A day in Ronda

This past Friday, ISA took us to Ronda for a day trip. It's actually quite a historical city, but you can look up all the details about that because I don't want to bore you all with more information, I just want to excite you with my adventures!

So Ronda is home to the oldest bullring in all of Spain, and that's where we went first. Our program directors Tamara and Carmen told us all about its history and what bullfighting actually consists of. We then got to actually go out onto the sand of the ring where thousands of fights have been held. Being the fun people that we are, we decided to mock bullfight and got some good pictures out of it. The bullring has a whole museum dedicated to the history of the bullfight and what matadors do. There is also an equestrian school within the building and we got to see some of the students practice.

After the bullring we headed to the new bridge which was built in the 17th century. It was pretty cool because it was over this massive gorge called Tahoe. It was so deep that we couldn't even see the bottom! After about 2 hours of tourist activity, we went out to explore the city. We found these really awesome shoe shops. Of course, us girls gave in and I got some beautiful shoes that I know Meredith is going to be jealous of. We also stopped for some gelatto, and it was the best icecream that I've ever had...even better than Bubbling Brook's! We didn't stay very long in the city, and were back in Sevilla by 5:30.

Unlike the rest of my weekends here, it was pretty low-key. We went out walking Saturday to try and explore Sevilla a little bit more, but instead ended up at some riverside cafe's for sangria and girl chat. This weekend was very relaxing and definitely helped to prep for this upcoming week because I leave for Morocco Friday morning at 5 am and Semana Santa is going to be absolutely crazy here in Sevilla.

I'll try to make sure that I post about Morocco as soon as I get back next Wednesday so that way all of you have more adventures to read about and don't have to wait like last time. I miss you all and hope to hear from you soon!

You are funny girls

Barcelona, even though I was there almost two weeks ago now, was by far one of the best trips that I have taken. Caroline, Sam and myself flew out right after classes on Thursday and arrived in the Catalan city around 8 at night. Since we couldn't check into Mambo Tango, our hostel for the weekend, until later that night we decided that we would take a leisurely walk around the main part of the city. Thankfully we had a really good map, because we managed to find our way from the airport to the center of the city in under an hour and got to see Placa Catalunya all lit up at night. We then made our way down Las Ramblas, which is the most famous avenue in Barcelona and eventually found the hostel around 10:30.

Mambo Tango is definitely a very interesting place when you first walk in. It has a very hippie feel to it, but the people who work there were a lot of fun and helpful with anything that the girls and I needed. Toti, one of the owners gave us a full tour of the building and introduced us to some of the other travelers staying there. After we had settled into our room and locked our things away, we headed downstairs in search of some food. We were absolutely starving and hadn't really eaten anything since lunch. Good thing everything in Spain stays open really late so we were able to find a really good place to eat. Toti sent us to one of his friends restaurant where we were able to get some real authentic Catalan food. We got some hummus, some potato pancake type thing, lots of break, and these salted potatoes with a honey sauce. We also each had a glass of Cava, which is the Spanish champagne from that region. We pretty much stuffed ourselves as much as we could and then headed back to the hostel to get some rest before a busy day exploring what Barcelona has to offer us.

PRIMERO DIA
We woke up bright and early for us, around 7:30, to beat everyone else to the showers and to get down to breakfast. Coffee, cereal, toast, and fresh fruit was the perfect thing to get us energized for a long day of walking and touring on our own. There were quite a few other travelers that had the same idea of getting up early and we met a few, but most were leaving that day to head back home or continue onto other cities. Toti and Marina, his girlfriend, gave us a few good ideas of what to go and see, but we had done a little bit of research before we left Sevilla and Sam also had her handy tour book that gave us a lot of information that wouldn't have been able to get on our own.

We headed back towards Las Ramblas and made our way to the information booth to buy our Barcelona Cards. They really are a great way to get to see what the city has to offer, plus it covers public transportation and has lots of discounts to different museums and cultural activities. Plus it really motivated us to get out and see everything that way we got our moneys worth, you know how college students are.=]

The first stop that we hit was the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. There was a lot of construction, which you can see from the cranes in my pictures here, so we didn't go inside. But it was absolutely amazing to see all of the detail that Gaudí put into his design. The construction of this building has been going on since 1882 and isn't schedule to be finished until 2026! It was pretty cool to see it though and we were glad that we could see what the architect tried to envision for his clients.

