Sevilla

Me in my pack, looking....well you can use your imagination.

Sevilla is an amazing city. It was a beautiful day yesterday (Saturday) and we enjoyed walking around in the cool sunshine. Although I have been here before, the perspective is incredibly different. Coming here in high school was great but I doubt I got much out of it. Seeing the city, and other cities we have been to in the past few days in the eyes of a designer or architect has greatly increased my understanding of the meaning and depth of Spanish culture and history.

One challenge set forth by my professors is to include a narrative or story of the history of New Castle into my design that I will soon be developing. Once I started to look for the narrative, it is all I see. The Spaniards have carved, molded all of these details that tells the story of the transformation of the building and country throughout centuries. Its incredibly inspiring to follow suit and include the story of New Castle in my design in something more than a copper statue or plaque.

My favorite place that we visited today was the Plaza de Espana. This place has amazing architecture and includes an artistic story of the major cities in the country. The sunny day made it look even better. This is the setting of Princess Amidalla (sp?) in one of the newer Star Wars Episodes, so its famous in America too!


Narrative for one city. Doubles as a seating area which is great for bathing in the sun and sketching


This view was a popular one for my fellow sketchers. I chose a different route, looking for inspiration from different outlets


Sorry about the blurriness, at the liberty of my camera and the battery was about to die. A Spanish gentleman saw me doing this sketch as asked to take a picture of me holding it for him. Then Les, my professor proceeded to take a picture of this man taking my picture...classic Les.


After half an hour of sitting there looking for inspiration, I forced myself to draw the building that I had been avoiding, but was able to use the water as a mask over half of it...brilliant I know.


Along the way of getting lost to find the plaza again after we were let loose for the day, we found an amazing playground that had some very fun equipment that could be quite dangerous for children but very entertaining to young professionals like ourselves.


These things spun incredibly fast, well at least it seemed that way to me. There was a zip line as well nearby.

After being caught making sandwiches a breakfast the next morning, we left to go to the train station where the train we were taking was supposed to leave at 12. 17 of the 42 were able to get on the train because of lack of seats while the rest of us waited for our train at 4:15. Four hours in a train station that was easily 40 degrees. We could see our breath as we attempted to do homework with layers and layers of clothes, gloves and hats. We did have a choice of going out and seeing more of the city, if you like to get soaking wet and even colder. One guy changed his complete outfit with dry clothes because he was soaked through. So we suffered through the day trying to stay warm and got to Granada safe and sound this evening and I ate an AMAZING and kind of expensive dinner, but I have been eating quite cheap for the past few days, only paying for a cheap dinner and stealing lunch from my hotels. So I decided I wanted a nice meal...steak it is! So delicious and totally worth it.

Tomorrow we tour Granada and we are on to Barcelona the next morning. We are all nervous for when the time comes that none of us know how to speak the language or understand any of the words. Soon we be seeing symbols instead of western letters, oh what an adventure that will be...I hope there are pictures next to the names! Hasta Luego!