Spain, Day Nineteen

Wow, blogging is hard to keep up with when you are busy trying to experience Europe! Fortunately for me, today's post is rather short so it won't take much to fill you in. We started the day off by going to class, where our teacher had a nerd moment. Pretty much the whole class about this area of Madrid called Lavapies, which is currently a hipster area by the Reina Sofia museum that has a lot of multicultural restaurants and things. But it has a lot of history, which is something that my professor is actually writing a book on, hence the nerdy class period on all you need to know about Lavapies (pronounced "lava pee ay z"). Apparently, it began as an area where the Jews who got kicked out of Madrid were sent to live, so there is a lot of Jewish history going on, but you certainly can't tell now. There are no Jews or synagogues to be found. After she gushed to us about every event that had happened there from its creation to present, our professor took us on a walking tour all around the neighborhood. It mostly looked like a bunch of Thai restaurants though. We also saw a lot of people walking their dogs which was pleasant I guess. I miss my pets. Additionally, we also saw plenty of people making out on the sidewalk. I will never get used to how openly people display their affection here. Gross.

After our walk, Maria and I headed home for lunch and to rest before the evening's activities. We had signed up to go to an intercambio (holla at your palabra del dia!), which means "exchange" in English. It was coordinated by the study abroad company with a class at the local university where we could practice our Spanish with them and they could practice their English with us. It was pretty fun actually! I thought it would be scary but it was a pretty helpful experience. Would totally do it again. So after the intercambio, we just headed home to do some homework, prepare our stuff for our flight to Rome the next day, and just rest. A pretty decent day if you ask me. 

Spain, Day Eighteen

Today, we had another one of our classroom day trips to the cities surrounding Madrid. Our destination today was Segovia! There is so much history and beauty to this city; I don't even know where to begin. We arrived in the city at 10:30 and met up with our guide who was waiting for us beneath the Roman aqueduct that was just beckoning us to come investigate it. If you aren't familiar with what an aqueduct is, it was pretty much the world's first plumbing system, but invented like 1500 years before real plumbing and electricity.

Don't let the picture fool you. These aqueducts are actually freaking huge.

I actually learned a lot about how this aqueduct specifically works. It was supposedly made in 1 AD, although they don't have any official documentation on it. That is just the bestimate (I just made a new word: best + estimate) that the archeologists have made. The aqueduct runs a total of 15 kilometers but only one of these kilometers is actually above ground which is the cool part that you can see in my picture. This one is actually the best preserved of all the Roman aqueducts still in existence. The last time it worked was in 1921, but they think they could get it to work again with a little bit of tweaking. The coolest part about this structure is that there is no cement holding it together whatsoever. The stones were carved and angled just perfectly enough that they fall together and support each other to stay up. On the inside of the aqueduct there are big wooden beams in the part that comes to the ground and then the piping for the water is in the top most part of the aqueduct and stays horizontal the whole time. Pretty neat stuff. Those Romans were smart.

We proceeded throughout the town and saw some pretty neat landmarks along the way, as seen below:

A nice view of the town with the mountains in the background.

The cathedral where Queen Isabella's coronation took place. This is also the last Gothic cathedral to ever be built.

However, our next official stop was at the alcazar. This is our palabra del dia. I have used this term before but I feel the need to explain it now because I actually understand its significance. An alacazar is an actual royal castle where the king and queen resided. Then they just have regular castles, called castillos, where nobility lived but not the royal fam. Good to know. This alcazar has definitely been my favorite out of the ones we have seen so far. It was everything I was expecting from the one we saw in Sevilla, please note the knight armor that is pictured below. Segovia is a true medieval town though, so it didn't disappoint this time. The architecture and decoration in the castle was just amazing and it was settled up against a huge cliff that overlooked the rest of the town. A pretty good location if you ask me. Here are some of my favorite things that I saw on this tour:

The alcazar! It had a real draw bridge and everything! The mote didn't have water though... weird.

See this is what I'm talking about. Real knight and horse suits of armor. This was my kind of castle.

The throne room! Can you hear the Game of Thrones theme song playing in your head like I can?

The view from the back patio of the castle. It's lofted over the cliff so you better hope you don't fall off. That's how one of the princes died...

The King's hunting weapon of choice. Wanted to buy it as a souvenir but they told me no...

By the end of the day, I was completely worn out. I napped for a good two hours when I got home and still went to bed early, which is why this post is coming to you a day late. Segovia was great though. I would love to go back someday in the future and spend a little more time there exploring and hopefully see the aqueduct running if they ever choose to fix it up.

Spain, Days Sixteen & Seventeen

Another double post. Surprise, surprise. Sorry! Getting caught up is difficult. I guess I shouldn't let myself get behind too much in the first place. Anyways, Sunday was our day to travel home so it wasn't terribly eventful but there are a few things worth mentioning. We had originally thought we would try to go to mass at the Seville Cathedral and then head home but after our bout with the snails and shots the previous night, we decided sleeping in sounded pretty okay. So instead, we decided that we were going to go to that really old bakery for breakfast and then have our driver pick us up from there. Well. Things change. Our driver called us around ten and was like "So someone else is coming with us, can you come to the train station instead? It's not very far." So we were like sure. Then we looked up the train station and its a mile and a half walk from where we are! Normally this would be fine, but we had all of our overnight stuff with us, which was very heavy and awkward to carry with us all the way to the station. It took us thirty minutes to get there. I was not happy.

But we made it in one piece so I guess I can just chalk it up to extra exercise now. Our extra passenger turned out to be this hippie dude who goes to Berkeley in California. I learned some very valuable things from him. 1) He taught me to play chess on his phone, which was exciting because I've always wanted to learn how to play chess. Apparently I wasn't very good though because he stopped playing halfway through the game. Either that or he just forgot to play me back because he started talking about something else. He seemed rather scatterbrained. 2) He gave me some words of wisdom on how you just gotta do it, man when it came to me telling him about all the places we would have liked to travel to while on this trip. I thought we had done a good job to at least tie Seville and Rome into this program, but apparently that was not enough for hippie man. I told him we didn't have the time or money to go anywhere else, but apparently no matter what I said, his reply was that you just gotta do it.

The cherry on top of this lovely experience was that our driver got to the ghettolicious outskirts of Madrid, kicked us out of the car with little warning, and promptly drove off. It's a good thing they don't tip cab drivers in Spain, because this guy certainly wouldn't have got one. It was a thirty minute metro ride back into the city for us (about 25 stops). Kinda ridiculous. I was seriously missing our first driver who had the nice brand new car and had picked us up and dropped us off exactly where we wanted. But it was definitely an experience for the books. We made it home safely, and that is what counts.

I spent the rest of Sunday (and pretty much all of Monday other than going to class) doing homework and getting rested up from my amazing adventure in Seville. I definitely recommend going if you get the chance. It's like a beautiful little paradise in the middle of a desert-ridden country. So much good food and a very friendly atmosphere. Plus, all of the amazing attractions I just enlightened you on. I know I'll make it back there again someday.

Spain, Day Fifteen

Exhausted from the previous day's adventure, we decided to sleep in a little, getting up around 11:30 and then showering and primping until 12:30. We decided to have an early lunch and then get the ball rolling with our next action packed day. You will never guess where we ate lunch... 100 Montaditos! Those prices were just too good to pass up. I learned yesterday that four montaditos was one too many and carefully selected two new ones for lunch along with the delicious goat cheese and pesto one (I seriously can't get enough of that). We finished up lunch right around two, which was the time designated as near perfect if you want to bypass all the lines at the Seville Cathedral, our big attraction for the day.

Although, on our way to the cathedral, we were intercepted by these weird gypsy ladies who grabbed our arms and started telling us our fortunes. No matter how hard to tried to get away, they just wouldn't let us go, so I got swindled out of seven euros, which would have been like two meals at 100 Montaditos... So angry. I didn't even understand what she was saying most of the time. The only thing I got from this "fortune" was that I will be having two children. It will be interesting to see if that is true or not.

So we finally bypassed the gypsy ladies after they stole our money and we gained admittance to the cathedral, again with a student discount. Holla at euro pinching though! But really, I can barely even begin to describe this cathedral. I thought it looked big from the outside, but my goodness it was even bigger once you stepped inside. We splurged and got the guided tour this time so that we could take in every detail of this breathtaking structure. One fun fact about the cathedral is that it actually used to be a mosque when the Arabs were in charge in Spain. Once they were expelled, the Spaniards expanded the mosque and turned it into a cathedral. You can tell which part of the building is old and which is new from the outside because the mosque part is made of brick and the cathedral part is made of stone. This is also the third largest cathedral in Europe and the first largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Here are some of the highlights we saw:

This is just one part of the cathedral. I couldn't get the whole thing to fit in my camera frame. The area that is in the center and closest to me and all the tourists was part of the original mosque (see how its made of yellow bricks?) and then all the neat ornate stuff above it is made of stone. You can also see Giralda Tower which is the cathedral's bell tower and look out point. I climbed up this and took a picture which I have posted below.

I was so overwhelmed right when I stepped in the cathedral that I had to take a picture right away. So this isn't anything particularly special. I just thought it was beautiful with its high, vaulted ceilings and immense decoration.

This is where all of the cathedral baptisms take place. You can't really tell in the picture, but that basin is huge. It's like at least four feet across in diameter.

Again, another overwhelmingly beautiful picture. I just had to take pics of everything I saw.

This is the tomb of Christopher Columbus. This is actually a really huge tomb. If you look closely at the picture, you can see four statues (one for each monarch that unified the kingdoms of Spain in 1492, the same year that CC landed in America). These stone statues are huge though. They're like twice as tall as me and they are carrying his casket, which is his final resting place on their shoulders. Pretty cool if you ask me.

This was my view from Giralda Tower. We had to climb up 34 ramps to get to the top but it was totally worth the beautiful view.

After our tour of the cathedral, we decided it was time for an icecream snack considering how hot it had gotten and then shopped our way up the block until we got to our hostel for a small siesta before we took on the night. Once we were well-rested, we scoured Trip Adviser for a good but cheap restaurant for dinner. We settled on one that was ranked around 150 out of 800ish but it was 3/4 of a mile away. We opted for the extra exercise and made our way to La Taberna. Turns out this literally just means The Tavern (palabra del dia, anyone?). We sat down at a table once we got inside since there were no workers to be found, expecting table service of some kind. Then the bartender showed up and scolded us for trying to order what we wanted from the table and insisted that we walk five steps to the bar to place our order. Not feeling any alcohol that night, I opted for a coke and then the waiter showed us the runaround of the few tapas they had available that night.

First, he brought out a big dish with some kind of marinated steaks, to which I promptly said yes to (probably my favorite of what we were served). Then he pretty much just started bringing us tapas until we said no more. The second round was really the turning point of the night though: he brought us snails. I had eaten snails before I came to Spain, typically in a nice steak house where they were lightly fried and served with cheese, garlic, and butter. These snails however were just straight up steamed and lightly soaked in some kind of broth. They still had their shell. They still had their faces. They still had their antennae. If you know me well, you know that I have always talked about wanting to be a vegetarian because I am a huge animal lover but I have struggled because I just don't like enough foods to be a vegetarian and stay healthy. So as soon as he served us these snails, I knew I was in trouble. How could I possibly eat something that still had a face? Tiny as they were, they still had had lives and I was feeling really disturbed. Earlier that day, I had read an article with Spain tips and one of their top suggestions was to eat all of your food because it's impolite to leave anything on your plate. So what did I do? I promptly changed my mind about not having any alcohol that night, downed several a couple shots, and proceeded to eat the snails once their faces had blurred in my vision. Needless to say, it was a taxing night for me.

All the little snails. How many can you count?