Continuing with our Gaudí theme for the day, we headed even farther out of the city center to Parc Güell, another landmark by the famous artist. The climb up the hill was absolutely crazy from the metro station, but since we got a little bit lost, we actually found an escalator that is cut into the side of the gigantic hill, so it ended up not being too bad of a climb up to the park. Unfortunately when we got there, the skies were really hazy for some reason that day even though the sun was out and the weather was beautiful, so when we got to the top view point of the city we couldn't really see much but the haze. We were a little bit disappointed, but still had fun exploring the park and trying to find some cool places for fun pictures. I'm not sure if any of you actually know this, but one of the cycles of America's Next Top Model had a fashion show in the park, so we went in search of the tunnel, found it, and did our own model walks and poses. We had a lot of fun just getting lost and seeing all of the crazy art that was in the park. It was also really awesome to see so many little kids out in the park exploring and learning about their city's famous artist.

This city has so many important artists in history that are showcased throughout it, so we made our way to the Picasso Museum. It was really cool because it was a personal collection that Picasso's secretary kept and created a museum for the world to come and look at. It had paintings from when he was 12 all the way up to some of his last works. It was awesome to see the transformation from very realistic portraits and lifescapes to his abstract paintings that he is most known for. We even got to see his interpretation of Velazquez's "Las Meninas" which was really impressive.

Next stop was the Museu de la Xocolata (Chocolate Museum), Sam's favorite place in Barcelona. She had been talking about going there since her guidebook said that it was one of the hidden treasures of the city, plus we got a discount with our Barcelona Card. Not only did we learn about how chocolate is made and how Europeans came to love it so much, but there were all of these awesome scenes and sculptures created out of chocolate! Like this one here, it's a bullfighting scene. There was even a portrait of Salavador Dalí, one of my favorite artists of all time! To finish of our tour of the museum we went right up to the counter where they had fresh chocolate concoctions of all different kinds. The woman at the counter was really nice and kept feeding us chocolates and didn't make us pay for them. We ended up buying quite a bit of different kinds of truffles and bit sized chocolates and ate them all right away. My new favorite kind of chocolates are dark with tea. I wish that I could have gotten more because they were AMAZING and I could eat them all the time. They were absolutely delicious!

After the Chocolate Museum we tried to make our way to a few others but they were all closed or closing. So we headed back towards the hostel. On our way we stumbled upon this market. It was really cool because there was fresh EVERYTHING! Fruit, meat, vegetables, candy, fish, there were even bars inside of this place and it was massive. People shouting in Catalan and trying to barter. It was pretty cool. We stocked up on some coconut and tried these delicious shakes. Mine was mango, coconut and strawberry. I suggest trying it, and I'm going to try and make some when I come home. We also stopped for dinner at this really cool looking restaurant that was close to our hostel called El Consulado. We didn't get quite Catalan food this time, but I had the most delicious crepe. It had chicken, apples, walnust, raisins, and some sort of cheese in it. It was soooooo good. When I go back to Barcelona, I'm definitely going back to that restaurant just for that crepe.

The Barcelona futbol team was playing Valencia that night, so we meet up with a bunch of other people staying at Mambo Tango, made some friends, and watched the game on the big screen. I think that Americans are bad when we watch our football, but Europeans are crazy, even when it's not they're team that's playing! I was pretty sure someone was going to through a shoe at the tv before the game was even half over!This picture is the group of all our new friends from all over the world. We had a blast and we're all going to stay in touch and maybe visit each other over the next few years...lol.

We called it a relatively early night for us that first night because we had a lot more exploring to do the next day...

