I just wanted to let everyone know that I was back safe, although you'd probably heard that before reading this, I hope--haha. I will be trying to post updates on the end of the year and the traveling at the end. Oh, and don't you worry, I've taken PLENTY of pictures for you to look at :)
For now I'm loading some pictures online and enjoying watching the Redlegs end their 4-game losing streak by beating the Phillies 5-1 :)
I hope everyone is having a GREAT night and I'll try to post more soon!
Much love and thanks for reading this whole time.
Hasta luego!
- Location:home!
- Mood:
excited - Music:And this one belongs to the Reds
So, when I last left off (the other day before having to leave school for lunch), I was finishing up my paragraph about El Prado, which was great to see. I suppose I cannot complain TOO much about the "no photos" seeing as the museums were free (and I took some photos anyways). All in all, I'm glad we got to see them :) You guys probably are thinking, "geez, how many museums can these girls go to??"...well, we've thought the same thing. But sometimes when you go to places, the most famous things are museums so I guess we do what we can, haha. However, I'm just about museum-ed out for a long, long time.
After our museumed filled night we decided to have a chill out night, a night to sit and relax in the hostel, have some food, and see what was on the Spanish tele, since our room actually had a tv in it--neat! Don't just think we were sitting around while in a nice place--here, since TV is in Spanish, it's educational :D hahahaha. But we totally lucked out and came across a Spanish game show. The host talked really fast, since the contestants were under a time constraint, so sometimes it was hard to hear the questions, but we did okay. It was a fun night to relax after walking around ALL day, eat some peanut butter crackers for dinner, and watch a game show :).
That same night happened to fall on the night of PHA formal back in the states. While I was sad to miss it, I still got some good news! Ky called me (around 4am my time, 10pm his time) to let me know that I was voted First Lady of PHA!! So that was super exctiting and I'm very happy. Definitely something about next semester to look forward to!
Sunday was our day to head over to Toledo. It's only a half hour by train, so it's a good choice for a day trip from Madrid. I was excited to go see Toledo because I had heard from many people that thought it's all hills and cobble stone, it's a beautiful place. After getting there I could tell that all three of those things were true: the beauty, the hills, and the cobblestone. It was pretty much a beast to walk through, but we're young girls in gym shoes, so we can handle it, hahaha. Nah, it wasn't terrible, but it was kind of warm day, so it got pretty hot after a while of all of the stairs and the hills. It's a really old city, which gives it some of it's antique and pretty feel, and I liked it. There were gift stores upon gift stores full of the classic Toledon gifts: swords, anything with Don Quijote, black and gold hand-made jewelry, and more swords.
But we wanted to try to see the sights before we went into too many stores, but it really ended up being an interesting day. We got a map and tried to figure out where we wanted to go and come up with a game plan over breakfast (as we got into town around 10:30 or 11). We headed for El Alcazar fortress first. Granted it was a Sunday, so I perhaps should have seen this coming, but it was closed. We really hoped it would be open because everywhere else we've been on a Sunday had all of their main touristy buildings/sights open (ie La Mestiza on Easter Sunday in Cordoba). However, we got some cool pictures of the outside of it, so that was good. We kept walking around for a while through some of the windy little streets. The map is not incredibly helpful when the old street signs are either not there or hard to read (part of the old fashioned charm, you see) or when the streets are so sporadic that it's hard to tell exactly where you are on the map and where one street ends and another begins. This may have been because we weren't on the "main" road (although I think there's like 5 different main roads with 3 names each), but we found our way pretty well :) We saw the tower of the Cathedral and said, "Let's just head that way!" so we did.
We eventually found one door of the Cathedral and went inside. It was only a portion of the Cathedral and it was closed off by some gate things on the inside. It was an area that you could go into for free to do some free praying. I call it free paying because at the other door you have to pay to get in so you can see the rest of the Cathedral. We thoughr, okay well let's check it out. We make it over to the main door, and the man said we needed tickets and that they were 7 euro. That's quite steep as far as entradas go, so we asked about a student discount (which are common, luckily enough for us on these trips). He told us we'd have to ask inside. So, we go wait in like for about 5 minutes so that the woman at the desk could tell us that there was NO student discount. We said gracias and went on our merry way. We weren't going to pay that much to go inside. It was a little sad, but that's pretty expensive, especially in comparison to other things we'd seen. If they had a discount, we probably would have gone in. I guess I'll have to look up some pictures online, or something. So, that was kind of a bust and a bit sad, but we carried on.
At some point, this may have even been before that Cathedral experience, I can't really remember at this moment, but we came across a well priced Chinese restaurant. And let me tell you, after all of that walking and the stairs, one gets pretty hungry. We really enjoyed our Spanish Chinese food and it was great to be able to sit, have some food, relax, and get ready for the rest of our day. The rest of our day turned into random pictures and souvenir shops rather quickly...
We wanted to see the Casa y Museo de El Greco since we learned a lot about him (El Greco was his nickname) in my art class. We walked around for a while, following old fashioned signs with arrows through the narrow, narrow winding streets of Toledo on our search for Casa de El Greco. We actually ended up passing it a couple of times and looked around confusedly wondering where we had gone wrong. Eventually we found it, behind some construction scaffolding. It was closed for construction. This would be our luck. So, we did NOT get to go see the works of El Greco and decided that the best thing to do at a time like this was go to into every gift store we saw and shop around for the best prices. It was pretty fun and we even came across some really great ceramics stores (though I did not by anything, even if it was tempting). One man at the ceramics store went into a big description of his hand made works, including how the would not break. He then took one mug and hit it HARD into a bowl on a shelf. We were scared to death, BUT nothing broke, so he was legit. Sadly, when we tried to return to his store later so Rhoda could get a cup and saucer, he was closed :( Boo, but it was a fun store none-the-less.
Anyways, we thought to ourselves, "Man, we've gotta go into something at this place".. so we made our way over to la Iglesia de Santo Tome which houses a famous work by El Greco...although we had to pay to get in. Which you might think is normal, but I guess you'd have had to see how small this church was. It was basically paying so we could see one painting, but it was El Greco, so in we went. Oh low and behold--no photography. No sir, I'll tell you what, I was not going to pay to see ONE painting and then not get a picture of that ONE painting. That's how the gift shops think they've got you. Can't take a picture, so you'll buy the postcard version. Not this girl, I got my picture. Actually, I think I took two. You can see them in my album :) Also, I was not the only rebel, Jami got some as well.
So it was a semi-long, semi-trying day, and we made our way back downnn to the train station to get our ticket and head back to Madrid for the night before heading back to Valencia the next morning. However, the fun was not over yet. We got to the train station and asked for 3 tickets to Madrid, carnet joven. Carnet joven is what you say for student price, essentially. So he said he needed to see our ID, which is common so they can double check our age or whatever. So we all get out our student IDs from school. He said they weren't valid because they were "carnet estudantil" not "carnet joven". I asked about using our passports because we were able to do that in Barcelona but the man said no, my passport was not valid identification. Hilarious. So, we did not get the student price, but since it's a half hour train, it's not that expensive anyways, so we just bought it and went on our way. Needless to say it was an interesting day full of adventures and pictures.
And now for another great airport story brought to you by yours truly. So we're finally to the airport after fighting or swimming, crowd surfing, something through the hoards of people on Madrid's metro (all while watching our stuff carefully, believe me). We were feeling slightly rushed as we only had an hour until our flight. That's a decent amount of time, but we just like to err to the early side of things. We attempt to use our metro pass to leave into the airport (because with the metro you usually use your card to get in and to get out). Well even though we have passes left, we cannot use it because the security man tells us that we need a special metro pass to enter the airport from the metro. SO we had to buy some 1 euro pass to get into the airport. Okay, so we finally get in. We're making our way to where we check in. Jami and I waited in the main line while Rhoda went to see if we could do the express check in. Rhoda was successful, so Jami and I left line and got our boarding passes--off to security! So we go downstairs to security and wait in a fairly quickly moving line, taking off our belts, watches, etc (but not shoes. They don't do the shoe thing in Europe). We get through (after they throw away Jami's plasic jar of peanut butter, but let Rhoda keep her metal jar of peanut butter) and then they stop me. The woman says, "You have a sword in your bag." I, in a lapse of judgement, say, "Yes! It's from Toledo!" ... "...You can't have it." "But it's a gift. It's wrapped." "You can't take a sword on a plane." -- Okay, so I have to leave security, go back upstairs, wait in line to check my bag--please remember we're on a time crunch here, all of the above happening with less than an hour until take off--Rhoda and Jami find a quicker way for me to check my bag, I wait in a shorter line, get my bag checked, we head BACK downstairs, BACK through security again, and to our gate, with plenty of time to spare for our flight...only to find that our flight is delayed. It's funny how things work like that, isn't it? So we took a breath, got a coke, and sat and talked until boarding our plane back to Valencia.
I've hoped you've enjoyed that weekend story, and nowww... pictures!! :)
Around Madrid:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Around Madrid 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Museos Reina Sofia y El Prado:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Palacio Real:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Madrid Zoo:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Madrid Zoo 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Toledo:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Toledo 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
So! I hope you have enjoyed the stories and enjoy the pictures!! :) I'm going to work on some homework or packing type things while we wait to see what country our new apartment-mates are from...Esperanza's guess is more French. We're hoping otherwise.
Hasta luego!!
We made our way over to El Prado, the art museum with most of the classic artists that we learned about in my History of Spanish Art class. However, as we walked up to the line, we saw on the prices board that the museum was free between 6-8!! We said, woo then we'll come back then! As we made our way over to Museo Reina Sofia, the modern art museum with works by Picasso and Dalí, some woman stopped us asking if we'd seen the musems. We said not yet, and she said good because the Prado is free from 6-8 and the Reina Sofia museum is free from like 2-8 or so. Sadly we did not have money to buy the calendar she was trying to sell us with this information, but we did appreciate the information given!! So basically it was like 10am and we needed to kill some time, though we had seen everything else the day before, soo... off we went to the zoo!!!
Ohhh my goodness, what a zoo. It was huge, but a lot of fun. We lucked out because the internet said it was possible light showers throughout the day on Saturday, but it didn't during the day so we had really nice zoo weather! There was a huge flamingo area and they were super pink and great...we were basically right next to them!! We also got to watch a sea lion show!! They waved, clapped, AND balanced a ball on their noses. I was beyond pleased :D haha. It's probably another occasion where my pictures will speak for themselves, but I will say that I LOVED the pandas. There were two, and their names (translated from chinese to spanish to english) were "Star of Ice" and "Beauty Mouth"--hahahahahaha. Okay the "Beauty Mouth" thing cracked me up, but it's true. The Spanish translation was "Boca Florida", which I guess would technically be "Flowered mouth", but the sign said "Beauty mouth". They were both plump and precious and I would have liked to hug one, but I'm happy with my pictures :) I hope you all enjoy them too!!
We stayed at the zoo for quite some time, enjoying all of the cute animals (top 3 faves: panda, koala, baby zebra). But, since the museums were going to be for free, we headed back into town to go to the museums. We went to Museo Reina Sofia first. Once again, they said that we could not take pictures. What is the deal, Madrid?? Why could I take pictures of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris, but not here? So, I took pictures as I could. This one had a couple more room guards. The main thing we wanted to see in this one was "El Guernica" by Picasso. It's really dark, but it's very good. It's a LOT bigger than I expected too...basically a whole wall mural thing. I tried to get some pictures, but they're not the best, haha. We didn't stay a terrible, terrible long time as there were a LOT of people there and we were more interested in the pieces in El Prado.
So, off we went in higher hopes for El Prado. We got our tickets and headed in. We didn't see any signs initially that said "no photos", so I took a few good ones--without flash, as always. I could hear a girl talking in Spanish saying, "did you see that girl just take a picture?". I wanted to say something to her in Spanish to let her know that I totally know Spanish and could hear what she was saying, but there was no point. So I took only a few pictures, since no one had been stopping me and I hadn't seen any signs, until I saw something in very small print on the map saying "photo taking is forbidden"--ah dang. I just don't understand Madrileñan museums. Either way, I loved El Prado because we had learned about a lot of the paintings in my class and it was really neat to see them in person. Quite a few of them are bigger than I expected!! Like whole walls, and stuff. Very cool though. One of my favorite stories from the museum was the American dad trying to explain the meanings of the paintings to his daughter. I know he was American just because he was speaking English in the American accent...and he just sort of looked touristy, haha. But he was explaining pictures to his daughter, only he was entirely and completely wrong. He was also pretending to read the information cards that were in Spanish as if that's where he was getting his information, haha. At one picture, he told his daughter that the way the faces were painted were "so dutch, they're almost grotesque"--WHAT? ahahahahahaha....oh man, we almost followed him just to see what he'd say about all the other paintings we studied...but, we lost track of him in the people. It was very exciting to see the paintings of Goya, who I did a project on, as well.
