Second day in Sevilla

This morning we slept in and had a lazy morning. I walked a few blocks to the Starbucks to get a Venti coffee for myself, fresh squeezed orange juice for Sarah, and a couple blueberry muffins. It was a beautiful day in Sevilla but also our hottest of the trip with highs in the mid 80's. Sarah spent most of her morning battling the People magazine app on the IPad. She desperately wants a couple issues for the flight home but has been experiencing major downloading issues.
Texas Tech has a new Sevilla campus they moved to the semester after Sarah studied here. When she was here they occupied a building at Pablo de Olivade University but are now on the second story of a building you would never guess was a school. It is a complete different experience for the students that study here now because it is not on a college campus. We had trouble finding it and failed to write down the address before we left the hotel. We were going by a dot we jotted down on the map and I had recalled the address number 44. It was about a 15 minute walk and we knew we were close but couldn't find it. So we went into a Farmacia and asked in Spanish where the American University was. The pharmacist who spoke no English pointed us across the street to an unmarked door and said "Ahh, Douglas Ingles" who is the coordinator of the Sevilla campus. We pressed the button by the door and were buzzed in. As we walked up the stairs Sarah immediately recognized the woman that greeted us at the top, Sarah Pink. She was a faculty member while Sarah studied here in 2005 and recalled Sarah's name, Sarah.... Bienek? she asked. They were preparing for 200 students to come in this afternoon for the summer program and they were very busy. She gave us a tour of the facilities and they reminisced of the group of just 30 that was here back in 2005.
From there we walked to the apartment Sarah lived in even though we had just learned that her 'house mom', Pica, no longer lives there. Just down the street is a pizza restaurant Sarah used to go to, Sloppy Joe's. They have renovated it since she used to go there but the pizza was the same. It was much more like the pizza we are used to in the states with thicker crust, not the thin pizza we ate in Italy. It really filled us up.
I realized yesterday while looking through my bag that I was going to be one pair of skivvies short. I tried to reason with Sarah that I could re-wear a lightly used pair but she shut down that idea immediately. So after lunch we walked to El Corte Ingles, a Spanish department store, where I bought a single pair. Sevilla lacks the must see sights that the other cities we've been in have but there are a few. One of them is Plaza de Espana. We took a short cab ride from the store to Plaza de Espana which is a large crescent shaped plaza with a fountain in the center. The perimeter is lined with a manmade canal with row boats and it is a nice place to spend some time and take some nice pictures. Then we walked back to the hotel and along the way Sarah showed me some HUGE trees that have been here since the days of Columbus. He left from Sevilla in 1492 when he set sail to discover America.
We spent a couple hours in the room relaxing and then downstairs for tea time and some blog writing. Relaxing by the river with a drink is perhaps Sarah's (and mine) favorite pastime in Sevilla, so that's exactly what we did next. Then we set out for a portion of town we had not been to. It made Sevilla no longer seem like such a small city to me. This portion of town had a ton of shopping, nightlife, and the small streets were crowded with people. This area seemed like a smaller version of Madrid and Barcelona.
Now that we've been in Spain for a week we've tired of tapas and fried food. We asked our hotel concierge if there was any good Italian food in the area. He pointed across the street to a place that he said was one of the best in Sevilla. I had spaghetti in an egg sauce with shrimp and bacon while Sarah ordered one of her favorite pizzas that we had while in Venice, ricotta and spinach. It was very good but just not the same as the one in Italy.
While Sarah was studying here they used to go to a place called La Carpinteria. It is a bar that also has a flamenco dancing show. The scene has changed significantly since she was here. She remembers it being all Spaniards but tonight it was all tourists, some of which were rowdy and quite annoying. We arrived just before 11:00pm and ordered a liter of Sangria. Right at 11:00 the flamenco show started. It consisted of one man playing the guitar and singing, one man clapping, and one flamenco dancer. She danced vigorously and the show only lasted 20 minutes, any longer and she would have completely sweated through her dress. The show was short but we didn't mind because we were ready to get to bed as tomorrow is our final day.
Luego.