Week 12 in Sevilla

Entry 13

    Dublin

I spent the first half of the week in Dublin and unfortunately, I felt awful the whole time. Fortunately, I was staying with Tori at her apartment, and I had visited Ireland before, so it was basically the best set up to be sick in while traveling. Sunday was the travel day, and I once again was as lucky as I could be while traveling with a fever because my random seat allocation placed me in a row all on my own on a mostly full airplane. We went to the grocery store to buy a few cheap meals when we landed and then just had an early night at Tori's apartment because I was exhausted.

On Monday Isabel and I went into the city center and Isabel went to the library at Trinity College, which I had visited a few years prior, so I decided to wait at St. Stephen's Green Park nearby. I stopped at a bakery on the way there and bought a bag of chocolates to enjoy at the park. I have been trying to push myself to try new things and figured that you can't go wrong with chocolate, so I asked the employee about his favorites and tried those in addition to some classic dark chocolate truffles.

After the library/park, we went to the National Museum which was interesting but probably would have been more enjoyable if I hadn't been overheating and half asleep already. We grabbed some lunch to take back to Tori's place and had another early evening just hanging out there.

On Tuesday, Isabel went to the Cliffs of Moher which I had also been to before and I wasn’t feeling too well so I decided to opt out and have an easy day. Tori didn’t have class that day, so we hung out at her apartment, and I napped for a few hours. We walked around her campus a bit and then when Isabel got back, we met her in the city for dinner.

We went to the national art gallery on Wednesday morning which I quite enjoyed since the rest the day before had made me feel a bit better and the art had short summaries providing context which I always prefer in galleries. There was a nice park right next to the gallery that we walked through for a bit as well. We also tried to go see a famous church but ended up not being able to get in because they closed earlier than their website said that they would and had just stopped admitting people, unfortunately. We were only able to see the outside and it was raining so we decided to just head back as we had to leave that night anyway. I ate lunch, packed, spent a bit more time with my cousin, and then headed to the airport in the early evening.

We flew to the Birmingham airport that night, arrived around 11pm and stayed there until 6am, when we flew back to Sevilla and landed around 10am.

    Sevilla

When we had planned the trip, we wanted to have a few days in Sevilla to be able to enjoy Semana Santa but my being sick kind of derailed that for me. I had planned to see some of the processions at some point during the weekend but instead I more or less slept through the rest of Semana Santa, unfortunately. I suppose it's better to be sick on a weekend where I'm here than another where I'm traveling but it sucked, nonetheless. I did my laundry when I first got back, ate and showered, and then fell asleep watching a movie and basically stayed that way for the rest of the day, and weekend. I'm really sad that I missed everything but traveling with a fever and flu was miserable and my body just crashed when I got back.

I called my family a couple times over the weekend, between naps, to try to be involved in some of the Easter festivities (and see my dogs). My family kindly entertained me (with some bullying), and I even pestered my sister into setting the phone at the table during Easter lunch and my mom showed me the food, which was fun in theory, but also had me really craving mashed potatoes. My friends in Sevilla sent me pictures of the processions, so I got a small glimpse of the festivities and Isabel had an ice cream in my honor, so I was part of the holiday celebrations at home and in Sevilla, in spirit.

    Food

Not too much for food since I spent half of the week in bed. First, we have the chocolates in Dublin: the employee recommended the orange crunch: 6/10 and white chocolate espresso: 8/10. I don't usually like white chocolate or coffee flavored things, so I was surprised by how much I liked that truffle. The dark chocolate truffle: 10/10, of course, I love dark chocolate so much. The double chocolate was an 8/10, it wasn't bad, obviously, because it's chocolate but I always prefer dark chocolate. The final flavor was orange marzipan: 1/10, so gross! I did not finish this and I needed the good chocolate to cleanse the flavor; I forgot what marzipan was and saw the dark chocolate outside so I thought it would be good, but I was very wrong, and marzipan is very gross (I hope you enjoy this needlessly detailed breakdown, Mom).

Isabela and I had Mexican food for lunch where I bought a quesadilla: 7/10, nothing in Europe is spicy and I probably gave this extra points just because I was craving a quesadilla.

We went to a pizza restaurant for dinner on Tuesday night and each had our own pizzas: 9/10, it was good but once again I am craving spice. If you plan on studying abroad in Europe, maybe bring red chili flakes? The restaurant had a Nutella pizza which we got for a takeaway dessert: 8/10, it had cooled a bit on the travel back so it was a bit chewy, but it had Nutella and strawberries so couldn't really go wrong.