-->ahh, time to leave school... more later!! :)
Before I start, I just want to post a quick note about our apartment-mates. The 3 british girls have been incredibly sweet and it's been nice talking with them (in english english!) at dinner. They leave tomorrow morning at 5am--very early. I've liked them a lot :) It's great when we have good guests! The italian boys are still kind of weird. Their Italian also sounds a big different than girl Italian, I don't know why. Anyways, they piiile on the cologne and we can smell it all throughout the house. One of them asked MariaJesus if it was legal to sell drugs here because he was thinking of moving to Valencia. Another told Esperanza that he and his mom were really close, like brother and sister, seeing as she's 30 and he's 17...which would make her about 12 or 13 when she had him?? I'm not entirely sure, but that could explain his absolute strangeness. Other than that, they're pretty nice guys who always say hello and wish us a good lunch. I think they leave in a couple days, and then we're getting some more students on Monday. Once again, not sure what age, gender, or country of origin, but it's always an adventure :)
Alright, on to Madrid!
Our flight from Valencia to Madrid was a good one. All 3 of us, me, Rhoda, and Jami (Anna didn't come on this one), were able to sit together on the plane. It's a very short flight, 55 mins at most, but we got there super quick. We took the metro (subway) and made it to our stop and found our hostel. It turned out to be on the 4th floor of an apartment complex type of place. The workers were super nice and showed us around and everything. It was really cute, too! There was a shower in our room, but the bathroom (and toilet) were down the hall. It had a TV (good for late night Spanish game shows) and a sink--cool!
The first day we mainly walked around to see what we could see. We got a map from the tourist info office place in Plaza Mayor and used it later to plan our visit of the city. Plaza Mayor was a funny place, though. There were all kinds of people dressed up in weird outfits so that people would take pictures with them, and thus give them money. There was a knock-off looking Mickey Mouse in an Uncle Sam costume, a Minnie, a Winnie-the-Pooh (whose costume pants were too short for him), a fat Spiderman, some woman in a fruit suit, a cross dresser looking thing, a guy in a goat outfit, an indian, someone dressed up like a monkey, the creepiest rabbit I've seen, and Shrek.
We covered a lot of the map, though, and had just about seen all of the cool "major" things listed on the maps, except for the 2 big art museums. For example, we saw... Parque de el Retiro, Plaza Mayor, Palacio Real, Puerta de Alcala, Cibeles, Biblioteca Nacional, Jardines de Sabatini, y mas.
Palacio Real, or the Royal Palace, was really neat to see! Oh to like the kings and queens, right? Haha. Well I don't know if I would like it since we "weren't allowed" to take any pictures. I put the quote marks there because I totally took some secret sneaky pictures anyways. It wasn't easy at times as there were room guards and the occasional room camera, but I got a few. The rooms were really interesting.. I wish I could have taken pictures of them. I enjoyed the Royal Farmacy and Armory, too. I got a couple pictures in those, haha.
We also made it to the Biblioteca Nacional, or the National Library which also had a museum part. It was fun to go in and look around and see some of the exhibits. For some reason, we couldn't take pictures in the library either. They should have been happy that someone wanted to take pictures! Haha. But we still had fun as there was a Don Quijote kid's section in the basement :D
--> Okay, well it's about time for bed over here, so I'll continue this later :) (I'll probably just edit this post and continue it on this same blog)
Buenas Noches, para ahora :)
So I'm procrastinating just a little bit on my paper, but thought I'd do a little quick update before the Madrid/Toledo update. We currently have 6 more international students living in the apartment this week. Yes, 6. Aka 9 people in here total and Esperanza is sleeping on the couch, bless her heart. There's 3 italian boys, ages 17-18 (Sebastian, Giessepi (?), and Francesco), and 3 british girls (Sofie, Sofie, and Vicki), all age 14 ("But I turn 15 in two weeks!"). They're actually pretty fun! It's nice to hear some English, even English English, and the Italians are interesting. But it's always nice to have friendly people in the house who are able to communicate. :)
I'll keep ya posted if anything fun/funny comes up!
Okayyy back to my paper...
Hasta luego!!
We've just gotten back from our trip to Madrid and Toledo and have some lazy time as it is Monday and we have no classes today for the other St. Vincent. Yes, Valencia has 2 St. Vincent patron saints, and yes, we've gotten both of those days off of class :) There's no explaining it, really, haha. However, I'm very glad to be back to Valencia because Madrid was...interesting. But, more on that later!! I'm going to do my best to get through my list-o-things-to-blog, beginning with the very end of Fallas, and blazing through everything from then until now. Basically as far as I can go, woo! So, shall we get started? Deep breath--here we go!!
END OF FALLAS
From where I left off earlier, I was just getting read to talk about the Crema, I believe...the part where everything goes up into flames. I feel like I may have touched on it a little, but time is just getting away from me, so I'm not sure. If I repeat myself, forgive me and carry on to the next paragraph, haha. Anyways, Fallas definitely goes out with a bang. Huge pillars of fire, fireworks on top of that, and absolutely necessary firemen at every falla. At midnight, they get started with the BIG one. Luckily for us, we live like 10 mins from one of the top 5 biggest fallas. They dump lighter fluid on the bottom of them while other people put up protective plastic tarp things to block the nearby builidings from heat/flames. First the fireworks go off from around and on the falla and then the whole thing just catches fire!! LOTS OF FIRE. We thought we were so smart, being close enough to get really good pictures...oh no, we had to run backwards and I had to block my face with my sleeve from the heat!!...well, while still trying to take pictures. It's really an interesting thing. All the while the firemen are hosing down the tarps, nearby trees, and buildings to make sure they're not getting too hot and stuff. It was quite the experience!
The theory behind Las Fallas is that you mock all of the bad things going on and the corruption, but then you set it on fire and it burns away, so the next morning it's as if it never happened. It's a kind of Springtime cleansing and renewal. So, the week was pretty crazy, but I've gotta tell ya, they're not kidding about it all being cleaned up the next morning. The very next day there were no ashes on the ground, no trash from the parties, almost no signs that Fallas or the night before had even happened. No children with fireworks at 8am. It was rather...peaceful! And nice, haha. So I will give them credit that yes, they throw a good party, but I was glad to see that the reasoning behind it still stood strong. I was glad to have experienced Las Fallas once, but I think maybe one is good for me :) I'm glad I got to experience the biggest thing in Valencia's year and got to take all kinds of interesting pictures and make memories to last a long time.
CATEDRALES EN VALENCIA
So, Jami and I finally went out and climbed to the top of the Torre in the Cathedral in Valencia. I know I've put the pictures up, but I just don't think I've blogged it yet. It was something on our to-do list, and we were excited going into it. It was only 2 euro and we thought it would be good fun. However, my legs were SO unhappy with me after that... Oh my gosh that thing is so tall. We climbed, and climbed, and climbed forever. We passed people who shared encouraging words with us such as "You're almost there!" although I don't think we were. The stairs were old, spiral, and huge...I had to high knee step to get up them. It was a great workout, though, so that was good, haha. Anyways, once you finally get to the top, you realize why people have suggested this to you because the view truly is worth it. It's so nice to be able to see over all of Valencia and find things you recognize down below! I hope you guys had a chance to check out the pictures!! Looking at them is a lot less tiring than climbing up the tower :D
That same day, Jami and I also decided to FINALLY go into the basilica of Nuestra Senora la Virgen de los Desamparados (i think that's the name...more or less). This Mary is super famous throughout Valencia, as we've seen many items with her on it in the gift stores around town. I'm sorry to say that we were not allowed to take any photos in there, but the Mary behind the alta is BEAUTIFUL. Definitely a go see, even if you can't take pictures. I'm glad we went in to check it out :)
Look at me go! I hope you're keeping up :) We're now into the weekend of my birthday!!
BIOPARC
BioParc is the zoo in Valencia and once all of the parts are completed it will be the largest zoo in all of Europe. Seriously, in Valencia. Haha. Right now only the Africa and Madagascar sections are built, but the website said they are also working on South American and NeoTropics sections. It's a different kind of zoo and has a really neat feel to it. It's not like other zoos I've been to before, but I still really liked it. Granted, I love zoos, so, ya know. :) They claim to be an immersion zoo, but this does not mean that I was just running around with the animals (sadlyyy). They really aim to not just show you the animals, but also try to really put you in the environment. All of the exhibits can't really be called exhibits because all of the animals that would live together (peacefully) in the wild are in the same area together. Their areas are big and are built to look like the trees and rocks and things from where each animal is from. So, the giraffes are in with the zebras and ostriches all together....pretty neat! There was only one part closed that day, but it was abummer because it was the lemur section. I could have been able to walk around WITH the lemurs on the same sidewalk as they scurried around around me, but no luck that day. I still had a great time though!! I believe I posted the pictures on here already, so go check them out! There's 3 albums worth annnnd Iove those little animals :) I wish the hippos had gone swimming, but they did not. Oh well, it was fun :)
CAFE TUCAN
So BioParc was Friday morning/day, and we went with a few people from school. They said they were going out that night and as it would turn out, 2 of the popular night time hang out places are a hop and a skip from our apartment on our street. So, we figured it was about time we were 20 years old and acted like it, and said okay sure we'll come downstairs and hang out--haha. Luckily Spanish "clubs" (idk if I would call it that, but for lack of a better word..) don't seem to have a cover charge. At least, the place we went to did not. I have to tell you, though, maybe I was just tired, but it was one of the weirdest "club" experiences I've had. We met our friend's Spanish friends (Enrique, Jorge, and Eduardo--seriously), and they were nice enough. Jami and I, both happily taken girls, mostly just wanted to look around, to watch and take it in. This was not the kind of night time hang out thing I expected, but it was interesting to look around. We swayed to the music and sang along a lot as there was way more English music, and music that I knew, than I expected. I was surprised (but happy) to find that Spanish clubs are not like American ones in that guys do not just walk up and try to dance with you. Everyone basically keeps to themselves and dances about in the weirdest manner I've ever seen. It was like.. well, I don't know what to compare it to, but there was a lot of arm movement. Maybe it's a techno thing, I'm not entirely sure. So, Jami and I didn't stay out too late... 1 because we're probably old people and 2 because the dancing was weird, hahaha. Actually, we had to get up the next morning for our school excursion for the day, so we didn't want to be terribly tired. I suppose a highlight of the night was singing a Spice Girls song with one of our schoolmate's British apartment-mates. Lol.
TERUEL & ALBARRACIN
Saturday morning we met by school to load the bus and head out on our excursion to Teruel then Albarracin. It was about a 2 hour drive or so, but it was still a really nice trip. I enjoyed this trip because we've all been able to get to know each other better through classes and school, so it was fun to hang out with our school friends, whereas on the first excursion we (at least Jami and I) didn't know anybody very well at all. Our first stop was in Teruel where we saw the famous Mosoleum of the Lovers. Their story is supposedly what "Romeo and Juliet" was based on, but my professor doesn't know if she believes that rumor or not. It was a really neat place and we took some fun pictures, although we were not allowed to take pictures of the actual mummies inside the mosoleum, but we could see them. It was kinda creepy, but still interesting, haha. We didn't stay ther terribly, terribly long because the main excursion was to Albarracin. On our way there we all ate our bocadillos, made by our host moms. I had to laugh because the paper says "bring a bocadillo"..and that really only means, basically, "bring a packed lunch"...but it's just funny that we all end up with essentially the same basic sandwish. Just something funny :)
The weather in Albarracin was amazing that day. It was great because usually it's a colder area and one year our teacher said that they had snow on that excursion. But, lucky us, super sunny awesome day :) The city was really cute and is known for its mountain and a huge wall that was seen by the famous El Cid. So, we decided to climb the mountain/wall. It was great! I think everyone had fun, even though we were all tired with sore legs by the end of it. There were great views and I had a really good time. I'm glad we went on that excursion and it was especially fun after everyone's a bit closer now. It wasn't easy to get all the way up that mountain or wall, but we did it, haha. I hope everyone has been able to see those pictures too!! It's one of those things that had amazing views, so my words can't do it justice. Go check 'em out :)
MY BIRTHDAYYY
Saturday night, after the excursion, a few people were going to get together for my birthday. Well, basically people were asking if I was doing anything for it and I said I wanted to go to this one place and people could show up if they wanted, haha. Some people from school showed up, so that was fun, and it was a really nice night. We went to a place called La Claca and just hung out and chatted. We counted down to my birthday, the big 21! Haha. I just had 2 different drinks that night, both "spanishy" I guess. One was sangria, which wasn't so bad. I thought it would taste differently, but it wasn't terrible. The other, specific to Valencia, was agua de Valencia. I preferred that. It was pretty good and I liked the added touch of the pink sugar around the glass. Oh, and when it was midnight/my birthday, my friends wanted to sing. But none of them wanted to sing the Spanish version of "Happy Birthday" so they busted out a loud English chorus of Happy Birthday.. it was a little embarassing, but I appreciated the sentiment haha :) All in all that was a fun night. We didn't stay out terribly late, again, we're old, but also we were tired from the excursion haha.
