Travel notes

It’s hard to say how many times we had already visited Rome, but without trying to show off, we can say that every time you visit Rome, you can discover something new in this city. Due to certain circumstances, the New year trip was in question, and the issue was resolved positively only a week before the new year. It was not possible to find any special offers these dates, and we decided to start from air tickets-if we find a decent price (it is New Year after all!), we will go there. So we found good tickets to Rome. Neither was it easy with the hotels during this season, but thanks to the aggregator website with the best deals HotelHunter we found a very good place to stay, although the booking was made last minute, just a couple of days in advance, during holiday season.   The city greeted us with very cool weather, how could I even doubt packing a winter down jacket. Taking it was a good idea, and I wore it the whole trip, even despite the fact that in this “southern region” t

 It was my friend’s suggestion to study in London: for a lawyer, improving qualifications is much more effective in the world capital of legal thought. And since I was going to study abroad anyway, using this opportunity to see London sounded like fun. After a fascinating process of collecting documents and obtaining the appropriate visa, we began to organize our stay – finding a place to stay. No matter how many times in my [tourist] life I have faced system problems when booking through Airbnb, this time I allowed a friend to convince me to book through this platform again. Previously, there were cases when, after a payment and an active correspondence with the owner of the property, we arrived at night only to find out that the apartment was suddenly closed for “repair” and had to wait until the morning in the pantry (because it was a public holiday and all hotels were fully booked). Or the keys have to be picked up on the other side of a town, and if you’re late and come after 9

We already had trips along the “dream route”, when traveling around the region, and arriving at a specific point, you decide on the spot whether to stay in a particular place. But this trip was remembered by a huge number of different impressions. After all, Andalusia is a region where different traditions have historically intertwined, leaving their traces in the modern representation of local cities. Andalusia consists of eight provinces: Almeria, Cadiz, Cordoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaen, Malaga and Seville. Even the name of this region comes from the Arabic “al-Andalus” (that’s how Muslims called the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages), which indicates the complicated historical path of Andalusia. According to Wikipedia, in the 8th century AD, Muslims conquered almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. Relatively peaceful conquest was achieved through agreements with the rulers of certain regions and cities, which in exchange for the recognition of themselves as lieges of the Caliph in

 “From Seville to Grenada, in the quiet twilight of nights …” professor Preobrazhensky from “Heart of a Dog” book liked to hum this Don Juan’s Serenade. Therefore, traveling Andalusia, we did not hesitate for a minute whether we should watch the edge, where “serenades are heard”. Seville is the capital of Andalusia and the Central point of our journey through the region. It is the fourth largest city in Spain, an industrial and commercial center, as well as a center of tourism. Of course, we visited it for the tourist attractions.   I must say that during our stay the weather was clearly atypical for this region: +16-18 and rain. Therefore, the inspection of the city had to be done with breaks to wait out the rains. And there was plenty of places to wait at! Our hotel was located near the Cathedral of Seville and the Giralda tower, so these attractions of the city were studied first. However, the rain didn’t let us go far (more like a tropical monsoon) and we had to quickly search