My Faith in Humanity (Especially Spaniards) is Renewed!

So I have been kind of crabby the last couple days in Sevilla because of what I percieved as a negative attitude about and general rudeness towards tourists in Andalucia, particularly Grandad and Sevilla. I know that they probably get tired of tourists, but it´s low season and they also make a lot of money off of us, and my family tries to have a small tourism ´footprint´if you will. We try to speak spanish in restaurants, ask questions in spanish, etc. Once in a while we need something repeated but usually not more than once and we haven´t been asking everyone we meet ´habla engles?´we only try to speak english at the tourist bureau, etc.

But my arrival in Bilbao has renewed my faith in humanity. The woman who sat next to me on the plane saw me looking at the bus schedule and showed me where the stop was at the airport. Then she and another stranger decided what the best way for me to get to my hotel was (they asked where I was going) and she had me follow her on the bus and then the metro to a stop that was less than 3 blocks from the hotel. She was getting ready to walk me to the hotel but I thanked her and told her I had a map and would be OK. But it was the polar opposite of the experience in Andalucia, where no one ever stopped to ask if we needed directions, even if we were clearly trying to figure out where we were, and much of the time they didn´t even make room for us on sidewalks, etc. So hooray for Bilbao, and thank you nice lady who helped me find my hotel. I would have found it anyway, but it was really nice to have someone want to help me and be kind to tourists. My flagging vacation enthusiasm is renewed as well.

If I´m inspired and the hotel lets me have more than one free half our of internet, I´ll post some pictures later.