SEGUNDA DIA
Up early again for breakfast on Saturday we planned out our day around the Barcelona Card again. We started off our day with Gaudí's Pedrera. It was an apartment building that he designed for the Mila family in the early 1900s. It is a pretty impressive building, and once again full of fun details for those who get to go and see it. We were trying to go and find another museum but got sidetracked when we saw another fun building which lead us down to the Marina. We made our way down to the Column of Columbus, which we wanted to go up into, but it was closed, along with a lot of the other free museums we wanted to go into. But that's alright because we did a lot more fun exploring that we probably wouldn't have been able to do. We ended up back near the Picasso museum and had lunch at this cute little hidden cafe where I had a delicious sandwich and great coffee. And we had some gelatto for dessert which was delicious as well. Afterwards we went to the Museum of Natural Science, because Sam is a huge science geek, but we love her anyways. Caroline got really freaked out because all the stuffed animals looked real and a few "tried to attack her" which was kind of amusing, until I saw the polar bear! We also got to see the gorgeous park that surround the Museum.

Right across from the park was the Arc d' Triomf. There we met up with our new friends from Venezuela, Laide and Alexis. I swear that every Spanish city we go to we run into people either from our program or new friends that we probably wouldn't have seen again after that day. But these two have been in England for the past two years nannying and learning English. They are the cutest married couple! And they were so excited to finally be going home after being abroad for so long.

After our meeting with Laide and Alexis, we tried to walk over to the fun looking building that we saw in the distance. Unfortunately, we didn't realize it was a lot farther away than it looked. But that's alright because we found these fun parks and more fun artwork. After a long afternoon of exploring we headed back towards Mambo Tango and hit up the market again for some more fresh fruit and then back to the hostel for a little bit of a rest and to drop off our souvenirs. There we met up with Chris and John. What started out with "do you fancy a coffee" turned into a lot of coffee, then beers, and then the decision to go out and explore the Barcelona nightlife. Sam's friend Barrett even joined us at the bar we started out at and then showed us around, taking us to some really cool local spots that we never would have found on our own. Unfortunately the boys all had flights home the next morning, but we exchanged emails and hopefully will be meeting up again during our travels over the next few months. We all headed to bed pretty late, but the girls and I knew that we had to get up the next morning and prepare to leave Mambo Tango.

TERCERA DIA
The next morning was a little bit harder to wake up because we had stayed out so late the night before, but we packed up all of our things and made our way down to breakfast. There we met Alex from El Salvador and decided to explore the city with him and his Brazilian friend. We decided that since it was such a beautiful day that we would go down to the Marina and rent some bikes. Since we had already seen all of the super touristy things that the city had to offer, we just rode around and found more parks and fun buildings. After an hour, we were pretty hungry and headed to this awesome sushi bar for lunch. This place was ridiculous! There were these conveyor belts that kept going around in circles with all sorts of sushi and Japanese food. It was so much food, and we only paid 8 Euros! We ate so much food, I wish that we could have stacked up all the plates to see how much we actually ate! All you sushi lovers would definitely be jealous and want to check this place out if you ever make it to Barcelona. It was right on the Marina and in the perfect spot to bring in a lot of happy and hungry customers.

After lunch we made our way back up Las Ramblas and watched some crazy street performers doing crazy stunts and saw some of the most beautiful street art. We also decided that since it was starting to get late we needed to head towards Plaza Espana for the light, water and music show. It was great how they made the water and lights play to the wide variety of music that was playing. Barrett met up with us again there that night and we decided that we were going to go out just for a few beers and some food because we had an early flight the next morning. BUT... Barrett convinced us to stay an extra day that way we could go with him to his beach house in Premia d' Mar just north of the city. We grabbed our stuff from Mambo Tango, said goodbye to Toti and Marina, and took our bags to his friend Alexis' apartment. Toti was so cute when he said goodbye too. He gave us the best compliment I have ever heard, "You are funny girls." He told us how he enjoyed when we would talk to him and that we weren't like the rest of the American girls that come through their hostel with their noses stuck in the air and not willing to try new things or learn about the Catalan culture. He is the best and we'll probably stay at that hostel again when we go back. After we left, we went out to this fun salsa bar and danced the night away, skipping our flight to stay and have even more fun than we were already having in Barcelona. We thought that it would be pretty simple to just get a bus or train back home to Sevilla, but that definitely was not the case.

