Studying in Spain – Journal 16: Weekend at Sevilla – Friday

One of the best things about studying at Madrid is that it is relatively easy to travel to other cities in Spain than other cities. This is because Madrid happens to be right in Spain’s center, and is the center of transportation. Almost all main domestic train lines go through Madrid.

Sevilla is the fourth biggest city in Spain and the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia. There are three ways to get from Madrid to Sevilla: airplane, train and bus.

The flight would take about an hour and the price would depend on the Airline company. The train would take two and a half hours and the price would cost somewhere between 50€ to 75€, depending on when you buy the train ticket. Train ticket prices goes up as the time of departure gets closer. The bus trip would take about six hours and the price would cost somewhere between 20€ to 30€.

We didn’t want to take a plane because most Airlines within Europe has a strict rule about how much luggage you could carry and buying additional luggage space would cost a fortune. The bus trip would take too much time for a weekend trip and six hours on a bus would make us carsick. We ended up buying train tickets although it is probably the most expensive option of all three, but thinking about the hustle that we could have gone through with planes or buses, the money was well spent and definitely worth it.

Renfe is the national train company of Spain. Personally, I recommend buying the ticket online if you happen to have a cellphone that could receive text messages. It is quicker than waiting in a line at the train station and they send the ticket to you via email or text. The downside is that you would need a credit card to do so, and they would confirm the payment with a text message.

Friday

We started our trip on Friday morning, the train trip was smooth and comfortable. We got to Sevilla at around 13:00, and we met up with our host at the apartment. We got an apartment for our trip on Booking.com. as we wanted a place with kitchen access but we couldn’t find anything good with AirBnB at the time.

We took a walk around the apartment looking for something to eat. Luckily, we found a market called “Mercado de Arenal”. There are a wide selection of bars and stores there. There is also an interesting chocolate shop to look at. We stopped at a bar called “Veganitessen” for lunch.

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Veganitessen is a vegan bar and bakery with vegan food and pastries. The veggie burger that I had was very filling and tasty. I would have loved to try their cake but unfortunately I was to full to do so. They also offer “Menu del Dia”, and they offered soup and vegetable rolls that day. It was easily my favorite meal of the trip.

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After lunch, we took another walk to look around the city. The streets of Spain are very nice to look at for me. The buildings they have are colorful and the weather that day was very nice.

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After the walk, we went to the supermarket to buy some groceries that we needed for the next two days. The rest of the day was spent eating chips that we bought and making plans for the weekend.