Sevilla, Granada, and Cordoba

Hello readers!

FINALLY, I have had some spare seconds to post. Well, actually, its more that I decided to ditch my homework for tonight and do this instead. No worries, I don't have anything due tomorrow that I haven't finished. Wednesday is another story.

So, I am going to try to make this concise as possible by splitting it into easily readable sections.

My Travel Companions

I originally planned this trip by myself, but ended up with 3 other friends - my good friend from the Arcadia program Kelsey, a Swiss-Spanish guy Etienne, and an Italian guy Vincenzo. I had actually never met Etienne or Vincenzo before the taxi to the airport, but they both are believers, which made me feel confident that it would be fine. And it was! The guys were great - they took good care of Kelsey and I, and vice versa.

Sevilla

Sevilla was our base of operations for the weekend. We stayed in a great Hostel called Oasis Backpackers. The place was great, but "oasis" might be going a little far. There was major construction going on in the plaza where the hostel is located, which meant lovely banging and drilling accompanied our mid-day siestas. Sevilla is a small town, so we could walk everywhere. The highlights were the Cathedral and the Alcazar. The Cathedral is HUGE and very beautiful.

Right next to the Cathedral is La Giralda, which is actually a tower that was built during the Muslim occupation of Spain in the 12th-ish century. Check out the view of the city from the top!

Another awesome place in Sevilla was Plaza Espana and the Parque Maria Luisa. On my last day there, I rented a bike from the hostel and went for a ride on my own down by the river and around the park. It was quite relaxing.

Two more highlights from here. Firstly, we got a recommendation for a good lunch place from the woman working the reception at the hostel. We decided to head there for lunch, and of course, it ended up being a solid 35 minute walk. The lady had told us to order "superserrano" for lunch and so we did. It was grilled chicken sandwhich with some sort of garlic mayonnaise sauce, roasted green pepper, ham, and tomato. Let me tell you, it was DELICIOUS. The total bill came to 16 euro - small cities are the best.

And lastly, I got to see flamenco! I read about this bar called La Carboneria, which has free live flamenco performances from local groups every night. It's not guaranteed that they will show up and who knows what time it will happen. Vincenzo and I got to the bar at about 15 min to 11:00 and ordered sangria. Right at 11, a woman and two men come out and take their seats. The music is simple. One guy playing guitar, the other guy singing from his very soul and clapping in rhythm, the woman clapping as well. The music reaches some sort of unspoken climax and the woman leaps up from her chair and begins to dance flamenco. Flamenco is unlike anything I have ever seen. It is not elegant or graceful, it is soulful and powerful.

Granada

We left for Granada early Sunday morning, at 6:00 am. The guys had the great idea of renting a car, which served two purposes. It was way cheaper and we got there faster. The main reason to go to Granada is to see the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a fortress combined with two castles. It was also originally built by the Muslims and was expanded over the centuries. As you can see from the picture, it is absolutely enormous!

This pic was actually taken from La Mirador de San Nicolas, a church with a beautiful view of the whole city. It was a cloudy, wet, and freezing day - don't let my happy smile fool you!

Cordoba

Monday morning brought the trip to Cordoba. This was originally unplanned, but I am so glad that we decided to go! Cordoba has the singular La Mezquita Catedral. Yes, that is really the name. It was originally a church, then it became a mosque, then back to a church. The only thing that the various rulers had in common was that they made it even larger. According to my art history teacher, in Cordoba, when a child is being bad, it is common for the mother to say, "Go and count the columns in La Mezquita. You can come back when you are done." This picture should help you understand why this is apropos.

The other highlight of Cordoba for me was the Alcazar. (Yes, these people were not very creative with names.) I will let the picture speak for itself. It was an absolutely balmy day, really incredible!

Overall, the trip was great and we all got along fabulously.

In further news, Wednesday night I will be attending my first futbol game (that's soccer). On Thursday night, I leave for a weekend trip to the north of Spain - San Sebastian and Bilbao!

Besos!

To be continued...

Dear readers, I just got back from a weekend trip to Sevilla, Granada, and Cordoba. I left right after the majority of my midterm exams were over and then came back on Tuesday night with another exam this morning. So, the long and short of it is that I have not gotten the spare second to post about my adventure, nor have I downloaded my pictures onto my computer. I would like to post with the pictures added in because I think it is more enjoyable that way. So. Please be patient until this weekend and I promise that the resulting posts about my trip will be much more colorful.

Just to give you a tidbit....what do you get when you throw together two American girls, a Swiss-Spanish guy, and a crazy Italian?

You'll just have to see won't you. :)

Besos!

Random Story

I just thought I would post this story because I thought it was hilarious. So, this past weekend, I think it was Sunday, I was sitting in a cafe near my apartment. It actually happens to be called "Cafeteria Groins," which is quite hilarious. It also re-assures me that I do not live in a touristy area. Anyway, so I am enjoying my meal and a San Miguel, looking at the diners around me. My attention immediately focuses on these two quite elderly ladies sitting at the table to my front left. These ladies must have been at least 85. They were sipping their dessert wine when one gives the other a small package wrapped in plastic. I am not sure if this was a gift, or something that they got for free (you never quite can tell with old ladies of this sort). Anyway, it was clearly a jar of jam and one of those cheapo memo pads shrink-wrapped together. These things cannot wait and so the old lady preceded to open it. Or at least attempted to. She first tries to open it with her fumbling fingers, but is unable to do so. "Give me your spoon" she says to her friend. With the spoon, she manages to pierce the plastic a bit, before getting the spoon tangled up in the plastic. But the old lady is not stymied for long. She rummages in her bag and pulls out a pair of scissors. The kind that goes on a keychain that you can fold and unfold. I watch in horror as she attempts to fit the scissors onto her fingers to use them. That too fails.

At this point, I am about to jump out of my chair and offer to open it myself. I mean, how much more of this arthritic struggle can I watch? And then finally, SUCCESS! The old lady manages to rip the plastic and out tumbles the jar of jam, the notepad, and the now slightly-bent spoon. These items dually inspected, they are placed into the abyss of her black bag.

Some things are universal.

Canyoning in the Pyrenees

What a fabulous day! My long-anticipated excursion in the Pyrenees finally arrived. Here is the back-story. I was looking around for some sort of hiking/active fun thing to do in the Pyrenees mountains. They are right around the corner here. As I was surfing the Internet, I stumbled across a company called Spanish-Trails, based in Barcelona. They offer all sorts of day trips and one of them is their Canyoning day trip to the Pyrenees. One minute into reading the description, I was hooked. "Canyoning" is the term for traveling in canyons using a variety of techniques such as climbing, jumping, swimming, and rappelling. (Thank you, Wikipedia). After quite a bit of marketing, I had 5 other ladies in the Arcadia group agree to come on the trip.

So this morning, bright and early, we met our guide, Siska, and drove out to the town of Baga, only about 20 miles from the French border. The scenery was breathtaking!

We arrived in Baga and had some hot chocolate and croissants before meeting up with our canyoning guides, Chavi and Manuel. Chavi warned us that the water would be cold and even gave us some other excursion options that we could do instead. But we were there to canyon, and canyon we did.

The equipment loaded into the vans, we drove up to the top of the canyon. Then it was time to get out of the van on the side of the road, strip down to bathing suits, and put on 5 mm wet-suits. They were attractive, let me tell you. We suited up with helmets and harnesses and then hiked for 10 minutes up to our first descent.

Which one am I?...the one on the far right!

Oh, and if you are observant, you may have noticed that there are only 5 of us total, instead of 6. One of the girls is very sick and was unable to come.

And this is where the fun started! (see picture to the right) That first descent was so tame compared to the rest that followed. We were not only rappelling through the pounding water, but also sliding down waterfalls, scrambling over rocks, and swimming through pools. It was so cold!!! The water was up to our necks at the bottom of some portions of the falls and we got soaked through and through. I loved every minute. Well, almost every minute. There were a few moments in which I thought I was going to get hypothermia and freeze to death. Chavi and Manuel were awesome guides, being patient, but also pushing us to climb faster. Not to be prideful, but I think that they were a little surprised at how determined and persevering we ladies were. It was definitely a challenge and I felt so victorious when we finally reached the end of the trail.

Hopefully, I will be able to post a picture of me descending soon, its on someone else's camera....

I would love to go on another waterfall rappelling trip soon. Where? who knows?!

Besos!

All About Madrid

Hey y'all. Want to hear about Madrid? Here it is:

The Trip:

We left quite early on Friday morning to catch an 8:30 am plane to Madrid. Nothing interesting here, except that I got patted down by airport security for the first time. And they analyzed my shoes with this shoe analyzer machine. And my belt got caught in the x-ray machine, in between the rubber flaps, and it took them way longer than necessary to get it out. Good times.

Friday:

So immediately after we step off the plane, we are whisked off to a tour of the Retiro Park and then the Prado art museum. The park was very beautiful and there were a lot of pretty fountains and such. We stopped by the Palacio de Cristal:

After a pleasant stroll, we arrived at the Prado. While I realize that this museum is supposedly wonderful, it was a bit awful. The tour guide was very difficult to understand. I didn't like the paintings she picked, with the exception of Las Meninas. Do I need to see Goya's dark period? I don't really appreciate cannibalism, even as an "art form." After two hours of traipsing around the museum and only seeing about 6 paintings, we were finally set free.

My friend Kelsey and I decided that with our limited amount of time, the best way to get around Madrid would be to take the bus tour. So we did. It was a beautiful day, although a bit brisk. Sitting at the top of the bus is a great way to see all of the city in one go, especially the architecture. It also helped us get an idea of what we wanted to do and see on Saturday afternoon.

After a brief rest at the hotel, I went out to get some tapas with a group of friends for dinner. It was quite nice.

Saturday:

We woke up bright and early to head to the Palacio Real. This is one of the highlights of my trip to Spain so far, for sure. Unfortunately, you cannot take pictures in the Palacio Real, so I don't have any to share. To sum up, it is one of the most luxuriously, beautifully decorated buildings I have ever seen in my life. I don't think I could live there because it would be too overwhelming.

After an excellent guided visit of the Palace, we went to lunch at a restaurant. The food was typical for Madrid, and very good. After this, we headed out for some shopping. In the evening, I went to visit the Reina Sofia, another art museum which was right next to our hotel. This was a highlight, because they had La Guernica by Picasso. Not only that, but they had all of his pre-sketches and some photos of the work in progress. The other cool thing about the museum was it had a third floor with a huge terrace, made of glass. I happened to explore it just at sunset, and it was awesome to see the city starting to light up.

Later on that evening, I had yummy chicken paella for dinner and we went on a quest to find the best churros with chocolate in Madrid. And they were delicious! 1 am rolled around, time to go to El Kapital and dance the night away!

and then on Sunday, we came back to Barcelona.

That ends the tale of my last trip.

Besos!

Forecast for this Week: Severe Storms of Homework with a chance of Torrential Lack of Sleep

My dear readers,

I had a wonderful time in Madrid this past weekend, and I do want to tell you all about it. However, I am currently quite occupied by homework and studying. Once the coast clears, I will be posting about my Madrid adventure.

Besos!

The Daily Slog

I am posting simply because I had quite a terrible day. We had an intercambio (exchange) this morning with Spanish students who are studying English. They told us about various holidays and we told them about Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Superbowl Sunday, etc. We were supposed to be there at 10:00 am and I figured the place was relatively close to the Arcadia Center. I woke up a bit late and at 9:15 am, I pulled up the map that they sent us so that I could glance at where the school is located. Shoot, it's like 15 blocks away from the Center....and i don't think changing metro lines will get me there any faster. Leaving, now. Long story short, I made it at 10:03, quite out of breath and a bit disheveled.

The intercambio lasted until noon and then i had my usual hour to get a snack before art class at 1. I decided to read over my assignment for my class at 6 and was quite unsatisfied with my work and wasn't sure how to improve it.

Then comes art class, and at this point, I am a full day behind the rest of the class, being a slower sort of artist.

A harried trip to the Pharmacist to get some antibiotics to kick the congestion in my chest and then back to the Arcadia Center to try to make end-of-semester plans with a friend...a whole story unto itself. At 5 pm, I finally got a chance to look over the assignment again and I managed to make some changes to it before printing it and hustling to class.

Women writer's class consists of the professor calling on people randomly and having them read out loud their written responses to questions she has given us about today's particular text. This can be very interesting, it can also be EXTREMELY PAINFUL. This depends on the quality of work and the person's ability to speak Spanish correctly. Today, there was a girl who had basically paraphrased the entire text for her assignment. And paraphrase is generous, she had lifted entire sections of the text into her writing. And it was 3 pages long. And she read the WHOLE thing, out loud.

Only one thing remains clear in my brain - I could use some cafe con leche.

Besos!