Sunday, my real birthday, was a really nice day too. I started the morning going over to Cafe y Te to use some "real" internet to webcam with my family and Ky. It was really great to be able to see and talk with each of them. An hour with the fam and an hour with Ky...it was really nice :) I was also happy to be able to open the present that my parents had packed into my suitcase that I was not allowed to open until my birthday....a very cute "21 wishes" bracelet! :) Also for my birthday, Esperanza made a special lunch for us which was this awesome rice with vegetables with little shrimps in it! She even made little strawberry smoothies :) She asked if I wanted any wine, but I told her I was fine with the strawberry smoothie, hahaa :)
That night we (me, Jami, Anna, Rhoda and her 3 sisters) went to the futbol (soccer) game of Valencia vs Getalfe (a pueblo near Madrid). It was so much fun!! It's been so long since I've been to a sporting event so it was really cool to see some professional Spanish soccer. We had great seats and some fun people near us, like the man in front of us who was soo into the game, haha. They even did the wave!! I didn't know they did that here. The best part was that Valencia won!! I was so excited :) It was a great end to a great birthday. It was a lot of fun to go to the game and it was an enjoyable weekend. Of course, I look forward to celebrating my birthday when I get home too!! I missed the family birthday, but it was all good.
SEVILLA & CORDOBA -- SEMANA SANTA & EASTER
Well, we took an 8 hour train down to the southern part of Spain into Sevilla (aka Seville, in English). The length of the train ride wasn't as bad as it sounded because we brought some homework stuff to do and all of that. We got to the hostel and it was in a really good location and was pretty cute! The lockers were super safe and involved a key-card and twisting...it took some figuring out, so I felt like it was pretty safe, haha. We mostly walked around the first night and saw the sights. There sure were a lot of people out and about though. But, that's to be expected as it was one of the biggest festivals of the year. The only problem is that even with a map, Sevilla can be kinda hard to navigate and the street signs aren't well marked. Then add like loads of people, haha. But we did just fine and managed to get around and begin to see some processions that had been going on already (the processions started on Palm Sunday (my birthday) and we got there the next Thursday).
It's not easy to describe the processions so you'll probably have to take a look at some pictures to understand how big the floats and the processions themselves were. Basically, from what I could gather, every church has a brotherhood, and each brotherhood has a specific color combo. Each brotherhood also has and processes 2 floats, one of Jesus from one of the various stations of the cross (I think ) and a Mary float that shows her in some kind of sadness, I believe, as in some of the pictures I've seen I think she's crying in all of the floats. All of the brotherhoods wear these outfits that resemble KKK outfits but they are not...they're of the various colors, but they are pointy hats. Those outfits are known all over as part of the Semana Santa festivities. So, I got use to them after a while, but they were still kinda creepy, especially when someone was just walking right behind you, haha. We watched quite a few processions!!
We also went into the Cathedral in Sevilla...it was amazing! It's the 3rd largest cathedral in Europe, and it definitely lived up to that expectation. I really enjoyed it and took plenty of pictures. We were able to go into all kinds of side rooms and see of the statues and paintings and things. There were a lot of people in there, but it wasn't too bad. I was just happy to be there and look around and take it all in. It was a bit unreal since it was so big. I'm glad we got to go though!! Definitely check out those pictures :)
A fun story from our weekend in Sevilla was on I think Saturday night when we were sitting on the Cathedral, watching the processions go by. We got a pretty good seat that was kind of above the people standing below so we could see better. At one point a family came up and placed one of their kids on the place where we were sitting. There were 3 levels of places, so we were on the 2nd and he was on the 1st. Well, he, being 3 years old and quite the character, decided to sit himself between Jami and I and move my head for me to where it needed to be so I could see the floats. It was pretty cute!! Lots of, "MIRA! MIRA! LA VIRGEN!!" That was Adrian and he was super cute. very excited abut the processions and for me to see them, too. His brother, Javier, 7, also wanted to see what was up, so he chatted with us as well. So, we learned quite a bit from these 2 about Semana Santa. They were surprised to hear that we were from the USA, but that at least explained why our names sounded so funny to them. They didn't really get that we didn't know all Spanish, so we had to ask them to explain what they meant a couple times. It was fun learning from 3 and 7 year olds :) Their parents were glad we weren't mad that their kids were being silly, and we all had a nice time :) It added some fun in the middle of the processions.
We also visited the Real Alcazar, or royal palace while we were there. It's the oldest standing edifice that still houses royals! It was really neat to see, too, and of course, I took a lot of pictures--haha. The palace was really cool and very big. My favorite part, though, were the gardens. They were so pretty!! I got to chase some ducks and see some peacocks as well. I really wanted to see the male one foof his feathers out, but no such luck. Oh man there were so many gardens but they were beautiful!! Lots of trees, flowers, and gardens. So it looks like I'm going to have to have a garden now with a little fish pond and stuff :)
We went to Easter mass at the church down the street from our hostel, San Pedro. It was a really nice church and was older so it still had some cool paintings and statues and things in it. It was also neat to see some of the floats close up because they were housed in the church as well. It was a nice mornig and Jami and I were happy to finally put some skirts on!! :) Haha.
After mass, we got our stuff and checked out of the hostel, headed to the bus stop, and got to the train station with enough time to sit, relax, and have a pastry breakfast. We then took a train down to Cordoba for the day!
Cordoba was probably by far one of the prettiest cities I've seen on this whole trip. We got there and made our way to our hostel which actually turned out to be an apartment!! It had a kitchen and bathroom and all sorts of nice things, but was still on of the cheaper places we've stayed at. Very nice! We mainly wanted to see La Mezquita, which is what Cordoba is famous for. It was as amazing as I thought it was going to be. I've seen pictures of it's arabic arches in just about every Spanish book I've had and it was really cool to see them in person! We spent quite a bit of time in there taking pictures and enjoying it. Oh, La Mezquita is now or was a cathedral but was built with arabic influence and has been around for a looong time. It's super cool. Definitley check out the pictures, haha. We had a nice long dinner of splitting some pizzas at a little restaurant down the street from our hostel/apartment. It was fun to sit, talk, and be in this nice little beautiful city. We did a lot of walking around during the day and just really enjoyed ourselves. We ended the night watching a National Geographic show in Spanish about kangaroos and then headed to bed to catch the train the next morning back to Valencia.
PHOTOS from Sevilla and Cordoba!! :)
Around Sevilla:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Around Sevilla 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
El Alcazar:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
El Alcazar 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Catedral de Sevilla:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Catedral 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Catedral 3:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Procesiones de Semana Santa:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Procesiones de Semana Santa 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Cordoba:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
SO!! I am now caught up with everything except this weekend in Madrid and Toledo!! I think you have plenty to read and photos to check out, so with that I'll say hasta luego!! :)
Hola everyone :)
I thought I'd go ahead and get this Fallas blog started!!
Las Fallas is a weeklong festival dedicated to San Jose (St. Joseph) and is the biggest festival in Valencia. It's always from march 15-19th no matter what (since the 19th is the feast day of St. Joseph). The short version of the story behind Fallas is that back in the day people use to make little wooden caricatures of people in their town. They were made out of wood because St. Joseph was a carpenter and then on his feast day they would light them on fire. I mean I don't know if that's the whole story, but that's more or less what went down. So the theory is that they build huge monuments out of Styrofoam and cardboard and paper mache (things that easily burn) that mock something going on in the world (political corruption is popular, the economic crisis was big this year) and then on the last day they're all burn down as a symbol of renewal. Burn it, there it goes, and the next day everything returns to the way it was before as if Fallas never happened. Spring has come and all is new again. So! That's a little back story, now for my Fallas experience...
I have some stuff written down, so I'm not necessarily going to go day by day, but mostly comment on stuff that went on during Fallas and some of the things I did. I believe I posed about La Crida...the invitation to Las Fallas that happens 3 weeks before the festival even starts. There was another thing that happened not a terrible long time before Fallas started, and that was paella in the street. I don't think I blogged about this yet. If I did, well, sorry, haha. My school sponsors the making of Paella Gigante in the street by our school. It's a HUGE pan of paella for like hundreds of people. It was really good though!! We got back from Paris that morning, so we essentially dropped our stuff off at the apartment and then head out to school for the paella. It was a really fun time and we really enjoyed it! It was the first (and currently only) paella we’ve had since being here.
So basically I have to try to write about the fireworks, but I just don’t know how I’m going to do it any justice. There is no way from reading this that you’ll understand the amount and frequency of fireworks in the street. Four year old children were setting off fireworks. Actually, just people of all ages. Fireworks in the park, in the street, as you were walking, kids with them right next to you, throwing them right in front of you, also fireworks in groups of people—all incredibly safe, yeah. It got to the point where I felt immune to the sudden burst of firework…not totally, but somewhat. A lot of the smaller ones, like the poppers you throw on the ground, didn’t faze me anymore, but the louder ones did. A sign that a loud one was going to go off was when you saw children with lighters running away and across the street with their fingers in their ears. The only people, besides people who are here with me, that will know how loud and frequent these fireworks are are the people that I was on the phone with during the week (aka Mom and Ky, haha). The start as early as 8 in the morning and end as late as 5am or so (I was usually asleep, but I was shaken awake one night by sheer force of firework).
Every day at 2pm there were fireworks called “mascleta”…these fireworks are televised and also hoards of people go to see them every day. One day we made the mistake of being too close to the Plaza de Ayuntamiento over an hour before the mascleta and we had LOTS of trouble getting through that part of town. We went to see it a couple times, but not right up near it. It’s LOUD, but still cool. People from Valencia actually check the paper and know which pyrotechnics are good to see and which aren’t. Every night there were firework shows, but these are more like the firework shows you think of during the 4th of July, only better. They call these fireworks “castillos” and they’re the pretty light up the sky ones. They’re also absolutely crazy. The other crazy thing was that the shows didn’t start until 1:30 and 2 am. However, they were worth it, haha.
Another famous aspect of Las Fallas, that we definitely enjoyed while it was here, were churros! I must say one cannot go wrong with sugar-coated fried dough. There is just nothing wrong with that. I was not as big of a fan of the buñuelos, but that’s just me. There were churrerias everywhere (churro stands)…and I was happy about it. Sadly, they are only here for Fallas. The good news though—they sell churros during Semana Santa which we’ll be going to in Sevilla!! Yayay.
Just about every neighborhood has their own Falla. Those are the huge statues made out of the flammable stuff. I wish I could explain these things to you, but I just don’t think words will do them justice. They are so big, so artistic, so intricate and detailed…you’re just going to have to see the pictures. Don’t worry, I took plenty. One of the things that struck me, though, is that they spend millions (I kid you not, millions) to build and create these things, just to burn them down. They spend millions of dollars creating statues that joke about the economic crisis. It’s sort of ironic, I guess. There were also quite a few that included Barack Obama (again, they don’t just say his first or last name, it’s always his whole name at once: BarackObama—haha). They were bigger and more detailed than I could have imagined…I look forward to you all seeing the pictures!
Another thing that happens during Fallas is people staying out incredibly late and having dance parties in the street. Or at least, that’s what happened on my street. The “young people” (hahaha) were all out with bottles in hand until probably around 5am around every night in Fallas. There was an outside party directly outside of my apartment window every other night, with a live DJ and everything. It looked a little sketchy, but I guess they were having a good time. They sure like to have fun over here. I can adjust to the eating times, but the later party times I’m just not accustomed to, haha. Luckily, when I wanted to go to bed at 2am but the parties were still going on out the window, I had my trusty earplugs.
Let’s see…continuing down my list of things to write about…
Aha, the Bullfight. So I was a little cautious before going to the bullfight because I just didn’t know how I was going to take it. We were closer in seating than I expected, but it wasn’t terribly close which was nice. We were close enough to get good pictures though! But before I get into the actual fight, I want to mention how we had to get into the place. The Plaza de Toros is a pretty old building and there were a TON of people there…Esperanza was leading the way, but she wasn’t so much leading as like whipping through people. Jami, Andrew, and I almost got lost in a huge mass of people. By the time we found our place and jumped over people to get into our seats, I was almost over this experience, haha. It was just a little stressful. But once we were there and sitting it was okay. Now, there really were a LOT of people. I mean, I had my knees in the guy’s back in front of me, and the guy behind me had his knees kind of in my back because we were sitting on little bleacher style concrete rows. Once everything got started, though, we all settled in and were a little more comfortable in our seats. One thing I probably could have done without was the smoking, but I’m just use to that being everywhere at this point.
