Within minutes someone pulled over and picked us up. He was listening to Spanish rock music and told us that a guy on his own would never be picked up but because Aiden was with me, we always would be. He dropped us by a roundabout by the motorway where we stood for an hour trying to get picked up. I was getting pretty moody probably because I hadn't eaten much, and I was tired and I didn't even think we were on the right road. I'll give Aiden a lot of credit for dealing with it so well, and he suggested we went to walk up the road to get some food. As we were crossing the road a car pulled up as they'd noticed our sign, and said they'd meet us in a petrol station so they could pick us up. There was an Irish Londoner with his Spanish girlfriend who were heading further South but wanted to stop in and see family on the way so they'd take us a bit further and then we could hitch the rest of the way. We spent the whole trip listening to an old Now! CD which they didn't know any of the songs from because apparently English music takes a while to get to Spain.
They dropped us off in a tiny little petrol station and said they'd be back in four hours so if we didn't get picked up they'd take us the rest of the way. We thought it'd be pretty likely we'd still be there as there were hardly any cars coming through, but we felt pretty relaxed so we weren't too bothered. It was nice to feel like we had a safety net in case we didn't get a lift.
After about 40 minutes a couple in a smart looking car pulled over and to Seville. They dropped us by the bus station so we went in to look if there was somewhere to put our bags. We made a trip to McDonald's so Aiden could use the wifi and I found a place that was like a cross between subway and McDonald's. We looked online but couldn't find anywhere to stay, so we left our bags in the lockers in the bus station. The couple who dropped us off had said that there was a festival for Easter on tonight in this city which was the most impressive over the whole of Easter. But it didn't start until 1am. So we wandered around the shopping centre burning time, but there wasn't much to do. We went to the cinema and watched Clash of the Titans in Spanish which was actually pretty good. Then we went out to look for the cathedral, and although it was only half ten, the streets were packed with people. There were chairs everywhere so people could sit down and watch later. We even found a shop which sold little figures, and I know it was supposed to be the religious thing, but to me and Aiden they just looked like little KKK figures. We saw a few people dressed like it so followed one down some side streets until he went into a church. At that point we heard some drums and followed the noise to a procession of guys with feathery hats marching along. At the end we joined in and matched to a square where it became too crowded to continue. We wandered and longer until we found the entrance to a church where people seemed to be gathering. We stood here until 2am, watching more and more of these hooded black figures going in through the doors. Eventually everyone went dead silent and as the doors opened, a nun started singing from a balcony above.
And that began the 40 minute procession of black hooded guys carrying floor length candles leaving the church. There were also some floats; gold with loads of candles and figures of Jesus and Mary. Throughout the whole thing everyone was completely silent. After the procession we got pretty lost trying to find our way to the bus station. All the routes we'd previously taken were blocked by the procession, so we had to take strange routes and ended up wandering around for hours. It was 4am by the time Aiden eventually led us back to McDonald's, and we crashed in the bus station for a few hours.
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