When we arrived into Sevilla yesterday I started doing my research on the things to see and do in this city. I quickly found out that one of the main attractions called the Alcazar was a filming location for Dorne in Game of Thrones. I think I overestimated my ability to handle the heat and got ahead of myself to book tickets to visit this royal palace knowing that the only available time was at the peak temp of the day.

My friend Luke, who I’m meeting with tomorrow, was in Dubrovnik Croatia last week visiting the area that inspired King’s Landing so I was excited to match his Game of Thrones visit with my own.

We set out for the morning doing some light shopping and checking out the area, sort of killing time until our 5pm reservation time for the Alcazar. There was a street market near the Cathedral of Seville where Joanna took her time looking at some of the shops. I found a shady spot to sit and people watch. I noticed these women were holding small twigs of rosemary and other plants and trying to hand them out to touristy looking women. I looked it up on google and this was a common scam that older “Gitano” women perform where they hand you some rosemary, do some fortune telling, then demand €5 to €20 for their services.

I wasn’t familiar with this term Gitano and looked it up:

Though etymologically the term gitano originally meant “Egyptian”, the use itself of the Old Spanish word meaning “Egyptian” (egiptano) to refer to Romanis in Spain developed in the same way that the English word “Gypsy” also evolved from the English adjective “Egyptian” to refer to Romanis in Britain.

During my 10-15 minutes sitting there I watched as they came up to unsuspecting women, did their thing, and then pointed at the woman’s purse for payment. Most people didn’t accept the branch, others stood there politely, then upon realizing what would happen would hand it back, 2 women offered €1 but were declined because it wasn’t enough, they were able to get full payment from one lady though. I almost wanted to give them €5 because I was pretty entertained guessing who would be a worthy mark for them.

I started getting really hot and we decided to get out of the sun and take a break back to the airbnb. I called a cab and saw on the dashboard thermometer that it was 98f outside. I ended up taking a several hour long nap and upon waking up we made the decision to skip the Alcazar since it was well over 100f outside. Didn’t want to risk heat exhaustion and ruining the rest of the trip over €13.

We left the apartment once it cooled down to the 80s and decided to head towards La Plaza de España. We walked past a brightly lit park with a crowd of people around 10pm which tuned out to be the Seville Festival of Nations. I was curious how the US was represented and gladly paid the €2 for entry to find out.

This festival reminded me of the International Bazaar at the MN state fair. We walked by a lot of different booths representing countries like Taiwan, South Africa, Venezuela, Greece, Germany, etc. The Spain booth was a result of home country bias so they had the nicest set up. Naturally, the US booth was one of the largest. The beers they were offering which represented the country were Duff Beer, Budweiser, and Miller lite. You could order hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets, and something called Obama ribs? Go ‘Merica I guess?

This was a really fun event just seeing how another country views my home country as well as seeing such a vibrant night life in Seville. The plaza was right across the street and I had a decision to go right or left after we approached the plaza. I made the wrong choice and we walked all the way around the back of it. Dumb…

I am glad that we ended up coming at night though. It was much cooler and had almost no one around so we were able to take some pictures without the crowd.

Edit

So it was brought to my attention after I originally posted this that Star Wars Episode 2 was filmed at this location. I’ll take Star Wars over Game of Thrones any day 🙂