Seville, where the bulls are outstanding in their fields

Our last day in Seville, we woke up, checked out and left our suitcases and the hostel and headed to breakfast. We got some crepes, of course, and drank several bottles of water.

Our cafe had a papermache bulls head.











We then headed across the river to the Bullfighting ring and museum.

Here's the side of the ring.

There's Obama the Bullfighter again

For some reason, I didn't realize that the bull was killed at the end of the fight.

In the history of the Seville Bullring, only 3 people have been killed in 250 years. One person was killed in the 1920's and two people were killed in the 1930's.

Here's the ring!

There's Adrienne and the ring

And me and the ring

The President of the Bullring awards the matador depending on his performance. If he was good, he gets one ear. If he was very good, he gets two ears. If he's the best bullfighter, he gets both ears and the tail. A tail hasn't been given since 1971.

The matadors are the best of the fighters, but there are other people involved in the bullfight. There are 2 people that give the first jabs to the bull. They are usually smaller.

Horses are used in the larger bullfights, but they are protected with some sort of leather armor and do not get killed. The same horses are used in each bullfight.






They also had a game, kind of similar to jousting, where they stabbed the heads off of fake people with poles. I am not sure what that was about. I couldn't hear the guide at that moment.

There they are. Adrienne looks happy.

Almost better but Allison's not looking...

And there you go.

The museum was interesting.

This was on the walls of the arena.

There's a bullfighter statue.

There's a painting of a bullfight. Clearly the horses were not protected there.

There is a bull who is outstanding in his field.

And there are more bulls outstanding in their fields.




Apparently the bulls are raised on a farm that only grows bulls used for fighting. According to the guide, they live a nice happy life in their fields and near a river until it's time to die in a fight. The smaller, younger bulls are used in the off season and with matadors who are not yet completely professional. The larger bulls are used during the main bullfights with the professional and the best matadors.

There are the bulls hanging out in their fields before dying in a bullfight.

One of the horses.

A dead bull.

Two more dead bulls.

A matador outfit.

The lances used for jabbing the bull.

A painting of the bull escaping and running at the people and causing mayhem.

A matador with a funny grape hat.

A miniature person's matador outfit.

Another dead bull

This is the chapel that the bullfighters pray in before each fight, just in case they die.

There's a door.

We left the museum and headed to the Naval Museum nearby.

We took pictures with the bullfighter statue first, of course.

Band pic!

The ring from across the street.

The walk to the Naval museum, which took us much longer because it was so freakin hot.

That building behind them is the Naval Museum

The Naval museum

There is alarmingly flattened shark.

There's a turtle with some sort of razor sword shark thing below him.

The view from the museum.

The front of a ship

A map.

We went to the top of the museum for about 3 seconds then ran back downstairs to the air conditioning.

Once leaving the museum, we sat along the river and looked at the city for a bit (in the shade of course). Then we made it about 5 feet more over to a cafe, where we got coffee and a snack. Then we attempted to find the Archives museum but couldn't. It seemed to be in a vortex. We did find the flamenco museum though and learned about the 7 different types of Flamenco dancing and watched videos and looked at pictures of famous flamenco dancers. Unfortunately, something happened to my camera card and I lost 100 pictures, which were of the flamenco museum and the first church I went to in Geneva, which is irritating. At least I didn't lose all of them! We then headed to our hostel, where we had told the owner we would be to grab our bags at 4.

He wasn't there. This couple wouldn't let us in and rapidly closed the door behind them.

So we had to use Allison's emergency phone to call and say "what the heck? We said we were coming at 4!" and the owner said, "I'll be there in 40 minutes!" Luckily, 4 was the "Lauren is worries we'll be late to the airport, so we have to get to the hostel early to get our bags" time and we still made it to our flight after much fuming. There was definitely more than one time that it paid off for me to be a worrier. We took a taxi to the airport, which we hadn't planned on doing.

We then flew to Geneva!

The last two pictures are of my tanned face, despite copious amounts of sunscreen. Apparently, only my nose decided to tan for a while with a sunglasses tan line. Then, my face rapidly tanned and I had a horrific hairline tan. Grant later referred to me as "two-face" repeatedly and everything he said to me for practically an entire day was said in Batman's voice. Sigh.