Stories of Spain 2 at 14:25

Before we begin, a picture of the jam session from the last post:

The most important thing about life in Spain that I didn't listen to was that everything is later.
Lunch is late. Dinner is even later. I'd generally say everything is about two hours later than typical life in America, and I could have factored that into the jetlag thing. In Cordoba the past two days I've woken up at seven, showered and dressed by 7:30 and still was up before the sun. Forget about breakfast at that time, unless you're fine with capsule coffee and yesterday's sweet pastries. (Turns out, I was.) Lunch places don't even open for business until 13:30 (1:30 PM), and dinner typically starts at 20:00 (8 PM). I hadn't really considered this time thing when I read about it, because they said the same thing about the Dutch when I went to Amsterdam, and my schedule transferred pretty typically. They're actually quite serious about it here!
Anyway, to continue with a more chronological narration:

I took a taxi from Santa Justa estacion to my hotel, since it was 5 km or so away from the city center of Sevilla and I couldn't look up the bus lines before I got there. I checked into my hotel at 20:30, at which time the sun was still out and there were a lot of kids (maybe a hundred) in the plaza outside my hotel, playing football and running around and all sorts of kid things. I showered immediately and sent some emails to tell people I was still alive, and went down to the hotel restaurant because I was starving. Only the bar was open, however (this restaurant didn't follow the rest of Spain time), and there were a few men sitting at the counter watching the football game. I decided to be adventures and point at something random on the menu that was decently priced. Huevos Rotos con Salteado de Gulas it is! I recognized none of the words on the menu besides "tiramisu" anyway, and ignored everything in that section. What showed up was super interesting.

Huevos = egg. Rotos = broken. So huevos rotos means broken egg, or refers to everything but hardboiled eggs (am I right, Spanish-speakers?). True to its name the dish had two sunnyside eggs that were well-done. Underneath that were a bunch of freshly fried chips, so fresh from the pan that they were still soaked in oil to the point that it would collect and drip as I transferred it to my mouth. But that's not what Salteado de Gulas was. That referred to the layer of white and gray worm-looking things between the eggs and the soggy chips. I suspected they were eels or seafood or something, because it was way too wobbly and uniformly thin to be strips of pork or any other meat. I don't eat seafood, by the way, I'm allergic to at least shellfish and aversive to everything else. I ate one but it was indistinguishably salty from the eggs and chips, and I started to feel nauseated so I didn't eat anymore. So for 6 euros, my first meal in Spain was essentially two eggs, a piece of gulas and some chips until I got sick of the grease. I found out the next morning that gulas = baby eels. Sigh.

I was exhausted but I took a walk around, just to explore. At other bars down my block there were a lot more people watching the game, sitting around and drinking. Other than that it was really quiet. I went back to my room and passed out.