Semana Santa

We returned to Sevilla just in time to celebrate Semana Santa, a week-long celebration for the city. I did not realize the extent of this until I returned back and it took me about an hour to get to my apartment instead of 30 min! When I say there were people in the streets and it was crowded--I mean ALL OF SEVILLA was in the streets. Everyone was dressed to the nines, drinking and eating in the streets, spending all day in the streets, etc. It's really hard to explain if you don't see it yourself. A bunch of churchs have two massive pasos (floats)--the first one of Jesus before/during the crucifixion and the second of Mary. They're ornate and gorgeous, and carried by these people who have practived for months, Costaleros. There are also people dressed in what we would recognize as KKK outfits. The ones with points, capirotes, are Nazarenos and they carry large candles, cirios. Penitentes are the people without the points and carry crosses. Some people choose to go barefoot or with shoes. There's a lot of music--horns and drums--but then there are also silent cofradios (processions), which are really impressive. Streets were shut down--EVERYTHING is shut down--except restaurants of course, which are all selling bocadillos (sandwiches) and cans of beer. One night though, La Madruga (the dawn), is an ALL night celebration in which people march ALL night long with the pasos. All of the pasos go from their church to La Catedral and back to their church. Plenty of people stayed up all night to partake in this. It's just as much a cultural event as religious, but being an outsider, it kind of exacerbates the feeling of foreigness since there's no deeper significance to you. It was really cool to see everything, but as an outsider, it loses it's appeal quite quickly to be honest.

After walking around for a day(or really trying to walk around since it was kind of impossible), I wanted some peace and quiet so a couple of girls and I took a bus to Jerez de la Frontera (Sherry by border-literally). The Alcazar (palace) was closed but we went on a wine tour and tried some Tio Pepe in the end, which I have to say was really not pleasing at all. It was fun though! Jerez was just what we needed after the chaos of Sevilla! Today's Easter and there are still some processions going on in the city. I just can't wait to have Sevilla back to normal!