Saturday we spent a majority of the day just bumming around in the beach town. Barrett showed us around, took us out for lunch, made us dinner, and we exchanged a lot of stories. He basically became a brother that weekend with all the jokes and sarcasm that was flying around. Sunday morning we all got up early so that we could make it to the bus and train station to grab one home, but little did we know that nothing was available for us. Needless to say after a lot of stress (more for Caroline and Sam than me) we made our way home on a night train back to Sevilla, but it was totally worth it to stay in Barcelona and make good friends with Barrett. He's actually thinking of coming with us to Italy in the next few weeks!

Barcelona was an absolute blast and anyone who ever goes there will probably have the same reaction that Caroline, Sam and I had and decide that they want to stay longer than just 3 days. Therefore, I suggest that you plan on that, and not just skip your flight like we did. But needless to say, we had a blast and it definitely set the bar high for the rest of the trips that I have planned for the rest of the semester.

Lisboa and the rain...

I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to write an update on my life over here in Europe. I talked to mom and she told me how a few of you were worried. I’ve been on the go quite a bit lately between Lisbon and Barcelona plus studying for midterms (yes I am still studying even though I’m such a globe trotter). But Here is a little description on my time in Lisbon two weeks ago.

Friday February 22nd, we left bright and early for a 6 and a half hour bus ride to the beautiful Portugal capitol of Lisbon. The bus ride wasn't too bad because I slept most of the way, and therefore missed the border crossing, but that's alright because borders in Europe now are like traveling through the US, so I didn't miss very much.

We got to the hotel Fenix around 2 in the afternoon allowing us some free time to roam the city and grab some lunch. It’s absolutely beautiful and we got a chance to see some of the architecture before the rain set in. That Friday we didn’t really have much time with the group and right after dinner, I went straight to bed because I was exhausted from the traveling of the previous weekend and classes. Everyone else went out though and scooped out the nightlife for me for that Saturday =].

The next morning we woke up bright and early and had a delicious breakfast ( I had the best cup of coffee I've ever had there). And then we set out into the dreary day to do some sightseeing of all the historical aspects of Lisboa. Our first stop was the long walk up to the most beautiful viewpoint of the city. The bridge in the distance looks just like the Golden Gate and there's also a gigantic statue of Jesus looking over the bridge to protect all those who travel in and out of Lisbon. We got a great view of the port and all of the other places that we would be going to visit later that day.

Our next stop was the Jerónimos Monastery and Cloisters. This building was absolutely beautiful! The architecture and decoration was amazing. If you check out my picture webpage here http://picasaweb.google.com/caitlin5487 After monastery and the cloisters we headed out into the blustery weather outside to go to the tower of Belém . It's this really cool tower that was built both as a gateway to Lisbon and as part of a defense system of the entrance of the Tagus river and the Jerónimos Monastery.

After we experienced the city, a few of us decided that we were going to head to the little city of Sintra on the coast. It's this beautiful little scenic town that's about an hour outside of the city. We took a bus tour of the village, and the bus driver was INSANE! He was probably going about 50 to 60 miles per hour on these tiny little windy streets and hills. We all thought that we were either going to die or have the ride of our lives. Fortunately I'm still here, so it was definitely a great ride.

Even though the weather was still horrendous and by this time, we decided to take the 30 minute bus ride to Cabo de Roca which is the farthest point West of Europe. It was pitch black the whole ride there but we got to the edge of the world just as the sun was setting and came from underneath the clouds. It was gorgeous!

Later that night a bunch of us tried out the traditional Portuguese cuisine. It was quite an experience trying to figure out what we were eating when none of us really spoke any Portuguese. We all ended up with something completely different than what we thought, and it was delicious! And after dinner a bunch of us headed down to the docks for some dancing.

The next morning we headed back to Sevilla on another long bus ride. But Lisbon was a lot of fun. Not my favorite city, but it definitely made me want to head back there some day. Even though the weather was pretty ugly for a majority of the time that we were there, Portugal is a beautiful country, and I'm glad that I went.