Anyways, back to the bullfight. So, at each bullfight there are 3 matadors (called toreros in Valencia) and 6 bulls. Each torero gets a go at 2 bulls. The first bull comes out and they get him riled up and he runs around a lot. After he runs around, the picadors come out. They are guys on horses with spear things. The horses have protection from the toros and also blindfolds. I guess the blindfold is a good idea so that the horses don’t run when a bull comes charging at them, but I felt kind of bad because they just don’t see it coming, haha. The picadors poke the bull with the spear. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think it’s just to make him more mad, maybe. After the picador part, some guys with some different spears come out. I think they’re called bandilleros. Either the guys are, or their spears are. They run about and throw them into the bull. Seriously, the bulls get really bloody…it’s kind of crazy at times really. The main torero comes out after the bandillero part and they do the dancey stuff you see in the movies or the classic matador stuff you think of: ole, whooshing of the cape, and the bulls really do that thing where they scrape their hoof into the ground!! I kept thinking of that Bugs Bunny episode… Anyways, I could deal with all of that first part. Once you get through watching the 3rd or 4th bull go down, you start to get a little desensitized to the whole ordeal. I even found myself getting kind of into it; it was sort of exciting. The end part of the fight is the worst part though. The torero goes and gets his huge sword. By this time the bull is huffing, puffing, and bleeding just about everywhere. He’s supposed to stick the sword into his spine in one hit. All of our matadors had to do it in 2 hits, except for the last guy. Anyways, he sticks the sword it, but it doesn’t kill the bull instantly. He walks around a little, clumsily, a little wobbly. All of a sudden, he just falls to his knees and falls over. It was really disturbing the first time to watch such a huge, strong animal, just fall to the ground like that. What more, they bring a couple horses and a cart out, attach a rope to the bull, and drag him off the ring. Then the sand scraper people come out, fix the sand just like on a baseball diamond, and then it’s time for the next bull.
One of the funnier parts to the bull fight was the people around me. Everyone brings their own bocadillo , or groups of friends will all bring different stuff. One friend will bring the bread, another the cheese, another the lunch meat, another the wine and the (gasp) plastic cups (yes Dad, Uncle Jim, Uncle Bob, and other wine-type folk reading this…plastic cups). Everyone was super friendly, though, and I was offered some stuff by people. Esperanza thought it was great and funny and was glad we were having a good time. I ended up trying 2 kinds of lunch meat and a piece of bread, haha. Esperanza and Maria Jesus were telling the nice man in front of us that we were from American and from Kentucky (which, I let slide since Jami and I both go to school in Kentucky, it’s easier to go with that). For the rest of the bullfight this guy referred to us as “Kentucky.” “HEY KENTUCKY—would you like some wine?”...although he said wine in some funny way because he was trying to speak English. It was kind of fun, haha. But I told him no to the wine quite a few times (they made their way through 2 bottles during the 2.5 hour bullfight), and also to the cigars. He was a little confused as to why we, young people, were not smoking, but I told him I didn’t want that cigar but thanks anyways. Haha. It was a pretty interesting experience.
OH, I almost forgot. When a matador does really well, the people give them a standing ovation and wave something white around in the air (a towel, a seat cover, a hat) so that the matador will get both of the bull’s ears. Yes, they get the ears for “winning”. Our 3 toreros were pretty good, the first guy not the best, El Juli was quite a show stopper, but I think I liked El Fandi the best because he didn’t have other people do the bandillero part; he did it all himself. There was one guy that took a horn to the gut and hit the ground hard (I may have a picture of it…), BUT the paper the next day said he didn’t die, so that was a good thing. Esperanza reassured me that all of the toreros were all “muy católico” and that there was a chapel in the Plaza de Toros where the toreros would go to pray before every fight.
Another neat thing about Las Fallas are the lights. Every neighborhood, besides having a falla (or ninot), has lights strung down their entire street. Our street has kissing swans; I really liked them, haha. There are a couple of streets that keep the bragging rights of having the best lights out of everyone. Calle Sueca and calle Puerto Rico have some pretty good ones…Sueca’s are definitely the most elaborate though. Once again, you’ll have to see the pictures haha. I could feel the heat coming off of these lights as I walked down its street. Very pretty, though.
It would be hard for me to try to explain the amount of people in Valencia during Las Fallas. I have it on my list of things to mention, but it’s hard to explain. You know I’ve had issues with the “walking strategy” here, but just add like hoards and hoards of people. There are a lot of tourists that come around, and it’s amazing how easy it is to pick them out. It’s also weird that I don’t really consider myself a tourist as much…although I probably take a ton of pictures as if I am one, haha. Sometimes the amount of people is really crazy and it would take us maybe an hour to get somewhere when it would usually take us maybe 20 minutes. During the Ofrenda de la Virgen there were parades through the busiest streets and in order for it to get done on time they would only let people cross the streets sometimes. We never made it to where we were trying to go that night because we just gave up. There was no point in fighting it, so we went to Starbucks.
Also during Fallas, we had our first trip to the beach. Actually, we had a few trips to the beach, so I guess here I will put various beach stories :) Let me begin my saying that the beach is beautiful. I will definitely miss living 20 minutes by tram away from a lovely, lovely beach. There are a couple different things though. Jami needed a beach towel, so we figured no big deal, just get one and the many beach shops that are always on beaches. There are NO beach shops. Anywhere. No stores with sun block, towels, sunglasses, games, nothing. None. I was really taken aback. I mean, that’s a huge money maker on beaches. There are only sidewalk vendors that sell nothing of importance as far as being on the beach for the morning/day. The other difference, although I was semi-prepared for this one, was the topless women. I knew there were going to be out in full force, but I guess you’re just not ready to see it when you do, haha. This next story is going to sound weird, but quite honestly a lot about my life here for the past 4 months has been weird, so we just go with it. Our “favorite” topless lady is Topanga. It’s so bizarre that we’ve given her a name. That’s not her real name, it’s actually the name from a character from “Boy Meets World”, but we thought it was fitting. Anyways, Topanga only wears a thong to the beach. She’s totally topless and only has a thong thing on. This would be one thing if she was just lying out and she’d be on the sand so we wouldn’t have to see her. Ohh no, She was DANCING and KICKING and doing Yoga and just doing all kinds of crazy things. Then she would run with arms open into the sea, which I’m going to go ahead and assume was really cold, and embrace the water. I guess she’s in her element or has embraced nature or found her happy place or something. But she’s out there like every day, not getting any tan lines, and doing some tae-bo and stuff out there. I’m almost temped to take a video from a safe distance just to document the ridiculousness. I realize that probably sounds creepy, but I only wish you all could understand how bizarre she is. It was almost like a train wreck…we didn’t want to stare but almost couldn’t look away. We were a safe distance away though and couldn’t really see anything. So, that’s a good story. There are also many vendors on the beach that walk up to you while you’re lying out. There you are, lying and basking in the sun, when one of various vendors walk up to you and set their wares out by your head, asking—“would you like some sunglasses?” Next person, “would you like a beer?” Next person, “Would you like a henna tattoo?” Next person, “Would you like a massage?”…and so on and so forth throughout the morning. The beer, tattoo, and massage people tend to leave as soon as you say no, but the sunglasses vendors are a little more difficult. We have to bust out the “you’re ruining my morning” tone with a few of them. Needless to say, I really do enjoy going to the beach—with sun block on!!—and will miss it when it’s gone.
Another place we went during Fallas was el Mercado Central. It’s a great market with in a really neat looking building, as if it used to be a church or political building at some point. It was a little creepy to see like bloody, skinned animals with buggy eyes…but I guess if you’re into FRESH meat then that’s the place to go. They also sell great fresh fruit and vegetables and I believe that’s where Esperanza goes to get our oranges most of the time. We bought some strawberries and a couple of kiwi—they were really good! While I’ll always love my Valencian oranges, it was a nice little treat to have something different.
A neat random thing about the Fallas that I have on my list here is that they are “planted”. Once they’re all built, they’re not officially done until they’re planted. They literally have like little patches of grass that they put around them with flowers and stuff! It’s kind of cool. I’m not exactly sure why they do that, but it’s just one of those landmark moments of Fallas, according to everyone who lives here. I guess that’s when you know it’s really in full swing.
A fun thing about Fallas (since there are soo many!) was that Esperanza’s other daughter, Azucena, who works in Madrid, was in town! It was so great to see her again as we hadn’t seen her since about the 2nd week we were in Spain. She is involved with business, so she’s also learning English and has been to the States a few times. She loves practicing her English with us, and she’s really good at it, too!! We don’t mind helping, haha. It’s sort of nice to hear a little English every now and again! Azucena (which means “lily flower”) was super sweet all through Fallas and came with us to see some stuff. It was sad when she left because we’re not sure if she’s going to be able to get in town before we leave to come home! But, we’ll send Esperanza letters and tell her to tell Azucena we say hi and stuff.
Another part of Fallas that Jami and I were having a little problem with was trying to remember that we were 20 years old and that we could not go to bed at 10pm and must try to live the Fallas life. I’ll tell you what, though, I was definitely not brought up to live the Spanish night life. I cannot, haha. I didn’t try terribly hard to live the Spanish night life because part of that I don’t feel like dealing with, but when nothing starts until around midnight, you can only do so much. When Esperanza told us that the fireworks started at 1am, we told her that was late! She said, “Late? You are in your twenties, you’re in the prime of your life, you need to go out, that’s not late”—ahh. So basically Jami and I are old tired women. However, we DID go out, all nights of Fallas, and it was a good time, haha. It’s just a little rough when you walk around literally the entire day going around seeing stuff and then are expected to be out until at LEAST 2am. It’s a tiring thing!! But it was fun and the pictures and memories are worth it.
A quick, funny Esperanza story—everyday when we were going to leave to see things around town, she would tell us to see the Fallas at the Plaza de Ayuntamiento. “Have you seen it? It’s great. You should see it. Go see it”. The only problem here was that we had seen it. From every angle. During the day and during the night. We’ve seen it. Every day she would tell us to go see it and ask if we’d seen it. I’m not entirely sure what the obsession was there, but it became a funny ongoing joke.
Another fun story! So I mentioned earlier in this blog (oh somewhere up there…) that Jami’s boyfriend, Andrew, came in town for the spring break. Well, he also proposed to her!! So, now they are engaged, haha. It was very fun and she’s very excited. I am excited for her as well. Since he was only in town for the week I told them I would go take some engagement type pictures for them by the area where he popped the question. Of course I made them do some silly pictures, but I think over all they turned out really well and they liked them. Esperanza was very happy about it (even though I think she already thought we were both engaged, not sure). She thought Jami’s ring was very pretty, and asked me, “Oh and so you’re going to get yours when you get back?” hahaha, ohh Esperanza.
Man, my list is getting a bit shorter… Keep it up! Thanks for still reading! You’re almost there!!
BUT I have to go for lunch and I think I’m just going to post this thing for now, and then finish it later!!
- Mood:busy
Hola amigos!
So I'm sitting at school, working on homework and photos from this weekend. Holy Week was fun! Sevilla and Cordoba were beautiful and I cannot wait to get the pictures to you :) I wanted to write a quick message to let everyone know that things are going well and also to post some pictures! Also, I'm here for school this week (we had no classes on Monday), but we leave again on Friday to fly to Madrid and see that city and Toledo! Should be very fun--I'm excited :) I can't believe there's only 25 more days!!
Sorry this is so short and that I haven't been able to post as much as I would like...I'm not sure why our teachers decided that NOW was a good time to assign papers :( But, here are some photos!! :)
BioParc (the zoo!!) 1:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
BioParc 2:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
BioParc 3:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
Teruel & Albarracin (an excursion we took with school):
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
Albarracin 2:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
Enjoy!! More later, promise!! Hasta luego :)
- Mood:busy
Hola friends, Happy my birthday morning to everyone in the states and around the world!
On this day I decided to give YOU all a present, for being so nice and ready my crazy times... photos!! Okay, I'm admittedly still not done with the Fallas blog, but it's really long. In the mean time, I'm going to post my pictures as a preview to the blog! :)
Enjoy. Love you all!
Corrida de Toros:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Lights & Fireworks:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Ofrenda a la Virgen:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Randoms:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Varias Fallas (the big statues :D):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
More Fallas and La Crema (the big fire part):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
And, this isn't from las Fallas, but this is the trip to Museo de Bellas Artes and our Climb up the Tower of the CAthedral:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
That should have you busy until more blog posts :D hahaa.
Miss you all!! See ya in 5 weeks ;D
hasta luego!!
- Mood:birthday!
Not a terrible lot going on right now...just working on some school stuff. We'll have some papers coming up and a presentation, but more exciting will be the trips coming up! Haha. This weekend we have an excursion with the school to Albarracín and Teruel. Sunday is my birthday (yay!) and we'll be going to a fútbol game. Next weekend is Holy week and we'll be heading to Sevilla and Córdoba. The weekend after that we're heading to Toldeo and Madrid. And THEN the weekend after THAT...will be our last weekend in Valencia! Wha? Whoa. Then our week in Italy and Greece and then from Athens to Frankfurt to Charlotte to Lexington--whew! :)
In the mean time before all that, we still have the French boys in our apartment this week. I am practically counting down the days until they leave. They are the most obnoxious guests we've had yet. Last night they were carrying on and being loud around 11:00pm and we were still trying to do some homework, and they were hitting the wall, and being a bit inconsiderate. They're only here to see touristy things, not go to class, where as our other guests have also gone to class. After they almost knocked the wall in, I about went over there and was going to bust out some RA skills...but, they don't know English and they also don't know enough Spanish for me to really tell them how I feel, haha. Once again, it's only a week...but we've just had such good guests before that they're really not painting a good picture for me.
