Our First Trip to Spain April 6-18, 2005

Seville and the Feria de abril April 11-18, 2005 Seville has a week of parties in the springtime, called Feria de abril. The stores are ready to supply the ladies with the proper costumes, and we saw many colorful dresses in the streets after the fair opened.

Cristián's good friends, Eloy and María José, invited us to go with them to the opening of the Feria. We met them in Cristián's neighborhood and stopped at a restaurant for "tapas" and drinks before heading to the fairgrounds. Tapas are small plates of food. They are a tradition of Seville, and the custom is to order a number of different ones for the table, and then everyone shares. It's a good way to have variety in one's diet.

Because so many people attend the opening of the Feria, parking there would have been impossible, so we walked. It was a beautiful night, and we walked along the river. As we got closer to the fairgrounds, there were more and more people. The sidewalks were full, and the traffic in the streets became gridlocked. It was good that we were with experienced Seville residents who knew the ropes!

As we arrived we could see the fans that arched over the main entrance to the fairgrounds. The official opening of the fair was set to be a midnight, when countless lights would be lit. While waiting for that magic moment, we entered and saw and heard that many parties were already in full swing in the casetas.

It was fun to experience the lighting of the lights. The streets within the ground were full of happy people, and we cheered as more and more lights began to glow. It was a lot like New Year's Eve at Times Square when the ball drops.

María José explained about the casetas. Casetas are party tents, and most of them are private. People belong to them and pay their dues all year so that they have the right to enter them during the Feria. The casetas vary in size and most are quite nice. She had guest cards so that we could enter the one she belonged to as a member of a professional arhitectural organization. We enjoyed a toast of manzanilla mixed with 7-Up.

There are a few casetas where the public is invited, but all of the others have guards to limit entry to members and their guests. All of the casetas have two parts, one with a dance floor and the other with a bar where drinks and food are served. After our drinks, we watched some people dancing Sevillanas. This is a very seductive dance like a flamenco.

These were some of the smaller casetas along the same street near the entry gate. The fairgrounds consisted of many streets of casetas, and as with a fair, there were also areas with carnival type games and rides. The Feria begain as a cattle fair in 1847. The cattle market was moved out in 1950, and in 1973 the feria took its current form as an artificial city in the Los Remedios district in an area measuring one and a half kilometres by 600 metres. The partying doesn't stop until the week is over.

We were expecting to see a lot more Flamenco dresses, but there were very few. Many people were quite dressed up, and others wore casual garb. We found this woman's outfit to be very reminiscent of a Chilean city lady dressed up for special historic events. Spanish customs carried through to Chile, no doubt. During the rest of the week in Seville, we often saw people dressed for the feria. Horse drawn carriages were very commonly used by party goers for this week throughout the city, rather than just by tourists in the historical areas.

		The ladies certainly choose colorful dresses!

As long as we are on the topic of clothes, we'll mention that we had to wash ours. There is a washing machine in Cristián's apartment, but the drying takes a bit more work.

There was an "at home activity" that we had really been looking forward to during our time in Seville. This was to hear Cristián play theorba for us. He played a number of pieces, and we could hear and appreciate the progress that he has made since his arrival in Seville.

		Towards the end of the week, we all went shopping for a computer for Cristián. It was fun to look at the various options in the portables that he would be able to take with him to the Conservatory. We bought the Toshiba, and later that day, Manuel started helping him learn how to use it.
We still did more sightseeing in Seville, so let's go to the next page to see the Cathedral and Giralda.