.  Apparently, and I've recently discovered, this paradise spoken of in the book of Genesis, is Al-andalus, or Andalusia in southern Spain.

What a fucking place this is, and what a fucking place it's capital Seville is.

For two months, It is only sunny and hot everyday.  The food is amazing.  The architecture is a curious melange I've never seen.  The people are pleasant.  The bars are great.  The prices are reasonable.  The guitar players are renowned.  The history is deliciously complex.  And the food--I know I mentioned the food, with hams, cheeses, peppers, calamari, potato and egg creations, and alcohol flowing from every corner of any room.

Vines and flowers hang from white washed building sides.  Vespa riders zip and whirl through an impossible grid of lanes and alleys.  Ornately decorated tiles adorn door frames and window boxes.  Glued bull fighting posters, advertising the next festival, line the many cobble stoned ways.  Seville is a city to get lost in, and enjoy every second of it.  I walk, snap endless pictures of scenes straight out of your mom's home and garden magazine, and at the precise moment of overheating, I sit, and drink beers under a mist machine within one of the endless cantinas in town.

Andalusia is all the more impressive, as over the last couple weeks, I've become harder and harder to please.  As I tire from traveling, churches don't seem to compare to those seen in Italy, architecture doesn't come close to that in Prague, and no city is as fun as Berlin.  Everything has become an endless cycle of comparison and relativity.  My impressions gained an armored resilience to new experience.

However, Al-Andalus, which translates literally to paradise in Arabic, easily surmounted my developed notions and fragile defenses.

READING:  For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway


LISTENING: