CADIZ CRAZINESS

Ooo midterm week. In the past 36 hours I have had three midterms. And I guess since I haven’t really done a whole lot of work this semester they kind of kicked me in the butt.

BUT this past weekend we traveled to the south of Spain (Cadiz) with a travel group here in Madrid called European vibe. Cadiz is famous for its Carneval. Carneval is basically like a huge Mardi gras celebration, only everyone is dressed up in Halloween costumes. So we took a bus down on Friday morning (7 am? No thank you) and it took us TEN HOURS to get down there. Granted the bus stopped like three times but it was quite the long bus ride.

Once we finally got to our hotel we realized that there really weren’t too many hotels around the area so we went to a grocery to stock up on bread and sandwich meat. Our hotel was very nice as well. We had a balcony that overlooked a golf course and were like a five minute walk from the beach. Cadiz is supposed to be really pretty in the summer months but the weather wasn’t bad when we were there! It was like 60 and sunny for most of the two days that we were there and then when we left on Sunday it was raining. Everyone kept telling us we lucked out because the previous weekend all it did was rain and many parts of the city had flooded.

But Friday night they took us out to a nightclub and then Saturday during the day we had the day to relax and get ready for Carneval. The bus left for Carneval at 4 and we were all set to go in our costumes. Gretchen, Erica and I had on black leggings, bright skirts and weird patterned shirts with boas, sequined headbands and had drawn designs all over the sides of our faces. But some of the costumes there were RIDICULOUS. Some people had full-on astronaut or Avatar costumes. But needless to say, there was not a single person there that was NOT in costume. We basically walked around and met some (interesting?) people from all over Spain. Think of Summerfest- and picture everyone in costumes. That’s basically what it was. So great.
(picture of our group in Cadiz)

The downside was that Sunday we had to endure a ten hour bus ride home and got back real late at night with midterms beginning in two days…haha oops.

On a sadder note, this morning our senora’s mom died : ( She had been sick for some time and was 101 years old so she knew it was going to come soon. However, she left with her son and her daughter this morning to go over there and won’t be back for awhile.

Friday we’re headed to Escorial for a day trip with the school and then we are going to be in Madrid for the weekend!! Wooo!

Andalucía

Last week, our class headed to the south of Spain---Andalucía. We took a bus down and stopped in Cordoba along the way to see the Mezquita de Cordoba. The weather was absolutely beautiful there (and about 60 degrees) and during our lunch break we sat out in the sun in the courtyard, surrounded by orange trees. In many of cities in the South, they plant orange trees so that in the spring and summer, the cities have an amazing aroma.

After touring the Mezquita (the place where Christopher Columbus was buried) we got back on the bus and headed to Sevilla to check into our hotel (a nice four star hotel by the way J ). We had free time to explore the city and at night we all went to a small tapas bar and had some FANTASTIC tapas…I’m not really quite sure what I ordered but it was good. Then one of my friends from high school, Lizzie, happened to be studying in Sevilla for the semester so our group decided to meet up with hers and we explored the “Sevillan nightlife.”

The next morning we did some more group touring and went to Los Reales Alcazares y el Catedral. Afterwards they took us to a restaurant and we literally got a 6 course meal: salad and bread, tortilla, pea soup, SCALLOPS (and I ate them), pork and dessert. That night we also went to see a flamenco dance show a la Casa de la Memoria. The last city we went to was Granada, which was actually a lot bigger and had more of a “city” feel than I thought it would. We saw the church where the famous Spanish King and Queen, Isabel y Fernando, are buried and had a chance to do a little shopping. I got a cute blue purse. Then that night we went to Las Cuevas to see an authentic flamenco show. We were literally driven up to the mountains and taken into a cave-like theatre and watched the show. Then we got a mini-tour of the city at night and saw La Alhambra lit up. So pretty!!

The final day we got a tour of La Alhambra. This place is HUGE. It took us three hours to tour everything. But it’s such an important site because it’s one of the last remains of Moorish influence in Spain. We were able to see all the rooms of the different palaces, and the fortresses and the extravagant garden. After the tour (that literally felt like the tour that was NEVER going to end) we were all grateful to get back on the bus and head six hours back to Madrid.

Gretchen’s birthday was on Saturday night so we all decided to take her out to a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant which turned out to be veryyy delicious (and probably had some of the best margaritas I’ve ever tasted). After we headed to a club called Pacha. We got there at 1 am and realized we were still VERY early in Spain time. It’s so weird to think that at home, the bars are closing at 2, but here, the crowds don’t even start to come out until 2 here.

This weekend we will be staying in Madrid, but the following weekend (the 19-21) we are heading back down to southern Spain once again to Cadiz for an event called Carneval (which apparently I need an elaborate Halloween costume for).

BARCA.

This past weekend, I took a mini trip to Barcelona. We left Friday morning and took a one hour flight and were in Barcelona by 11 am. It was kind of a last minute trip as we planned it four days before we left. Our plan was to stay in a hostel, but we ended up finding a hotel that was cheaper per person and in the main area of the city as well so we decided to go for it. There were eight of us girls so we just got two rooms of four and it all worked out perfectly.





We decided to be hardcore tourists for the rest of the afternoon and went to the Picasso Museum. I’ve never been a huge art freak but this semester I am taking a class on modern painters so it’s actually cool to see what my teacher has been talking about in class in an actual museum. We saw everything from Picasso’s earliest art to his latest works (and there was, for some odd reason, an erotic art display there as well…definitely very different). We also walked around the city and down by the ocean.

That night we went to a bar called Chupitos (in Spanish, it literally means shots). This place had over 500 different shots to choose from. Some of them were normal but most were hilarious. For instance, there is a shot called Pop Rocks. You literally put pop rocks in your mouth, take the shot of whatever it is, swish it around in your mouth then swallow it. But there were literally hundreds of people crammed into this tiny place and it was basically impossible to move.

The next day we decided to hit up some more of the tourist spots: we started out the day by going to the local market where I literally had the best chocolate pastry ever and strawberry –banana juice ever. They sold everything there it was crazy- fish, candy, bread, seafood, peppers…everrrrrything. We walked around and saw some more of Gaudi’s random houses (Casa Battlo and a museum). Then we took the metro to La Sagrada Familia…this was by far one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It wasn’t even finished yet but it was insane. Parque Guell was next on the list…it is the made that Gaudi had been in charge of constructing. It is basically a huge park on the hills with lots of hiking and biking and then a center in the middle where there were some bands playing and people selling things.

That night we also decided to go to the IceBar. It is literally a bar made of ice- the temperature was literally at 5 degrees and they gave you these big puffy grey coats to wear. It was so much fun..but the downside was that you really couldn’t stay long inside because it was so cold. But after that we walked around the beach and met some other SMU students at a place called Black Sheep for the rest of the night.

Sadly, the next day the market was closed because it was Sunday and we just walked around the city until we had to head back to the airport around two. It’s funny because Barcelona is really different from Madrid. They are both huge cities, but to me, Barcelona felt a lot more touristy. Pretty much every time I tried to speak Spanish they would say to me “oo I speak English.” But there is a lot more color and craziness in Barca than in Madrid where everything is darker. The shops are more vibrant and the city is full of a lot more color.

Next stop: Andalucía for the next four days with the school. :)