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Saturday, November 16, 2013

Itálica: A Quick Hop to the Roman Ruins of Santipone

 
 
Feast your eyes upon the picture above and stew in your own jealousy, because I went exploring and you did not. Well, maybe you did, but I can assure you that it was not as much fun as my exploration.
 
A couple of my friends and I decided that Fridays were meant for adventures, so we decided to take a quick 20 minute bus ride over to Itálica, the Roman city that currently resides in present day Santiponce, Spain. Citing the lovely Wikipedia, the city was built in 206 BC by the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus in order to settle Roman soldiers wounded in the Battle of Ilipa. Now, ruins of what was the city reside fairly close to where I'm currently living in Sevilla, so I had to check out them out for myself.
 
Casual Itálica selfie.
 
After a small bus mix-up and what turned out to be a 30 minute bus ride later, we hopped off to realize we were starving. We walked up and down the street that paralleled the ruins and almost everything was way out of normal price range (seriously, who wants to pay 20 euros for a tapa? Where's your humanity people??). After almost giving up hope and touring the ruins without food, we stumbled upon a little restaurant with affordable prices and a couple of vegetarian-friendly choices (score). Downfall? The hundreds of flies surrounding this restaurant. But hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, so we decided to eat there anyways. I hate flies so much. They annoyed me throughout the entire meal. But, my bocadillo de tortilla de patatas was very good and very large, so I really didn't need the patatas fritas that it came with. Womp.
 
Finally, it was time to head over to the ruins. After a small 1.50 euro entry fee, we realized that we were pretty much the only people touring there that day. More room for me to romp around. Only I couldn't, because a lot of the area was unfortunately blocked off due to safety hazards with falling rocks, etc. You know what Drake says? YOLO. I almost hopped the fence and snuck into the forbidden section, but then I realized that I'm only 20 and have so much more to live for, and played by the rules. 
 
The first part that we toured was the amphitheater, and to me that was the coolest part because there was the most to see because a lot of it was still in tact. Here are a couple of pictures of my friend Alex and I in one of the archways:
 

 
 After the amphitheater, we wandered over to a place which was once the holy place for them. They had these magnificent floors that were made with extremely small tiles. Masterpieces! I was almost in awe that they knew all of the planets back in the year 206 B.C... very smart people indeed. Check out one of the magnificent floors:
 
 
We did also manage to break a few rules, because after we were done looking at the holy place, we stumbled across a tractor and of course we just had to get on it. And yes, you heard me right, a tractor. Casually in the middle of the Roman ruins. Welcome to Spain.
 
 

 
Overall, it was an awesome day, but I was kind of disappointed with the ruins because they were, well, really ruined. Some of the sites were so run down they appeared more like construction sites than actual city ruins. Nonetheless, it was a fantastic Friday experience, and I can't wait for my next spontaneous adventure.
 
Until next time,

Leah

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