Between the fullness and my semi-inebriated state, I was passed out a little after midnight and snoring happily through the night. I will say though, I was a little disturbed when I woke up the next morning and thought about all those little snail bodies (probably a couple hundred) that were presently getting processed through my body. So tragic. I will be passing on the snails from now on.

Spain, Day Fourteen

Our first full day in Seville was quite impressionable. I thought it was a beautiful city the night before, but seeing the city in full bloom with the sun high in the sky is just incredible. It was like a paradise resort, but one full of beautiful stone architecture everywhere and lots of history.

We began our day with a free tour of the city, which we promptly learned at the beginning of the tour was intended to be no free in the form of a tip at the end of the tour if we had enjoyed ourselves and/or learned something. We are hopeful that an old, retired couple with lots of money tipped our guide extra because while she was great, we are just lowly college students who thought we signed up for a nice tour intended for other broke college kids. We did enjoy it nonetheless though and learned much about this gorgeous city. Our guide basically just walked us all around the best sites that Seville had to offer, which I won't go into too much detail about now since we went back and visited more in depth later. Our tour basically walked us from the center of Seville, to the plaza that housed the Real Alcazar (which is the royal palace) of Seville, the Indian Archives which holds all of the important documents from the time of the discovery of the Americas (sadly, we did not make it in here), and of course the vastly overwhelming Seville Cathedral. Then she walked us through a few historic neighborhoods that were just so cute and unique, which leads me to our palabra del dia. If you want to say something is "super cute" in Spanish, then you would say that it is "mono," which is really funny to me because mono also means monkey in Spanish, so you are basically calling all the cute things in the world a monkey.

While we were in one of the historic neighborhoods (this one was the Jewish neighborhood, which if you have read my previous post on Toledo, you will know that the Jews had quite the presence in Spain), we learned that it was actually home to Europe's oldest bakery! It was built in 1385 and is still functioning today. Sadly, I forgot to write the name of it down so we were unable to revisit that bakery but I am determined to come back to Seville someday, if for nothing else, at a minimum to get a delicious pastry from this bakery.

Our tour guide casually pointing out the oldest bakery in Europe

We continued our tour along the river's edge of Seville, which was a huge hub for trade, as many rivers were about five hundred years ago. We also learned that the area across the river recently seceded from Seville to become its own city because they didn't like it for some reason–I can't see how because everything there is GORGEOUS! The river is now the official dividing point between Seville and this new city named Triana.

Our last stop on the tour was at the critically acclaimed Plaza de Espana, and let me tell you, it was just incredible. Words cannot even describe the magnificance of this place. It was grander than any other plaza I had been to in Spain, and I have been to my fair few. Apparently there was an American expo held in Sevilla for which this plaza was made for. It's constructed in a semi-circle shape, facing the river which flows in the direction of the Americas, as if to be a motherly symbol who is welcoming her children home. How neat, huh? But the architecture of this place was just awe-inspiring. Take a look for yourself because my words don't even come close to doing it justice.

Even this picture doesn't do it justice. You have just got to go see it for yourself someday.

After taking in this magnificent architecture, Maria and I decided to try a chain restaurant recommended to us by our professor: 100 Montaditos (which basically means tapas). We really got our fill at this restaurant and it only cost five euros for a huge meal! You could get one even cheaper for 3 euros probably if you brought your own water bottle, but I was just happy with the price I had. All of the "montaditos" are served on a mini-bun and with potato chips. My favorite of the kinds I ordered was called "queso de cabras" with pesto. If you didn't guess already, this is going to be our word of the day today! So you all know that queso means cheese (duh!) but what you probably didn't know is that cabras means goats! So know you know how to order goat cheese in Spain, which is by far my favorite type of cheese. This sandwich was definitely the best though. I forsee many more in my future.

So we lunched. And we were full. We needed a descanza (anyone remember this word of the day?) but we decided to press on. We trekked a mile back to the plaza with all of the historical sites and decided to hit up the Alcazar. I must confess, I am a little disappointed with the Alcazar. Don't get me wrong–it's beautiful and wonderfully impressive. But the outside looks NOTHING like the inside. The outside looks like it came straight out of a Monty Python movie, so obviously I was expecting knights and medieval-looking things when we got it, but from my first step across the threshold, I was emerged in an Arabian palace (if you can even call it a palace due to its lack of size). The inside was definitely not as big as it appeared on the outside. The palace to garden ratio of this structure was like 1:8. So much gardens! I have decided that I need a royal garden though and have mentally added it to the list of things to incorporate in my future house along with a giant library that has ceiling to floor book shelves on every wall and an indoor/outdoor swimming pool. So the palace was impressive, but the most exciting part about it for me was the student discount. I saved eight euros just by being a college student! That's like two whole meals at 100 Montaditos. I'm sure I've made my parents proud by taking advantage of my college education. Slowly earning back that out-of-state tuition one college discount at a time.

See how the castle looks like something medieval and should have knights and shining armor guarding it?

But on the inside it has these yellow sandstone walls everywhere to totally clash with the outside. So Arabic.

Part of the immense gardens that we saw.

For real though, the Alcazar took the last of our energy, so it was time for a brief two-hour nap back in our hostel. We woke up around 8:00 feeling refreshed and ready to take on the night, which really just resulted in us going to this super cool tapas market for dinner and then having a night-cap at a local Irish pub (been trying to get my fill of the British culture any way that I can if you can't tell). This market was so cool though. I don't even know the name of it but it was the first building I noticed on our way into the city on Thursday. You can't miss the giant black building with glass walls and a huge "M" on the front. We had walked through quickly the night we arrived and decided we definitely needed to make our way back for a meal. Here are how my courses of the night proceeded:

Round one: Ham focachia (pretty sure I butchered that spelling... it was pizza)

Round two: Gorgonzola croquettes (more or less fried cheese). Please note that the pitcher of sangria was not all to myself!

Round three: Dessert! Chocolate covered strawberries which paired perfectly with the sangria. Seriously, best sangria of my life..

So after this point, I was barely able to walk (from the food... not the sangria..). I slowly sipped a SmithWicks halfpint at the pub across the street and chatted with my roomie before we found the energy to make it back to our hostel. Needless to say, we slept like rocks after our long and adventurous first day.

Spain, Day Thirteen

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to keep this post short today because I am posting from my phone but I will do my best to include everything. I began with a short class from 10-11:30, where we discussed the Spanish civil war that occurred right before World War 2 broke out across Europe. This is why Spain didn't play an active role in WW2; they were too busy cleaning up their own mess. We looked at lots of pictures though and saw how Madrid handled all of the bombings and warfare.

Then, what is even cooler is that we went and walked around Madrid to see the locations of these bombings and how they are holding up today. Pretty neat stuff. As a fun side trip, our professor took us to her favorite market where they have all kinds of crazy ingredients (in addition to the normal ones). All of the meat stands had literally every part of the body that came with the animal, ear to hoof. I could barely stomach it. Instead of a palabra del dia today, I'm offering you this awesome chart I found instead at a smoothie stand. So if you need to brush up on your fruits, this is the way to do it:

After our market tour, my roommate and I headed back home for a quick lunch and then to pack for our Seville trip. We decided to use what is called a "rideshare " company to get to Seville, which is kind of like uber or lyft but instead of using it for local transportation, it is only used from city to city. You also have to look online to see which drivers have posted that they are going to your city of interest and they post what time they want to leave, so you pick the driver with the time that works best for you. I'll admit, I was a little nervous about this method of transpiration but apparently it's super popular in Europe and our friends' host family said they use it all the time, so we decided to give it a try. It actually turned out great! Our driver showed up five minutes early, picked us up from our own flat which was really nice, and took us exactly where we needed to go in Sevilla. The car was also clean and very comfy, and we also had the fortune of being the only occupants of his car so it was smooth sailing for five hours. 

This is also my first experience with a hostel. I'm going to be frank with you—I really don't mind it! It's much cheaper than staying in a hotel room. While we do have to share a shower and toilet with the other five rooms on our floor and had to pay an extra €20 for air conditioning, it's really not that bad! It's very centrally located and was so cheap. America really needs to get with the hostel program. 

This is part of our hostel room as seen from the bed, which was tucked into the corner of the room. Not much walking space.

After we got all settled in, we took a brief walk around the city to get acclamated to where we are and also figure out where a tour we are taking tomorrow begins. We also had a mini dinner which consisted of salad and paella and I had some really nasty apple wine—never again! But I am already in love with this city. It has stolen my heart just within a few hours and I can't wait to discover more about it tomorrow.

I can't handle this beautiful Seville skyline.

I'm going to do my best to keep posting while I am in Seville but I don't want to spend time typing a post on my phone when I could be out exploring, so it may just have to happen that I take notes each day and then get everything posted when I get back to my laptop, which is in Madrid, on Sunday. Thanks for understanding!

Spain, Day Twelve

Today, we went on another one of our exciting classroom excursions to the locations that are nearby Madrid. Our trip today was only a short ride of forty minutes to El Escorial. El Escorial is a giant monastery that is located on the northwest outskirts of Madrid. It was quite the sight to see! This huge building was made solely out of granite, which came from the mountains that are surrounding the area. But seriously! All of the walls, ceilings, and almost all of the floors (the ones in the bedroom for this monastery had terra cotta floors, don't know that I spelled that right...) were made from a beautiful, pure grey, sparkling granite. The layout of the place is pretty cool too. The symbol for this part of the area is a parilla (this is today's palabra del dia pronounced "par-ee-yah") which means grill in Spanish. This is because it is located in the suburb of El Escorial de San Lorenzo, who was a saint who was martyred by being grilled to death. There was actually a really impressive and disturbing painting depicting this scene towards the end of our tour. Pretty gruesome stuff. The whole monastery is devoted to San Lorenzo though and is done by arranging all of the rooms in a criss-cross grill layout. The whole place is one giant grill. Pretty cool. Also all of the hand rails and gates have little black grills on the tops of them. Seriously, that symbol is everywhere in that town.

I obviously didn't take this picture but I just wanted to show you how crazy big it is

The monastery is actually still in use today though which is pretty cool. Only about sixty or so monks live there, but still, it is neat that they kept the tradition alive after nearly five hundred years. It actually has many purposes though, other than just being a Catholic monastery. It was also built to be a summer vacation home for King Felipe the second of Spain. We were able to view his chambers, which overlook the giant basilica worship area. The basilica was definitely my favorite to see, considering how beautiful it was, but unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures of it so I hope my descriptions will suffice. The ceiling in the basilica was crazy tall. Like at least six stories tall. And the main alter was just gorgeous. There were huge hollow golden statues that represented many saints, apostles, and of course Jesus was at the top, hanging from the cross. There was an immense amount of velvet and carefully crafted paintings lined the back wall, which was a stark contrast to the grey granite that surrounded it. Overall, just a beautiful place. It is too bad that I'm not Catholic because they said you could get married there if you were for just 2,500 Euros if you were! To all my Catholic friends though, remember this and then be sure to invite me so that I have a reason to come visit!

The roomie and I standing in front of the entrance to the basilica

Also, in the monastery, a vast majority of Spain's monarchs are buried in the royal crypts here. Again, no pictures were allowed, but I will just say it was a very eerie room to be standing in. It a circle shape, with the coffins (which very fancy and expensive looking) encircling the entire room on the edges of the walls. They were stacked about four high and total surrounding you when you walked into the room. It almost felt as if they might rise from the dead and trap you in there. It's just better not to stay in that room for too long if you ask me.

After our tour of the monastery, we ate our picnic lunches and then walked around the cute little town for a while. I grabbed a snack of tea and a chocolate pastry before heading back to the bus to go home. Once we got home, our host mom had dinner waiting for us, and then we spent the rest of the night planning our trip to Sevilla for the weekend!

Spain, Days Ten & Eleven

I decided to do another combined post today because I am getting a little behind. Sorry for being such a slacker! We'll go ahead and do our palabra del dia early today because it's relevant to this. Today's palabra is lo siento which means I'm sorry. So, lo ciento for getting so behind on my posts everyone!

Yesterday was a rather difficult day for me because after this weekend, my sleep schedule got a little off so I had a hard time falling asleep Sunday night. I was pretty dead for class on Monday which isn't good considering my class lasts for three hours. Fortunately, my professor always gives us a little break halfway through the class, during which I took a power nap and pressed on through the rest of class. Needless to say, I used my siesta time pretty wisely that day. Much sleep.

After that much needed nap, Maria and I decided we could use a chocolate snack so we ventured down to a chocolateria called San Gines, which is easily the most iconic churros con chocolate place in Madrid, maybe Spain. They had all kinds of pictures all over their walls of famous people who have snacked in their shop. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize many of them.

Me in front of San Gines

The churros themselves were honestly just okay. This should be shocking considering I am a baked goods addict. I'm not really sure what it was about them, but they just tasted like they were lacking something. Obviously I still ate them all though. Definitely not the worst thing I have eaten. I would strongly recommend trying some just for the experience if you ever come to Madrid.

I thought I ordered one churro and then they gave me a whole plate of them! Couldn't let them go to waste though!

San Gines is located pretty close to a cute shopping street so Maria and I just started wandering down the way and we happened upon a really cheap bohemian-style clothes store where I found a super cute maxi dress for only thirteen euros! I thought that was a bargain made sure to wear it the following day (I received many complements). After shopping around for a couple of hours, we decided it was time to head home for dinner, after which I just relaxed in my room and had a nice long Skype session with my boyfriend, which was much needed. And it was truly very long. I didn't make it to bed until 4 a.m. so again, I was rather exhausted for class the next day.

Today, after another long class where I struggled to keep my eyes open, I went home and had a siesta that was as long as I had slept the previous night (granted I didn't get much sleep the night before but it was a rather long siesta). I didn't actually do a whole lot today considering how long I slept, but I can't say that I wasn't productive. Although I didn't spend much time in Madrid, I did spend quite a bit of time planning out trips to other places I will be seeing while I am here. I have officially made reservations to take a trip to Seville (here it is said Sevilla, pronounced say-vee-uh) this weekend, which I am rather excited about and I also booked a flight and made reservations at a hostel for Rome next weekend! I'm so stoked about all the places I'm going to see while I'm here. Speaking of which, tomorrow we are taking a class excursion to a place called El Escorial, which is this giant and crazy old monastery. More to come on that tomorrow though!

Spain, Days Eight & Nine

So this weekend was pretty uneventful and chill so I decided to combine the two days into one since I don't have a lot of content for either one. To my surprise on Saturday morning, I woke up at almost two in the afternoon! Whoa. I haven't slept that late without waking up first and then consciously going back to sleep in a really long time. Fortunately, that was right around lunch time so I rolled out of bed and went straight to the kitchen (remember, the Spanish eat lunch anywhere from 1:30 to 3:30 so this really was kind of perfect).

I had intended on going to a museum that afternoon to learn about the San Isidro festival that was happening all weekend but considering I had some dinner plans and I still needed to shower, I decided to nix that. Instead, I read my book for a little while and then dolled myself up leisurely for dinner. My roommate and I headed out for dinner around 6:30 to make it to our professor's apartment by 7, where we were just about the last people to arrive because we got a little lost on the way (Madrid streets are very curvy and tricky to navigate).

This was a special welcoming dinner put on by my professor, her husband, and our TA (the one who gave us the food lecture in class the other day so you know he's a good chef). It was actually a night filled with many different tapas, which I was very thankful for because I wouldn't have known where to even begin when going to a tapas bar. My takeaway for the night was that I really enjoy croquettes which kind of look like giant tater tots but there are filled with a gooey breading and some kind of specific ingredient. Ours had ham in them so they were croquettas de jamon but you can get them with just about anything in them. Be sure to try them if you ever get a chance! I was also brave and tried some other more eccentric tapas like a bowl of cold, mushy leeks (it was ehh). Another food that is really seen as a delicacy here that we tried was jamon. Now I know that just sounds like ham but it is actually much more than that. If you ever go to one of the many museos de jamon or meat markets in Madrid, they have giant pig legs hanging by the hoof from the ceiling. Literally, they take a knife and slice it off the edge of the leg and that is your jamon. No other preparations necessary. Well other than cutting it into smaller bites. We had this at our dinner but with a little date wrapped up inside it to give it a sweet kick. Again, this wasn't my favorite but I am happy that I was brave and tried it. The whole raw pig thing kinda freaks me out. If you are ever here and feeling adventurous though, make sure to get it from a pig that has a black hoof and is fed acorns because apparently that is the best.

After dinner, we decided to try the clubbing scene, which actually turned out to be somewhat of a bust. The key to clubbing in Madrid is that whenever you go out, all of these club representatives try to give you really good deals on cover charges or discounted alcohol but the best we could find all night was a coupon for one pint of beer and one shot of your choice of vodka or tequila for four euros. So naturally, we didn't stay out long but it was good to get an idea of where all the clubs are in case we ever want to try again.

So Sunday, I woke up a little earlier: noon. My host mom said that she was surprised I was sleeping in so late because I have been getting up earlier than her on the days we have class, to which I readily responded that that was only because we had class and that I sleep a lot during the weekends. But I pretty much just had another relaxing day. I read my book for most of the afternoon and then popped over to an H&M to do a little shopping. All in all, a pretty good weekend, which leads me to my palabra del dia, although it's really more of a phrase. Today's palabras are fin de semeana, which literally translates to end of week, but is the equivalent term for weekend here. So I'm glad I had a good first fin de semana in Madrid. Here's to many more!

Spain, Day Seven

I had a fantastic day today filled with much knowledge and entertainment. Despite having to get up at the early time of 7:30 today, this has been my favorite day so far. Today was our day trip to Toledo, the former capital of Spain, and I just loved it. I think the trip worked well because we had a very enthusiastic tour guide named Mario who spoke Spanglish for the convenience of everybody on the bus. He was very funny though and you could tell he was so passionate about everything he was saying, which made him very easy to listen to.

On our way into the city, Mario gave us some basic facts about the city itself. Apparently, the original name of the city was Toletum, which is a latin name but it was changed in 1085 to Toledo and they began transitioning the city of predominantly Muslim to Christian, although the city itself is known as the city of three cultures because for a time, the Muslims, Christians, and Jews actually lived together without hostility, which to me is amazing.

When we arrived in Toledo, we immediately stopped the bus for a Kodak moment that was just absolutely breathtaking.

Our first real touristy stop was at the monastery named after San Juan de los Reyes and let me tell you, there was SO MUCH history going on here. It was just incredible. During the 14th century, there was a civil war happening in Toledo, which is in the province of Castile. This came about because the present monarch, Henry IV, died unexpectedly and had not written a will. There was some disagreement about who was to succeed the throne because although he had a daughter, there was much speculation that she was not actually his. So many people believed that the crown should go to his sister instead who would have been next in the blood line in the event that his daughter was not actually his. Unfortunately back then, there was no way to check genetics so the people of Castile picked sides and had themselves a civil war. The king's sister ended up winning, who is actually the very famous monarch Isabella the first who would go on to marry Ferdinand of Aragon to unite their kingdoms and create the country we know today as Spain.

However, right after the war and before her marriage, the first thing Isabella did as a thank you to God for winning the war was erect this monastery which has been standing for over five hundred years now.  Once Isabella came to power, she immediately went to release the Christians who had been imprisoned by the Muslims and put the Spanish Inquisition into place, which expelled all Muslims and Jews from the country (unless they chose to convert to Christianity, which is where the term Sephardic Jews comes from). On the wall outside the monastery, the chains that held her fellow Christians captive hang to serve as a reminder of their oppression and who prevailed.

It is difficult to see them but the dark spots on this wall are all of the chains from the Christians that were held captive

Our next stop was at the Synagogue of Samuel Levi. This served as a primary Jewish meeting point in all of Toledo and was named after the most well-renowned Jew at the time of its construction. This synagogue was actually converted into a church though when the Spanish Inquisition happened in 1492 but has since been restored as a Jewish place of worship. Spain has actually made a point to give citizenship to anyone in present day who can prove their lineage to the Jews who used to live in Spain, which I think is pretty neat.

This is the main wall of the synagogue

After the synagogue, we wandered over to another church which was home to El Greco's masterpiece. It was quite a sight to see. Unfortunately, they had a strict no camera policy so I couldn't document it but I did learn quite a bit there anyways. The painting is of a man from Toledo, who was later declared a saint, during the time of his death. The bottom half of the painting shows the burial of this man who is actually being buried by two other saints who came down from heaven with a large crowd around them. The top half of the painting is of heaven itself with Jesus at the top and his apostles surrounding him. This part shows the man who died in his "soul" form as a baby being carried up to heaven (he was represented as a baby in this transition because heaven represented the beginning of a new life for him).

I didn't found this picture online since we couldn't take our own. Don't let the size of this picture fool you. The painting is a giant mural that is probably twice my height.

The artistry is just incredible in this work, with many brilliant colors and stylistic elements. El Greco actually painted himself into the crowd that was watching the burial of the body as well as his son who are the only two characters in the painting breaking the fourth wall. El Greco was actually known for not putting his signature at the bottom of his paintings but only painting a handkerchief somewhere onto the piece. In this one, the handkerchief was in his son's pocket. While he usually puts the date of when he completed the painting on said handkerchief, he actually put his son's birthday of that year on this one, as if to say "This is my masterpiece and the date I want you to remember is my son's birthday because he is truly my masterpiece." How cool, right?

Our last stop on our tour was in the Cathedral of Santa Maria which is actually the fourth largest in Europe (the first is in the Vatican, the second is in London, the third is in Seville, Spain, and then there is this one). I could hardly even believe the magnanimity of this cathedral. I mean wow. It's hard to comprehend that something of this scale could have ever been constructed, especially without the tools and technology of today. In every corner, inside and out, there was some kind of intricate artwork carved into the wall. Seriously, it must have taken so long to complete this cathedral. Some of my favorite details can be seen in the pictures below.

Check out how small those people are. This cathedral is huge! Above the main arch at the bottom center, there is a row of carvings depicting the last supper in statue form. It was so beautiful.

This was my favorite window. It has a Jesus figurine as well as other saints surrounding it, making it seem very heaven-esque

This was the main area of worship. It is much bigger than it appears in this picture.

After we saw the cathedral, it was lunchtime. We quickly at the picnics that our host families had packed for us and then walked around all the fun boutique shops of Toledo. I only made out with a watch and a hair straightener (that was only 15 euros, which is like $17.50!) but I didn't want to go too crazy with the money spending. Some of my classmates came back with dagger replicas and knight figurines and I'm just like what are you ever going to do with that? But to each their own. My roommate and I also found a little Irish bar so we popped into the bar and had a half-pint of Smithwicks, which brings me to my palabra del dia. So just about everybody in this world knows that cerveza means beer, right? Well if you are ordering a beer and you just want half a pint, you would tell them that you want una caña. Truly, that is the perfect size for me, so I am glad to know this word. 

At four, we headed back to Madrid where my roommate and I rested up until dinner time and then tried to head out for the evening to see the activities that were happening for San Isidras. While there were many people in the Plaza del Sol, we had a hard time finding anything to do, so hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow. We ended up home before midnight and just read for the rest of the evening. I do enjoy reading though so it wasn't exactly a bad evening. Hoping tomorrow night I have something more exciting to tell you about though.  

Spain, Day Six

Okay, onto my second post of the day. Today was much more relaxing than yesterday–thank goodness! I appreciate all that I get to see while I’m here but after that grand adventure, I just needed a resting day. 

This morning, I woke up a little early so that I could finish my homework before class since I was obviously too tired to do it yesterday. Then I showered, had breakfast and headed over to the ISA (International Studies Abroad is the company hosting my program) building for class. The walk to class was very pleasant since the weather is starting to cool down quite a bit. The high was 96 yesterday! Today it only got up to 88ish but that is still much better than yesterday. 

Today, we spent three hours in class! I have never had to pay attention to a professor that long in my life and it proved to be somewhat challenging. I thought Tuesday/Thursday classes at school were challenging during the semester because they were an extra 25 minutes than normal classes but those are nothing compared to our class schedule for this program. Although we only meet for class eleven times during the program, each class lasts from 10 to 1 so it is very draining.

We began class with a lecture about food from our TA who is writing his Master’s thesis on the food in Spain, which I think is incredibly fun. He began by telling us the history of Spain’s food and how they came to acquire certain things. For example, Espana is a word meaning the land of rabbits because they are apparently abunnydunt (see what I did there?) here and are used in many recipes. He also gave us a lesson on tapas. Apparently they were invented because people needed something to shield the tops of their cups from bugs so they made these small plates of food that would sit on top of their glasses. Although, my question is how did they guard the food on the plates from the bugs then? He had some really good restaurant suggestions as well, so hopefully I have more to report back on food-wise soon.

After our food discussion, we talked about the art museums; although nobody really had much to say considering we were all exhausted and pretty zoned out throughout the last half of the tour. Our professor managed to steer the conversation for another hour and a half though which was amazing since nobody was supplying much content.

After class, a wave of exhaustion hit me so I decided I would have a long nap after our lunch, and that I did. It was almost four hours long. This brings me to my palabra del dia. Since today was all about relaxing, the palabra today is "descanzo" which means "nap."

I guess yesterday really took a lot out of me and going to bed early didn’t actually recharge me all the way. So after my siesta, I just decided to relax all day and get caught up on my blog postings and this night’s homework, which is also consequently a blog post but in Spanish. If any of you guys know Spanish and want to read those, let me know and I can send them to you! 

So yeah, that has pretty much been my day. Sorry there were no pictures. I can take some selfies really quick if you just want to see my face but I just had a relaxing, get back to normal, recuperation day, so no pictures necessary for that. This day was definitely needed though since we have another long day tomorrow when we go visit Toledo, which will hopefully be very neat. Check back tomorrow to see what that was like! 

Spain, Day Five

Sorry I am getting this up a little late but we just had a really busy day yesterday and all I wanted to do at the end of it was sleep! So I'll try to get both today's post and yesterday's post up.

We had class yesterday from 10-11:30 where we learned about the geographic history of Madrid. Apparently, Madrid is of Arabic decent and was run primarily by the Muslims until 1492–consequently the same year America was discovered by Christopher Columbus. Madrid is actually an Arabic word meaning land over water. There is one river in Madrid but it wasn't used for transportation like many other European cities had. This is because when Madrid was founded, people were past the point of using rivers for transportation, but there is still a large area of water located beneath the city that gave it its name. Madrid was actually not the first capital of Spain; it was Toledo–where we are going on an excursion this Friday so stay tuned to learn more about Toledo! This is the reason for it being a few centuries younger than other European capitals.

In class, we discussed how Muhammed the first had founded Madrid and created its foundatio by building the royal palace along the western edge of the city and then building a wall around it to protect it. This brings me to my palabra del dia. Today's palabra is "real" (pronounced ray-all) which translates to "royal" in English. So when you see things like el palacio real and Real Madrid (the soccer/football team), that doesn't mean that they are really a palace or soccer team. They are royal. It's something that is easily confused so I thought I would just clear that up for you. So after learning about the foundation of the city, we decided to take a brief walking tour to see some of these places.

We began our walk in el Puerto del Sol (our class is located here which is why pretty much everything begins and/or ends here) and began walking towards el Palacio Real. We had been looking at some maps in class that showed how Madrid has expanded over the centuries and I learned that the Puerta del Sol, which means "Sun Gate" or "Sun Door" in Spanish, was actually one of the gates in the wall around Spain after the first or second wall expansion that people had to go through to get into the city. Naturally, they wouldn't just let anyone into their city, so they had to have a solid wall and gate system for any people who wanted to enter or exit the city and el Puerto del Sol was one of the main gates for this purpose.

Along our walk, we saw some of Madrid's original plazas, including la Plaza Mayor, where they were presently setting up a stage for a free concert for the San Isidras Festival that is happening all week. A gruesome fact we learned is that la Plaza Mayor was where most of the public executions took place. However, now the Plaza houses many tapas restaurants–that are grossly overpriced and of poor quality according to my professor–so try not to think about all those public beheadings next time you're sampling tapas in the terrace at la Plaza Mayor.

La Plaza Mayor

It took a little bit to make it over to the palace, but the first thing we noticed when we got there was the huge cathedral next to it. This is the original royal cathedral that was built for the palace. Our professor was telling us that this is nothing compared to the architectural beauty of other cathedrals around Spain though, which I find hard to believe.

Me and the roomie in front of the royal cathedral

We arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard ceremony that I guess every big building and monument has. I enjoyed this ceremony though because it was unique. It had a lot of music and it didn't last too terribly long, which is just the way every changing of the guard ceremony needs to be.

The changing of the guard ceremony

Since the palacio real is on the edge of the city, we could see the mountains and vast land off in the distance, which really is something incredible to see inside the boundaries of a large city. That is one of the things that I think makes Madrid so unique. You get the city feel AND the country feel, which is pretty amazing.

Our last stop on our walk was actually underground in a metro station. Our professor had been telling us that many old European cities just reconstruct themselves by building on top of their old structures. So naturally, if we wanted to see some old ruins, we had to go underground. Apparently they uncovered a lot of old walls when they built the subway system and continue to do so as they expand it. In the station named "Opera," they actually have a museum devoted to these old walls where they have preserved a few of them. Unfortunately, the museum was closed when we got there so we were unable to learn more but we took lots of pictures of what we could see.