Yesterday we had lunch at Rebecca and John's host mom's house and she made us some paella. She said hers was a little different than Valencian paella because she's originally from Madrid, so she makes a more Madrid-ish paella. (Not sure what the word is for that...something like madrileña). It was really good though! It was fun to see a different Spanish apartment other than our own and meet another host mom.
Well, we're probably heading out for lunch soon which I think is going to be chicken and white rice today. Oh, and an orange :)
Still working on the Fallas blog, though, don't think I've forgotten!! Haha.
Miss and love everyoneee.
¡Hasta luego!
- Mood: cheerful
So I'm still in the process of working on the Fallas blog amidst other homework, but it's just not quite done. It's a lot to write about! Haha. But in the mean time, I thought I would tell you about the past week or so.
So last week we had some other students saying with us: 2 Italian girls (17 and 18, from Milan) and 2 German boys (17 and 18, from Kaiserslautern). They were all a lot of fun and really nice. The Italians spoke Spanish pretty well, but the Germans had only had about a year or so. However, they knew English fairly well. They tried to have meals at the same time as us so that we could help translate what Esperanza was saying to them, haha. It was interesting to think that I translated Spanish into English to speak to the Germans, but spoke Spanish to the Italians. Hm :) Life is kinda weird over here, but it's a pretty neat experience all the same.
The Germans (I don't remember their names, sadly. They only told us once and it was hard to understand what they said) were pretty funny, although I don't think they intended to be. Now, Esperanza always gives us water with our meals, but these boys brought in cases of Coke and beer. But, the beer was fine because they're Germans. Apparently, that's how that works. Well anyways, the one day the German's teacher came by and took their beer. We asked them about this at lunch. Me: "So, your teacher took your beer" German 1: "Yes. She thought that we drank it ourselves...but...this was not true." German 2: "Teachers are shit." Me: "We're going to be teachers." German 2: "But you will be good teachers. They can have alcohol." --well, I decided not to go into too much detail about drinking ages and how no, my high schoolers aren't going to have alcohol for lunch.
Another day, the Germans came back from Mercado Central (the Central market, which is really neat, by the way). Esperanza asked if they got anything from the market. They bought a carrot and some strawberries. I still don't know why. What more, later they come knocking on our door. German 1 says, "Do you know how to open a coconut?" They had bought a whole coconut. Like, a real one. So, having picked up some internet in the room at that time, went ahead and looked up how best to open a coconut. Luckily we found a video! So, Jami, me, and Germans 1 and 2 watched the video and then proceeded to the kitchen to watch them try to open the coconut. HAHAHA...Okay, so Esperanza was like so confused, but was going to let them try to open it anyways. She gave them a knife to use, but I think it was a meat carving knife...it wasn't as heavy as the video showed. German 1 was trying to open this thing, but it was not budging. They did get part of the bark part off, but didn't actually crack it open as easily or with as much finesse as the guy on the video. Well, MaríaJesús was there too, and she went up to her apartment to get a hammer. She comes back and takes over...hitting the knife into the coconut with the hammer. I could not have imagined anything more ridiculous. Jami and I just laughed and took pictures, thinking how weird our life is right now.
The Italians were not so crazy, but they were super sweet and really nice. They were from Milan, the capital of fashion, as Esperanza told us ALL week, hahaa.. it was so funny. Anyways, they liked to go out and night and always wanted Jami and I to come too. I would have liked to but staying out until 4 on a weekday with getting up at 7:30 each morning just doesn't bode well, haha. They would always come bring us little chocolate dipped croissants after dinner or a piece of chocolate cake. We sat in the TV room and chatted a few times as well. They were just super sweet and enjoyed their time in Spain. We exchanged email addresses, but they were sad to hear that we were not going to be in Milan when we visit Italy. "You could have called us!!"--that coulda been fun, but we're not gunna be in that area. I don't know how to spell their names, but I believe it was Claudia and Eliza. Also, Italian accents are super cool.
So it was sad to see our friends go. By Sunday night they were all gone. But thennnn... Esperanza informed us that we were getting 4 more students to the apartment Sunday night! Low and behold, we now have 4 French guys, aged 15 and 16. Yuck... I'm going to try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they're rather immature and were super rowdy last night. Which, okay, I know they're younger guys, but I had homework, hahaa. Hopefully they'll be friendlier than the previous French ppl we had in the apartment. Currently Italians are my fave--haha. And of course, I try to take everything as a new experience.. so we'll just see how this one goes.
Oh, on Saturday we climbed to the top of the tower in the Cathedral! Omg. So many large spiral stairs....but, it was worth it :) I have a couple videos and some pictures from that that I'll try to be working on soon, but I have to finish that Fallas blog, hahaa.
The weather is on the crappy end this week...very yucky and rainy today. I feel kinda bad that the French boys are here for a week of bad weather. Jami and I are hoping to get to the zoo on Friday, but I just don't know if that's going to happen because it's due to rain all week. Esperanza said it should be sunny on Sunday for my birthday, so i hope she's right!
I've gotta get going though.. it'll be time to brave the rain and head back to the apartment for lunch. Hope everyone is doing well!!
Lots of love.
¡Hasta luego!
ps...we had our time change, so now we're back to being 6 hours ahead of the US. Ohh hour I'm sad to have lost you... It was a tired morning. haha :)
- Mood:
sleepy
Hello all, just wanted to post a quick update! I am still in the process of editing/sorting pictures as well as writing the big Fallas blog. In the mean time, I thought you guys might like to see a couple of pictures!!
Here is Jami and I with ESPERANZA at the bull fight! This isn't the greatest picture of her and you can't really see her face because she has sunglesses on, but there she is :) hahaa.
This is me at the bullfight again with a bunch of food that people kept handing me. You'll hear more about that in the blog. However, the smiling/laughing person behind me is Esperanza's daughter, Maria Jesus! I know you've read a little about here, so that's what she looks like! :)I've also uploaded some videos! (I'm so pumped I figured out how to put these on here!!! Haha)
La Crida (The invitation to Fallas by the Fallera Mayor. People singing Valencian anthems...view of the Torres de Serrano...3 weeks before Fallas even starts.):
Bull Fight (Corrida de Toros, torero (matador): El Fandi. The part where the guy throws the spears (bandilleros?) into the bull. Viewer Discretion is advised ;D):
Dolphin Song (Part of the dolphin show at Oceanografic!):
Ofrenda de la Virgen (Her dress is made entirely out of flowers and LOTS of people come to see her. Also, the band playing in the background is playing "our favorite song"...aka the song they played over and over and over until I had it memorized. Still cool though :) Enjoy.):
I don't have the video of the Eiffel Tower at night up yet, but thought you'd like to see these!!
I hope everyone is doing well and I'll catch you later!!
Hasta luego :)
Well, I'm back to school after a crazy week of the big festival, Las Fallas. You guys will so not believe the pictures when I put them up...but I am in the process of editing and sorting them, so I'll do my best to get them going and posted soon! I do not have the big blog post ready yet, but I wanted to post a little blog just to keep you guys updated!
There are currently 4 countries represented in the apartment this week. Esperanza from Spain, Jami and I from America, and we have 2 Italian girls, and 2 German boys! Whew. All using Spanish to communicate with each other, hahaa. It's pretty interesting. They're just in for the week so it should be fun. I have to say that Italians are some of the nicest people I've met.
I'm glad to be back into a routine. It'll get things moving again and keep things moving, which will be nice. I'm trying to see/do everything around Valencia that I want to do before we leave. Not an easy thing to do! And then in 2 weeks is my birthday (April 5) and after that we're going to Sevilla for Semana Santa and then Toledo the weekend after that and THEN we have one more weekend here until we travel! CRAZY!
I have to be going for lunch, but I'll try to post more soon. I look forward to seeing everyone again soon :) In the mean time, I just gotta keep doing my best to get the most out of Spain!
Hasta Luego!
- Location:escuela
- Mood:
hungry
Welcome to the long awaited Paris blog! I’m sorry this has taken me so long to type up, but things have just been crazy with midterms and then a ridiculous festival that was both fun and crazy. I’ll write up the blog for the festival soon too. You guys will just have so much to read and see with my pictures! Haha.
The 4 of us (me, Jami, Rhoda, Anna) met up at the Valencia airport in the morning since our flight was around 8:30 am. Our host moms had packed us bocadillos (sandwiches to go, kind of) to eat for lunch when we got to Paris. The flight went fine and we got to the Paris airport (Charles de Gaul, sp?), which is huge. Super huge. Luckily the website for our hostel/hotel included exactly how to get from the airport to the hostel, down to the terminal, which train, which train stop, which way to turn, and the street names (quick thanks to Colin for his suggestion to Aunt Kathy on that Europe-on- a-budget book which suggested that hostel!!). Before getting to the hostel, though, we had to get some train/metro tickets and get out of the airport. First, apparently within the European Union you don’t have to get your passport stamped when you enter a different country. I was so bummed!! I wanted a France stamp, haha. But, the lady said we didn’t need one since we came from Spain. Bummer. We found our terminal and some ticket offices. Thankfully a ton of people in Paris speak English. The metro/train systems in Paris are great. You can get passes that work for the metros, trains, and busses throughout the city, so we wouldn’t have to pay for various passes. The only train it didn’t cover was the one to and from the airport. So we had to buy, according to the ticket man, “one for to go and one for come back.” We also opted for the 2-day unlimited metro pass instead of the 10-trip metro pass…that was definitely worth it because I think we used it more than 10 times in the first day.
The hostel was great!! It was some classic French architecture…some kind of redone little place, and it was really, really cute. It seemed to be family owned and the people were just so friendly and nice about everything—much different from our “welcome” in Barcelona! Our room was on the 4th floor and we had to take these spiral stairs to get there. Now, I love spiral stairs, but walking up and down them was kind of crazy, haha. Our room was great. There was one bigger bed that Jami and I shared and then 2 other separate beds. We had a bathroom (yay!) and the shower was down the hall a little bit. The room was just overall cute, like the whole place, and we were happy to be there.
We decided to walk around the city near our hostel a bit (because we couldn’t begin to use our metro until the next day, to start the 2-days of its limit thing) to see what was around. We saw the Eiffel tower from afar. We stayed really close to Notre Dame Cathedral, so we hung out there a bit. It was just nice to start seeing the city and get a glimpse of Paris. The only downer was that it was really cold…much colder than we’ve been in Valencia. We saw the Louvre from the outside, too, and the famous river that runs through the city, but I can’t remember or spell its name. It’s something like Seine, I think (or at least that’s how spell check just told me to spell it). Either way I recognized it from the movie “Ratatouille” (the one with the cooking mouse from Disney). After looking around in the chilly weather, we decided to head to bed so we could get a good start to our day the next morning.
Another difference between this hostel experience and the one in Barcelona—breakfast. If you recall in Barcelona, we tried the breakfast, it was nasty, and we headed to the nearest Dunkin Coffee. In Paris, this breakfast was amazing. I actually still kind of miss this breakfast. The owner told us that rooms have to eat at the same time because they do their breakfast thing at once. That wasn’t a problem because all 4 of us just go together, ya know? They ask if people want coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, and then bring out this big tray. The tray has 4 of each thing, one for everyone. Everyone gets a bar of bread to spread stuff on (options being chocolate (like Nutella), cheese, butter, or fruit jam), a little fruit cup, a cup of orange juice, and a big cup for whatever drinks you asked for. Rhoda, Anna, and I shared the little pitcher of coffee they brought out to us. They also brought warm milk for the coffee and little sugar cube thingies. How cute is that? It was also delicious. And yes, I had the spread chocolate.
Our first stop for the day was the Arc de Triompf. I am not going to lie to any of you…I don’t know a lot about Paris, let alone France, nor do I know a terrible lot about history, especially France’s. So, I didn’t even know that the Arc de Triompf was there, nor what it was. However, I believe it has something to do with Napoleon and lots of soldiers. I was planning on googling it, haha. Regardless it’s still really cool and is really neat architecture. You have to walk underground to get close to it and under it, though. I thought that was a good idea because there is a lot of traffic around the Arc and tourists trying to walk across the street all the time probably aren’t the best idea. After getting some photos started of that, it was time to hop back onto the metro and head to the Eiffel Tower!!