This was the end of our walking tour but we went onto our next activity for the day which was a picnic in the Retiro park. I have learned that the Retiro was built as a getaway house and garden/park area for the royal family when they needed to get away from the stressful life of the palace (I'm sure it was so stressful...) but now it is used as a park open to the general public very similar to that of Central Park in NYC but a little bit smaller. It definitely didn't feel small though. I could have easily gotten lost if we didn't have our professor with us who fortunately knew her way around the city and park very well. 

This was a pond in the Retiro where people could rent boats and row themselves around

We slowly lunched in the park and wandered around until it was time to head to our next activity: the famous art museums of Madrid.

Our first visit was to the Reina Sofia museum of art, which had a lot of more modern paintings in it like those of Picasso and Dali. I had difficulty understanding some of them, namely Dali's paintings that use surrealism. Who knew that a hook through your body was a symbol for love and a grasshopper with ants on its womb was a symbol for happiness? I sure didn't. Who comes up with this stuff? It is very easy to see how talented these artists were but I just don't understand the logic behind the paintings. It's a little to out there for me personally, but I can definitely still appreciate it.

After about an hour and a half in the Reina Sofia, we went over to the Prado. Unfortunately, by this point, I could hardly stand, let alone walk, and my mind was about turned to mush from everything I had seen that day so I really need to take some time to go back to the Prado and check everything out again because I absorbed very little from this visit. We saw many historical paintings here though, my favorite of which were painted by El Greco, naturally. However, I can't fail to give a shoutout to the other amazing painters we saw like Valzquez and Goya, who are also extremely impressive. Most of these paintings were made in the 18th century and were representative of some historical point, like the royal families and the wars, things like that. I definitely need to go back though, which is a rather fortunate thing anyways because I get in for free with my student ID and passport! So, I am sure I will have more to say about this amazing museum in the days to come.

As soon as our museum tour was over, my roomie and I bolted back to our flat, had dinner and went straight to bed. I'm sure by now, you can understand why I am posting this so late. Better late than never though. Check back in a few hours for my post about today (May 14th) which is significantly less busy and much more relaxing!

Spain, Day Four

Today was officially my first normal day in Spain. I woke up at 8:30, showered, had a small breakfast that consisted of toast with nutella and a clementine, and went to left for class at 9:30. Our class met from 10-11:30 (which is much shorter than it will be for the rest of the program) and she gave us a rundown of how our class is going to work and what our assignments are going to consist of. Overall, this really seems like I'm getting three-credit hours for being a tourist rather than actually doing a bunch of school work, which is so fine by me.

After our brief class, we took a short walk from el Puerto del Sol, which is a large plaza area that is in the center of Madrid (as well as the center of Spain as a whole), to a building called "Centro Centro." On our walk, we saw many iconic landmarks, including this statue that is located in el Puerto del Sol.
Many people use this statue as a meeting point, but it is definitely more than just art. It represents the agreement between the church and government of Spain. Back when Madrid was just getting started as a city, the church had control of the hunting grounds (which is represented by the bear) and the government had control of the industry (which is represented by the tree). Since the two are touching, it shows that the church and state were united and can depend on each other for a greater living experience.

After about a ten minute walk, we came to Centro Centro which has a museum inside it that is filled with the rich history of Spain, as well as a lookout tower at the top that my professor refers to as the best view in Madrid.

This view shows a fountain located just outside of Centro Centro called el Palacio de Cibeles, which is the second most iconic symbol of Spain after the bear statue according to my professor. This fountain is very helpful for if you get lost too. If you can make it to this fountain, all of the four roads that intersect here can probably lead you to where you want to go. One will take you to the major shopping street, another to the museums, another to la Plaza Mayor, and the last one to el Retiro which is a huge park (kind of similar to New York's Central Park).

After our lookout over the city, we went back to our flat where our host mom had cooked a big meal of veal with carrots and peas, fries, and fried eggs. Seems like a weird combination but it was delicious. Everything has been delicious so far.

Once lunch was over, we took our "siesta" for the day, which for me was a two hour nap. I awoke refreshed and ready to explore, so my roommate and I headed back to Puerta del Sol to mosey around the city and see where we ended up.

Our first stop was at a bakery where they were selling little pastries called "rosquillas." These pastries are only in Madrid for this week because of the festival of San Isidras, which is an annual celebration of a Catholic saint. I hope to learn about this saint during the other festivities later this week, but for now I just decided to enjoy the annual delicacy. They have many types of rosquillas so my roommate and I each bought one for one euro and split them and shared. The one I bought was a rosquilla de Madrid, which consisted of an extra coating of sugar. My roommate bought a rosquilla tonta (which translates to "stupid rosquilla"), which was just a plain rosquilla. The basis of this pastry was very similar to a donut but it was drier and crumblier. I enjoyed the rosquilla with extra sugar on it the most, naturally.

The rosquillas are on the second shelf from the top. The rosquillas de Madrid are the second from the right and the rosquillas tontas are all the way to the left.

After our snack, we started wondering aimlessly where we ended up in a few cute boutique shops and also grabbed a mid-afternoon cocktail from a so-called "coffee shop" which turned out to be a hookah bar instead. This adventure lasted about three hours so by the time we made it back to the flat, we were exhausted. Luckily, our host mom had dinner already prepared by the time we got back, which consisted of these weird but tasty fish cakes (think of a crab cake and then instead of crab, make it with white fish), pasta salad, and a personal sized ham pizza. Everything was very good but it was way too much food, unfortunately. I am still stuffed and this meal was over two and a half hours ago! It's good to know that I am never going to go hungry here though.

Now it is time for bed, which brings me to my palabra del dia. Today's palabra is a phrase that you would use when you are saying goodnight to someone: buenos noches. So, buenos noches everybody!