The Eiffel Tower was hands down my favorite part of the whole weekend in Paris. We spent about 2 hours that first day at it taking the most ridiculous and fun pictures. I couldn’t believe I was seeing it, and still now as I type this I can’t really believe that I saw it. I think I felt like I was going crazy or that for some reason if I didn’t keep taking pictures of it that it somehow was just going to disappear. I was taking pictures on our way up to the tower from afar. My pictures start from far away, get closer, directly under it, and then slowly get farther and farther away the more we walked. Did I need to take over 100 pictures of this thing?? Who knows, haha. I have pictures of the tower, of me with the tower, me posing AS the tower, me with the big tower while holding a mini tower, me “touching” the tower, “kissing” the tower, “climbing” the tower, jumping in front of the tower. I’m sure we looked absolutely ridiculous, but it was an absolute blast. Those pictures are so funny, and all 4 of us have some great ones. I know I’m going to be borrowing some of their pictures off of facebook when all of this is said and done! The Eiffel Tower is super huge, too, by the way. I knew it was going to be big…but I guess I didn’t realize how big. It’s definitely taller than King’s Island’s Eiffel Tower, that’s for sure!! Haha. We did not go up into the tower. The options were to go to the first level, second level, or very top. I believe the very top cost like 12 euro, which is crazy. Either way, we were very content with our photos and before leaving planned on coming back for more pictures at night :)
After the Eiffel Tower photo shoot, it was time for lunch. We wanted a more cost efficient trip this go around, knowing that Paris was a pricey city, and had planned ahead of time just to find a market and go the peanut butter sandwich route. We found a store, got some bars of bread (French baguette!), peanut butter, plastic knives (that we’ve kept to use on future weekend trips), and a cold pop (French Coke! Haha). I think that day only cost us like 1 euro and something each (since we split stuff 4 ways), and we got to have lunch on a bench with a great view of the Tower. Not so shabby, right?
We ate lunch and had just drunk whole cans of pop and decided we should find a bathroom. We came across the weirdest public toilet I’ve ever experienced. On the upside, it was free. On the downside, it was bizarre as far as bathroom experiences go. You push the button, the door (which was more like a portal or something) slides open and then you go in. Your body’s pressure on the floor lets the bathroom know that you’re in there and the door shuts on its own. The toilet inside is not a toilet…it’s more of a bowl for catching purposes. You have to awkwardly squat over this thing and try to go to the bathroom into this bowl. In the meantime you’re thinking to yourself, “Why does the floor seem really wet?”—not I-missed-the-bowl wet, but an overall whole floor wetness. After going to the bathroom into the bowl (with no drain is what I’m saying), I looked around for the toilet paper. It was kind of like pulling napkins out of napkin holder at a restaurant. There is no flusher, but the stuff is in the bowl… And now, the fun part. After you’re done, you pull the handle to come out, all the while feeling weird because you cannot flush and the stuff is in the bowl. Don’t worry, though, because we then heard what happens inside the crazy portal bathroom. The door closes, the floor hinges open, and water rushes through the bathroom cleaning it out and sending it down under the floor (or somewhere). It was very bizarre… oh well, right? Haha.
Has anyone seen “National Treasure 2”? If so, then you have seen France’s sister to our Statue of Liberty! Now I’ve seen it too, from afar anyways. I haven’t seen ours in New York, but I think it’s probably bigger than this one. We didn’t see it up close, but got some good pictures of it. After that we headed somewhere else on the metro… As a general comparison, I still prefer Valencia’s metro, but I could be biased, haha. Barcelona and Paris’s are timelier, but they’re bigger cities so there are more people. However, I think Valencia’s has a smoother ride, personally. :)
That night we went to the Louvre! From the tip in my book (another thanks to the book!), we knew the days and times when we could get into the Louvre for free! We were able to spend 4 free hours in there and still did not manage to see everything. We did manage to get lost within the Louvre and see sections we didn’t intend on seeing, but it was still fun. I got to see the THE real Mona Lisa. There were soo many people crowded around her…and also, she’s smaller than I expected. She’s like…a regular sized piece of computer paper size, maybe. Okay, maybe a little bigger than that, but I guess I was expecting a mini-mural or something, who knows. I saw paintings and sculptures by all 4 ninja turtles—Leonardo (Da Vinci), Rafael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. I saw the Venus de Milo, aka “Girl with No Arms” as I call her. There was so much stuff to see that it was pretty overwhelming. Needless to say we walked a LOT. Oh my gosh the walking…I’ve never walked so much in my life than here in Europe, haha. It’s good for me though, right? :) After the Louvre we went out for some crepes, because when you’re in Paris, you need to go eat some French crepes. They’re pretty good! You can have regular food ones (like cheese and chicken) or dessert ones (like chocolate or cinnamon-sugar).
Here’s a nice little story about someone we saw while waiting for the metro. I saw a girl taking a picture with some guy and I figured they were friends. However, after the picture was taken, the girl, loudly, told the guy “THANK YOU!” to which he replied, “Where you are from?”—okay, this girl took a picture with the French guy for the sheer purpose of having a picture with a French person. To make matters worse, she answered him, yelling, “I’M AMERICAN!” I could have died. What a lovely picture she’s painting for our country, as she drunkenly stumbles onto the metro. I couldn’t believe it. Let’s have a little more pride in where you’re from and not go to other countries representing like that.
At some point we went to the Tour of Notre Dame Cathedral—also free!! Woo hoo, look at us go. There were tours by language. There were 2 English tours, one for native English speakers, and one for people that English was not their first language, but they knew it (aka, all of the Asians who were there since they did not have a tour for the various native languages). We had the French accent woman, but she was really nice and knew a lot. There is a lot of detail in the outside and inside of that building with lots of meaning behind it! Very crazy, you’ll have to check out the pictures (links will be at the end of the post!). Notre Dame means “Our Lady” so there were a lot of Mary things around it. The pictures really speak for themselves…it’s hard to explain some of the things just in a blog post, ya know? A lot of these things leave big impressions, but it’s just hard to explain them. So, I hope you enjoy those photos! Haha.
The four of us also went to the Musee d’Orsay. It had a lot of great art and was smaller than the Louvre, so we were able to see most of it. It was cool because it had a lot of Van Gogh and Monet and stuff. This is another one of those museums where I saw a lot of really cool stuff and really enjoyed it, but I can’t really explain all of the paintings, haha. I do have those pictures up, so I hope you enjoy seeing those as well! I took quite a few and a lot of the paintings are so neat.
The last night we went to Hard Rock Paris. Not going to lie, it was really nice to have some chicken fingers and fries. I thought about going the cheeseburger route, but didn’t want to kill my insides just yet. It was a little glimpse of being home…it was a nice halfway point dinner to have. Some music we recognized, food we liked, water for free! It was a really fun time and I’m glad we got to go. I mean, when’s the next time I’m going to be at the Hard Rock in Paris? Haha.
We went to the Eiffel Tower one last time, to see it at night. It sparkles at 10pm, too! :) I can’t believe I got to see it. It was so nice to see it during the day and during the night and to have fun with the pictures of it with friends. That night we headed back to the hostel, packed up, and got ready for the trip back the next day. We had our lovely little breakfast then made our way to the train. For some reason Jami and Rhoda’s weren’t working so Anna and I grabbed their bags over the turn styles and Jami and Rhoda crawled under the bars because we were not about to miss our plane. While on the train, there was an accordion player! That was kind of fun. After the accordion player got off, some creeper got on and was acting really weird. At the next stop, we all got off and ran forward to a different car so as not to be near him. All was well and we made our way back into the huge airport.
But the fun isn’t over yet. So, we’re making our way through security. I put all my stuff on the line for the metal detector and then made my way through the walk through metal detector. They don’t let you think about what you have on and let you walk through again, or else I may have noticed that I left my watch on. Instead, the woman proceeded to give me a total pat down and partial back rub. Then she did the wand thing, and low and behold, it was my watch. I wasn’t mad, it’s their job, so I just went with it, ya know? But THEN…we’re leaving the security area and getting ready to head to our gate. This woman from the conveyor belt scanner (she watches the x-ray TV) comes back and tells me (in French, so I’m clueless) that I need to come back to get my bags checked again. She sends me to this man who starts going through my purse. He’s looking and looking, going through every nook and craney. Once again, I don’t really care because I know he was doing his job and I’d prefer airports to be safe. I just wished that I had known more French because I would have asked what he was looking for and would have given it to him. So he’s getting really confused because there’s nothing in my bag. The woman who pulled me over comes over, frustrated, and takes my purse through the machine again. She comes back and motions that it must not have been my purse, it must be my little backpack. So she sends the little backpack through the thing, and (I assume) says something like “yeah it’s in here”. So again the poor man is going through my stuff and looks really confused and keeps trying to ask his co-worker what she’s talking about. In the end, there was nothing in either of my bags. Ha ha ha. Oh well, it happens, and we had plenty of time before our flight so it wasn’t a terrible inconvenience.
Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised with Paris. I didn’t know what to expect, especially with the stereotypes you here. However, that’s the point of these trips, I guess, to see for yourself what’s really out there. The people were incredibly friendly—well, the people in Paris. I cannot speak for all France. I’ve heard that Parisians are more use to tourists than other areas of France. Also, a lot of people spoke English. I actually heard a lot more English than I thought I would, but then again it could also have been other tourists. I didn’t feel like anyone was being rude. I will say that some of the people did smell bad…hahaa. Anyways, Esperanza was happy to have us home and we were glad to be back in Spain to get back into the swing of things. We really did have a good time though and I’m glad I had the opportunity to go. :)
And now--PICTURES!!
Around Paris:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Eiffel Tower:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
The Louvre:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
The Louvre 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Musee d'Orsay:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Notre Dame:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Hasta luego!!
- Mood:accomplished
Hello friends,
I have some internet in the apartment at the moment so I wanted to send a quick update your way. Fallas is getting into full swing and things are getting quite interesting around here. Well, unless you think fireworks going off all day is normal.. like until 3am and then again at 10:30am.. ya know, normal stuff.
I wanted to post my pictures from the aquarium and some other random things. I'm going to be typing up my Paris blog soon and then posting it when I have more internet as well :)
Oceanografico:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Oceanografico 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Some random pictures (you may have seen some of these already, but I added more pictures to the album):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
I'll be getting Paris pictures up at some point (might not be until next week.. we'll see) but hope to at least get the blog up soon so that I can start on a Fallas blog :)
Hope is all is well with everyone!! I hope it's warm at home. The beach was really pretty this morning :)
Love and miss you all!!
Hasta luego!
So this week has been very busy so far. I've really wanted to update with an amazing blog about my adventures in Paris. However, this week is midterms week so I've had 3 papers that I've needed to work on and finish before I can spend my usual hours on my weekend-trip blogs, haha. Also, I caught a cold (because it was very cold in Paris), and I've been working through that as well.
Esperanza has been very concerned about my cold and wants me to get better before Fallas. She wrote down the name of a cold medicine that I went out and bought. It works pretty well but makes me incredibly drowsy. I felt like a zombie for half of the day yesterday...but it was okay. While I didn't get as much of my paper done as I wanted, my nose was not running. I had a history of Spanish art midterm yesterday that was not a paper, but a written test in class. When Esperanza asked if I had taken my pills I told her no because I didn't want to be drowsy during my exam. She then looked through her cabinet and found an alkaseltzer type thing that she put in water for me. I had to drink it because, even though it wasn't as strong as the stuff I have, it would still help and wouldn't make me drowsy for my test. It tasted like nasty tonic water...but I drank it. Well, I took a sip of the water, then my hot chocolate, then the water, then my hot chocolate.. and so on until I finished it. Sigh. Anyways.. I feel a bit better today, so that's exciting.
Well, I just wanted to send a quick post so guys all knew I was still here, haha. I will try to update with the big blog soon :)
Miss and love you all!
Hasta luego
Do you think it's crazy that I'm going to Paris tomorrow? Because I do.
Truly though, that's kind of all that's going on right now. That and classes. Classes continue to go well and we have midterms next week, which I don't think are going to be very hard. I do enjoy my classes, though...although maybe not always the lit classes, haha. After midterms will be Fallas, and that's just going to be a crazy, crazy time. It really makes time seem like it's moving faster when I think of things like that. Fallas is a little ways past the half way point, I believe. 9 weeks left this Saturday. Lots of crazy things, haha.
We bought our tickets to the Corrida de Toros!! Bull fight!! While I'm excited, I'm also a bit nervous...I know it's going to be something very culturally different, and also a guy stabbing a bull with a sword a few times. However--I HAVE to go to at least one. I can't be in Spain and not go to one. I can't be a future Spanish teacher and not have gone to one, right? Totally. And, a very cool part, Esperanza is going to come with us!! Hahaa, I'm excited about that. She's excited too because we got tickets for the day with this one really good and popular bullfighter, El Juli. The bull fights run throughout Fallas, so they're only around for a little over a week during the whole time we're here. They don't happen all the time, just during festivals and stuff. The tickets started going on sale yesterday, the line at the Plaza de Toros was ENORMOUS, and when we looked online, 3 days were already sold out. We didn't want to wait long to get our tickets because we were afraid the day we wanted would be sold out. Jami and I walked in the POURING rain, got to the Metro, got to the Plaza, there was--magically--no line for where we needed to be, we needed 7 tickets sitting by each other, and they allowed people to buy up to 8--perfect!! So we got the tickets we needed :) And now, we're all going to a bullfight! Me, Jami, her bf Andrew who will be in town for the week, our friends Anna and Rhoda, Esperanza, and her daughter MariaJesus. Whew!
That's basically all the news I have other than our flight leaves tomorrow around 4:30pm my time (10:30am US time) and is about 2 hours so we'll get there around 6:30something. I'll have lots of lovely things to blog about for you all come Monday!! Haha.
And now, picture from Barcelona!!!
Around Barcelona:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
Walking Tour:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
Parc Guell & La Sagrada Familia:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
La Pedrera:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?ai
Enjoy!!
Hasta Luego :)
- Mood: hungry
How's everybody doing? Hopefully well. I had a pretty good weekend! And now I'm going to tell you about it, haha. I hope you've all caught up with the Barcelona update and the pictures. I have a few more photo links to put on here, but I'll be doing that tomorrow when I'll have my laptop on school. Side note, you can usually tell whether or not I'm using the school computer or my laptop by whether or not I use the accent marks and the fancy punctuation such as: ¡ ¿ ñ € etc. :) At school, the computers are in Spanish and have international keyboards, so I can do all kinds of fancy things here. It's been interesting trying to figure out where all of the buttons are... :)
Back to the blog at hand! Last Sunday night, right after we got back from Barcelona, Jami and I headed out to the Torres de Serrano because it was the official invitation to Las Fallas, La cridá. Basically a billion people go over there and the Fallera Mayor invites everyone to come celebrate Las Fallas. Note that this is happening 3 weeks before the real start of Fallas...this thing is gunna be crazy. Of course, after that a whole bunch of fireworks go off and they are louddd. Haha. They were pretty cool! The finale was a little scary because so many fireworks were going off that I felt my clothes vibrate, but other than that it was a pretty neat thing to see. I enjoyed when everyone broke out into Valencian anthems :) Pictures and possibly videos of that to come!
Fast forward a bit, still on the topic of Fallas. Yesterday, since it was the first of March, was the first of the Mascletá in La Plaça del Ayuntamiento at 2pm. Mascletá is a type of firework that is more for hearing than for seeing. They just set off all kinds of fireworks in the town square at 2pm everyday until the end of Fallas. Again, it was lots of fireworks and lots and lots of people, haha. I would say that there was an abundance of people, beer, smoking, and fireworks. It was still neat to see everyone come out for this thing, though. I keep seeing how the groups of people are growing and growing at this event, and I realize that I'm probably not going to be prepared for the amount of people in Valencia during Las Fallas. There have been fireworks going off at random times too, which is apparently a custom here haha. Little kids have those bags of the popper fireworks, the ones you throw on the ground. María Jesús says that there's probably around 1 kid a year that'll lose a hand becuase they're setting off fireworks. I hope that child does not live on my street, haha. Either way, it will be something spectacular, I'm sure.
On Friday, the friends and I decided to go see a movie since 1. they're not expensive, and 2. we've been here for a pretty decent amount of time and thought we'd understand the movies better this go around. We saw "Slumdog Millionaire", which won best picture at the Oscars. It was definitely best picture worthy! I really enjoyed it! There were times when I had to hide my eyes at some of the more...gross things, but it was definitely really good. Ah, and in case you're wondering, the voice actors only spoke in Spanish, not Spanish with an Indian accent, which I was actually a little concerned about. The really cool thing about this movie was that I totally understood everything. I really felt like I was just watching a movie, instead of sitting there trying to think about what they were saying. I know we must be getting better at Spanish because we watched the movie and really got into it... Jami and I got so nervous at times that we just kept eating and eating our popcorn, hahaa. This means that we rock at Spanish :) Haha.
Saturday was our trip to the Oceanográfico. Since we bought a double ticket for the reduced price and had to pick the date ahead of time, we had to go Saturday even though it was rainy and cold, lol. I love aquariums, so it was still a fun time, regardless of the rain. There's so much to see! I think the best will be when you guys get to see the pictures. I saw a beluga whale, which was neat since I've not seen a whale in person since Sea World. I was really upset, though, because I was so excited about seeing walruses, and the walruses were the only animal not on display because they were fixing their exhibit :( Oh well.. maybe the Cincinnati zoo will get some more someday, haha. We also saw a really cool dolphin show!! If I could do what those people did, I totally would. I'll just surf around and do leaping flips with dolphins all day long, hahaa. Even though it was a rainy day, there were still a lot of people at the aquarium.. it was kind of surprising. I'll tell you what, though, it's definitely a fend-for-yourself kind of place as far as taking pictures go. There was a woman who stood blocking the entire window of the dwarf seahorses and was video taping them and making kissy faces and kissy noises at them through the glass. I thought, "you've got to be kidding." Anyways, i got my pictures, but the lady was crazy :) Overall, we had a fun time, and I look forward to seeing the BioParc zoo sometime when it's sunny! Haha.
Saturday night we went with Rhoda and Anna with their host mom, Lola, to the Casa de Andalucía. It was suppose to be a free flamenco show and we brought our own bocadillo (packed sandwich). This was one of the crazy things I've seen. While in this place I finally thought to myself, "oh my, I am in a foreign country" haha. The decorations were crazy.. I don't know. I kind of felt like I was in a church undercroft or small church reception hall thing. The place was full, and I was excited to see some dancing. I asked the lady when the dancing was suppose to start, and she laughed and said "whenever they want to"...which apparently was not until after midnight. All I can gather is that one woman in their group was moving away and everyone was reading her poems about how nice she was...and I felt like I was in the middle of someone's group meeting, I was like, why am I here? Haha. Eventually the dancing started and it was really neat to watch. The best part was going with Lola and her friends because we were hanging out with grandma's all night. All of these little Spanish ladies were dressed up in their fur coats and all of it, oh my gosh they were so funny. So, even though it was weird, it was a good time.
Yesterday, Sunday, we got some Italian girls at the house. Esperanza did warn us about them coming this time, haha. I already like them tons better than the French boys. It's 3 girls from the north of Italy and they're staying for a week. They introduced themselves and shook our hands as soon as we met them and they also actually talk with us, haha. They're speak really good Spanish, but I don't feel terribly intimidated. I think it will be nice having them around for the week :) Although, I guess we'll only see them until Thursday because we're leaving for Paris that evening! Yes, so prepare yourself for another longer blog and more pictures. All of my time will be spent trying to catch up on pictures!! Haha.
Alrighty, time for lunch.
Miss and love you all!!
¡Hasta Luego!
- Mood: hopeful
Hey friends,
I'm going to go ahead and post the album links to a few more of my pictures. I don't have the Barcelona pics up yet, but all in good time lol. Of course, by the time I get Barcelona pics up I'll be having to be Oceanografico pictures up... ah well :)
Museo de Ciencias 1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Museo de Ciencias 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Museo de Ceramicas 1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Museo de Ceramicas 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
I have to split them between albums because you can only put about 60 pictures in each album on facebook, haha.
I hope everyone is having a great day!!
Love youuus
- Mood: happy
Jami and I took the metro and met up with Anna and Rhoda at the train station. Our train left at 8:35am, so kinda early, but really not that bad. It's about a little over 3 hours to get to Barcelona from Valencia by train, so we got there around 12ish. The train was nice because we were able to sit by our friends. The seating things are weird and you have to buy tickets all together to sit together, but we bought them in twos. Luckily, though we did all end up right next to each other. I really prefer trains to planes. I think it's because we're on the ground, haha. Anyways, this lady came by and offered us some little wrapped thing in a basket and we each took one. I thought it was going to be a little mint or something. It was an individually wrapped jelly bean. A single jelly bean. I'd never seen a thing like it, ahaha. It was good though :)
We took the Barcelona metro to the area where our hostel was (and I'll devote an entire paragraph or so to the Barcelona metro, so don't worry, I'm not skipping that part haha), which wasn't too hard to find. We get to our hostel that I had looked up online and we had done a lot of researching to make sure it wasn't so shady and that we'd just have the 4 of us in one room. It was also the lesser expensive of the ones we had found and it also wasn't full. We always book these things ahead of time, anyways. So we get there! I had made the 7 euro deposit, so I showed my ID and the guy told us when we could get our sheets and all of that. I also had to give him 10 euros for the key that I would get back when we checked out. I mean, that makes sense, but that was 10 euros I could have used lol.. but I will take it as an opportunity to save money (not that I'm spending a lot or anything). We get to our room, and there are 6 beds in it. Two of the beds had bed sheets that were not made because I guess whoever else was staying there didn't make their beds before they left that morning. The friends and I were not pumped.. it was suppose to be a 4 bed room, which is kind of why we booked it. Even though there are key lockers in the rooms, I mean we just didn't know who these people were, where they were from, or even what gender they were. Some of these hostels do co-ed bookings. BAck down to the front desk we went...
We explained to the hostel desk people that we were suppose to be in a 4 bed room. She was like "you must not have read the website clearly." I was like, 4 bed private room means 4 bed private room. This is not hard. So she tried to take the time to give us a lesson like "Well, we're really full, but I'll see what I have...you should read things more clearly..." and she found us a 4 bed room in about 2 seconds. Yeah, the hostel's really full, I can tell. Regardless, justice was served, we got our room. Okay, I don't want you all thinking that we were being picky girls or girls who didn't want to share rooms with other people. It's just kind of a safety thing, ya know? That, and we totally booked a 4 bed room. It was on my booking sheet. I showed that woman.
The room had a tap-in key kind of thing. It wasn't a slide card or a regular key, but more like a magnet scanner. There were 4 lockers in the room and you had to put in a 2 euro coin to lock it, but you got it back everytime you put the key back. Jami and Rhoda shared one and Anna and I shared one. I'll put pictures of the hostel up at some point.. haha. So after we settled in a bit, we headed downstairs to the common-room eating area since you can't eat in your rooms. It's a bunch of tables with chairs and things. Our host moms had packed us all bocadillos (long sandwiches on baguette type bread). Jami and I had scrambled egg sandwiches and a juice box (Esperanza thought an orange would get too messy) and our friends had good stuff too. It really felt like we were in middle school for a little while because we were all just sitting at the table with our packed lunches, Jami and I with our juice boxes, asking "Ooh what did your host mom pack you?"--hahaa.
This hostel was also a "green hostel". They're trying to save water and energy and all of that kind of goodness. Their way of doing that though, was really...fun to deal with, haha. You had to push a little button in the bathroom stall in order to turn the light on in your individual bathroom. The fun part about that was when it went off after a minute and you're peeing in darkness like "Whaat??".. so we had to push the light button while going to the bathroom, but it was a glow in the dark button, so at least we could find it in the dark, haha. The sinks were all push-for-water and even the showers were push-for-water. There were people moving about throughout the hostel. I heard a lot of French and there were a lot of Asians there, too. It's was just funny to me when an Asian person said "Hola" to me. There was also the issue of finding the men's bathroom. This wouldn't be a problem since we're all girls except that every guy on the floor kept walking by our room because they thought it was the men's bathroom. Our room was right by the women's bathroom, which means we ought to know where the men's is. I still never found it. I think they just started using our bathroom. Honestly, it might have been a co-ed bathroom, although I hope not because Jami totally saw some naked girl who did not have a towel when she left the shower. Hahahaha.
The rooms were fine to sleep in, minus it being outrageously hot in the room. The hostel had a good location and we were able to take the metro everywhere we wanted to go. Over all, I guess you could say we got a true "hostel experience".. hahaha.
Now I want to talk about the Metro. I use the Metro a lot in Valencia and I love it since we are now pros at mastering the Metro here. Barcelona's Metro... well, it has its pros and cons. We used it a lot because we bought a 10-ride-pass and used the whole thing by the end. The trains come on a quicker time frame than in Valencia. There will be a train coming to your stop every 3 minutes in Barcelona, so we always knew we'd be good on time. The trains were a bit wider than here, so there seemed like there was more room, but the ride was not as smooth. I felt like I was being thrown around a lot more there. But I have to tell one of my most favorite stories from the trip that happened on the Metro. It's one of those really-funny-after-the-fact kinda things. So, a LOT of people use the Metro and apparently people in Barcelona care for no one but themselves when it comes to Metro ettiquitte (I really don't know how to spell that right now, sry lol). We're trying to find an open area for the 4 of us to stand, and we see one, so we get on in that car. I see some lady trying to cut me off on the right, so I get in front of her so that Anna can get in after me and we can all stand together. This woman elbows into Jami, but then 2 handedly shoves Anna. I'm talking 2 hands, on Anna's back, SHOVES her while on the Metro. Anna turns around, "DON'T TOUCH ME", the woman, "YOU NO TOUCHA ME". Anna, "I WILL PUSH YOU OUT THAT DOOR, LADY". Rhoda, bless her heart, voice of reason, just says, "Anna, we're in a foreign country." And that was the end of that. Ahahahaha.. oh my word. You shoulda been there, oh man. AFter that I don't know where that lady went. I looked over and she was gone.. she either got off the Metro or walked down to a different car. "You no toucha me"... lol. Okay, so Anna did get a bit heated, but truly, that woman had no reason to shove Anna. It was weird, but funny to us now. It was an on-going joke through out the trip :)
Oh gosh I'm not going to get nearly finished with this before class. Okay I'm going to keep going--thank you for still reading!!--and then will continue after class. Hang in there :) Thanks so much!!
I think I can tackle talking about Las Ramblas before I have to go to class. Okay, Las Ramblas is the area of town in which we stayed. Our hostel was on the street just off of Ramblas and it's kind of a "hot spot" of town. I would compare it this area here, barrio Carmen. It has a lot of places to eat, tapas bars (but they call everything bars), and stuff like that. Lots and lots of street vendors too. Flowers, souvenirs, and even little street side pet shops. Lots of them!! With little mini fluffy bunnies!! Man if I could have bought one to save it from the street vendor, I would have :( There was lots of construction just throughout Bacelona. It wasn't as bad in Ramblas, but it was noticeable on the streets and buildings. There were lots of those creepy looking people with the make-up and costumes who look like statues and do things if you give them money. I'd seen lots of these in Italy last time I was there, but didn't expect to see them up and down Ramblas here, haha. Since it's a busy area, there are soo many people walking to and fro throughout Ramblas. Of course, I still haven't figured out a strategy to walking, but I guess I've just been being more observant about it. The thing that killed me was sidewalk rubber-neckers. There was an accident on the road, but not even really an accident.. just something going on on the road between a car and 2 motorcycles, and 1/2 of the sidewalk had stopped to stare at it. I'm talking absolutely standing still on one of the busiest areas on Ramblas. It was so bizarre.. lol.
Okay, I'm going to get ready to head upstairs for class, but then I will come back down and try to finish!! Gosh.. I haven't even started talking about my full days yet... :) Haha. More soon!!
........
I'M BACK from class.. and I'm just going to continue on this entry instead of starting a new one. You guys are already on a reading-roll, so let's continue! :)
DAY ONE
So we pretty much had a game plan before we left of the various things we wanted to see. We got some tips from my "Travel Europe on a Budget" book I got for Christmas as well as from Katie Boyd who is from Georgetown and is studying in Barcelona this semester. She was actually in Switzerland that weekend, but we did see her on Sunday, more on that later. The first day was Friday and since we got there relatively early, we locked the stuff up in the room, and headed out through Barcelona.
The first place we found was Parc Guell, a hugee park created by Gaudi. Luckily there were signs pointing us in the right direction because the construction sent us all over the place on our way there. This trek was also more uphill than Sagunto... I have pictures of how much uphill walking we did, haha. Luckily again, after walking a lot of uphill, in order to continue going uphill, they've put in escalators so we rode about 10 sets of those on the way up. Gaudi would totally build a park on some mountainous hill. I've gotta tell you though, it was definitely worth it. This thing was blowing my mind.. I'm not sure where or how Gaudi got his ideas, but this thing was crazy. Truly the best way for you to understand it will be to see my pictures whenever I get them up. I also bought a little book about the park in the gift shop (because I have to plan for a future classroom...right? lol) and you guys can read about it there too :) We walked all around it, sat on the longest bench in the world (I think in the world), and took millions of pictures. It was great! On the way back downnnn to get to our Metro stop, somebody stopped us and said "Be honest, is it worth it?" And we assured them it definitely was. The thing that got me about that guy was that he was definitely American. Not just that he spoke English to us, but I think it was the can of Budwiser he had in his hand.. I don't even know how he got that here. Regardless, they still needed to go see Parc Guell, as should anybody going to Barcelona.
After Parc Guell we walked over and found La Sagrada Familia, another work by Gaudi! (It was a Gaudi day, as you'll soon find out, lol). La Sagrada Familia is the oldest construction zone in the world because Gaudi never finished it. He's kind of famous for starting grand projects and never finishing them. Actually, Parc Guell was never finished either because after 14 years it was deemed a "failure" or something and they stopped giving him funding--lame. Anyways, La Sagrada Familia is totally beautiful, but we only saw it from the outside. Their tour of the inside and stuff was on the pricer end, even with the student discount. The friends and I decided to go to the Starbucks near by because really, when am I ever going to get to drink Starbucks outside of La Sagrada Familia again? :) It is crazy that you can just sit at an outside cafe and just be able to look at something like that.
We also walked around and saw two other works by Gaudi, La Pedrera and El Batllo (with an accent on the o, lol). They were really neat to see from the outside, but we went into the the tour of La Pedrera, so I'll talk more on that in a little bit. We went to see the Torre Agbar because Katie said it's just something we ought to see. It's just one of those buildings that's famous because it looks cool but nobody really knows what it's used for. She thinks it's the water company. The building kind of looks like a lava lamp.. it's hard to describe, but we went at night because it's only cool since it's lit up at night with red and blue lights. That'll be another picture you will have to see! Haha. We basically ended the night with dinner out at a Mexican restaurant. So, yes, now I've had Spanish Italian and Spanish Mexican. :) Haha.. it was pretty good though! And no, sadly, they do not give you nacho chips and salsa at your table here :( After that we headed back to the hostel, prepared a little of what we wanted to do the next day, and headed off to bed.
DAY TWO
We were excited that our hostel had breakfast included, but were upset when it did not taste good. We weren't expecting much, I mean we got some orange juice and some croissants, and we really just wanted to eat the cereal. It was one of those things where cereal was about all they had, and the milk was tasting a little weird. Lucky for us there was a Dunkin donuts down the road!! I promise I do not go out of my way to get American things. But when am I going to be in Barcelona having a Dunkin Donuts again? Ahahaha...
But really they have a great coffee and donut combo thing for really cheap, so it was great. Oh, and also, in Spain it's called "Dunkin Coffee" because they use a different word for donut ( I just can't remember what that word is lol).
I was really excited for day two because we picked up some flyers at the front desk of our hostel and there's a group called NonStopTours who set up meeting times and places and show people around and stuff. There was a 2 hour walking tour and it was free! Anna and Rhoda went to London before coming to Spain and did a similar walking tour from the same company, and they said it was really good. So we gave it a shot! Once again, totally worth it. There was no way we could have learned that much history or seen so many little interesting things on our own. Our tour guide was a British lady named Zoe who had been in Spain for about 8 months, she said, and she knew a lot of great Barcelona history. It was also super cool to listen to a British person talk, but that's just me, haha. The tour was free because she said you can decide how good you thought the tour was or not and that they take donations at the end if you want. We thought she did a great job and we loved it so we did give her a donation at the end.
She showed us around the Jewish sect of Barcelona and talked to us about the way the streets were built. She showed us the oldest synagogue in the world. There was one street that had a little statue up in this glass case thing. It turns out it was of Saint Eulalia (sp?) who was martyred when she was 13 years old to be made an example of. We were actually standing on the street that they rolled her down when they put her in a barrel full of knives and things. Kinda crazy. Zoe told us a story about one time when, it may have been before an Olympics.. Barcelona was going to hold an Olympics before the one they held in 92.. anyways, they were looking to build something great in Barcelona, but they wanted it to be sort of classic looking. A man named Eiffel came by and showed them some plans, but the people in Barcelona thought it looked too modern and it just wasn't going to be what they wanted. So in Barcelona, their Arc de Triumf (sp?) was built. Eiffel, on the other hand, took his plans to France where they loved his idea. They built his Eiffel Tower, but it was only suppose to stay up a year and then they were going to take it down. But, they decided they liked it a lot and so did other people, and so now the Eiffel Tower stays in France today.
What else did she tell us.. Ah! There's a story about a saint to slayed a dragon and where the pool of blood from the dragon fell, a rose garden bloomed. That day is April 23 and is celebrated in Barcelona. However, that's also International book day or something (because a few famous authors, like Shakespeare, died on that day). So to celebrate that day, in Barcelona, boyfriends give their ladies a rose, and the girlfriends give their boyfriends a book. We stood outside of Picasso's art school and also in the area that use to be the Red Light district where Picasso saw the prostitutes walk back and forth, using them as models for some of his works. We saw the Plaza of George Orwell, who fought in a war for Spain, so he has a Plaza dedicated to him with some art work in it. We saw pieces of architecture that are built on the remains of Roman ruins, and some Jewish gravestones that were used as building blocks for a few of the buildings throughout town. There was also another plaza, I think it was Saint Felipe or something like that.. either way there is a church there (the one Gaudi use to walk to and from every day). But the area was also used for executions during the Spanish Civil war. There are still shot marks and holes along the wall. Kinda creepy, but still interesting.
There were other fun stories and silly laws too. For example, nudism is not illegal, but there are rules. You either have to be fully clothed, or fully naked. You cannot wear pants and be topless. You either have to put a shirt on, or take your pants off. Also, if you're naked, you still have to wear shoes. It is not illegal to do drugs, but it is illegal to sell them. I guess you can only have enough on you for you, idk. Also, walking down the street while drinking is illegal (I guess our American buddy by Parc Guell did not know that). There are street vendors who sell cheap cans of beer, but when the police do their rounds, Zoe said that the vendors would hide their beer in the nearest trash can or something of the sort. So truly, who ever buys them is getting dirty trash can beer. Oh! All of the palm trees in Barcelona are not natural. They were brought in from Hawaii for the Olympics in 1992 and all of the beaches were redone with sand from Egypt for the 92 Olympics as well. The popular food dish, paella, was named that because some guy wanted to make dinner for his girlfriend, so it was called "para ella", or "for her", and then was shortened to "paella". Neat!!
So, totally worth it. I know I just threw like a million and two stories at you, but I really thought they were neat :) :) Thank you for still reading!! You're amazing!!
After the walking tour we headed over the Port Vell by the water where all the boats are. That's also where they have a statue dedicated to Christopher Colombus and his travels. We were looking for his ship, the Santa Maria. Our teacher told us that they created a replica of the Santa Maria and that we should go see it because it's great. However, we asked a police man where it was, and it turns out somebody had burnt the replica down 15 years ago. Why would somebody bother to burn down a replica of the Santa Maria ship? Who knows. But, that was a lil sad.
We decided to do the tour of La Pedrera by Gaudi because 1. it looked cool, 2. you could go to the top of it and look out on all of Barcelona, and 3. it was only 5.50 euros with the student discount :) It included a free audio guided tour of the place, so I learned about a whole ton of Gaudi stuff. You'll definitely have to check out the pictures because I won't be able to talk about all the stuff I saw, haha. Just know that it was great. One of the quotes I liked from the guided tour was from one of Gaudi's arquitecture professors: "We've just given a diploma to a genius, or a lunatic." That's kind of how I feel about his work too. It's crazy, just a little.. but it's still really amazing.
We ended the evening by heading over to see the FC Barcelona futbol stadium. There was actually a game going on that night, so things were really hopping over there. We took some good pictures. Their team is one of the more famous teams in Spain. The 2 big ones are FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. Of course, I'm a little partial to Valencia CF :) We had some tapas for dinner (I had tortilla de patata--see, I eat Spanish food too lol) and then headed back for bed. We had to check out of the hostel by 11 and our train left at 3, so we had some time to look at one more thing before leaving.
DAY THREE - final day, you made it!! :D
After checking out and having breakfast at the Dunkin Coffee, we met up with our friend Katie (from Georgeteown) who had just gotten back from Switzerland. We headed out to Olympic Park and got to see a lot of the things built for the 92 Olympic games. We even got to go into the Olympic Stadium! They also have a huge torch there, it wasn't lit, but it looked really cool. It was nice to walk around and see those sights before grabbing some lunch before heading back. The people at the train station were not being super nice. We were a little confused because our ticket said our train was to Valencia (of course), but they were telling us to wait because we were going to be on the one for Mallorca. It turns out that that they had a stop in Valencia, where we would get off, on their way to Mallorca. They could have just said that, lol. No jelly bean on this train, but it was still nice to be heading back to Valencia.
Overall, I was really happy that we got to go on this trip. It was a pretty nice adventure! I think we learned a lot, and not just by history book standards :) I can't wait for you all to see the photos! Still, I have a soft spot for Valencia and must admit that I do prefer it here rather than there. Barcelona is more city, more modern or metropolitan. Valencia is more.. pueblo than Barcelona. It's still a city, and I enjoy the city aspects, but I like that it's a little bit more "small town" than Barcelona.
You did it!! You made it to the end!! Thank you SO MUCH for reading all the way through that if you did :) :) I know it was a lot, but if I don't write it down, I'll never remember it all, haha. I'll talk about the thing I went to Sunday night on a different day, haha.
I'm off to eat lunch. I hope you all are having an amazing day!! Miss you all and love you lots.
hasta luego!
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