Segovia

This past Saturday, I went to Segovia, Spain with my Spanish civilization class. Segovia is a really pretty town just over an hour outside of Madrid. Although it was very sunny and the sky was a bright blue, the weather was actually quite cold. Despite the windchill, I had a good time.

{Real life castle}

{Old Church}

{another old church}

{coolest carousel ever!}

{Roman aqueducts}

{gorgeous cathedral}

{Plaza Mayor - the town's center}

{tower with varying architecturally styled arches}

{Castle!}

{pretty scenery}

{gorgeous view}

{Palacio Real de la Granja - a little outside Segovia}

Las Fallas in Valencia

In my last post I promised that I would update my blog last weekend about my recent adventures. I apologize for not following through.

Four weeks ago (wow I can't believe it's been that long!) I went to Valencia, Spain with a group of friends. We were there during a popular festival known as Las Fallas. During this festival, floats made out of paper mâché are displayed all over the city. On the last night, all of the floats are set on fire except for the winning float, which is displayed in a museum.

Everyday during the festival there is a huge fireworks show in the center of the city. For twenty minutes straight there are deafening booms that shakes the ground and the buildings. In addition, every night there is a beautiful fireworks show. We went two nights in a row and it was one of the best displays of fireworks I've ever seen.

The people of Valencia take this festival seriously. There were bands that performed while marching all over the city. Also, most of the women and children were dressed in elaborate costumes.

When we weren't exploring the town we were relaxing on the beach. The weather was pretty nice all weekend, but on the last day it was gorgeous. The calm, quiet beach was a nice contrast to the loud, busy town. 

Valencia is a great city. I liked it even more than Barcelona. If you ever find yourself in Spain, I highly recommend visiting Valencia. 

Slacking

I apologize for my silence as of late. I've just been soooo busy. From March 15 to 18 I was in Valencia and then on March 22 spring break started. In the past week I've been to Paris, Rome, and London. It was such a whirlwind and so much fun. Now that I'm back in Madrid, things haven't slowed down. I have homework, tests, and labs. School is never ending. I promise I will write blog posts all about my recent adventures this weekend. PROMISE!

Preparing for Las Fallas

On Friday, after classes, I am going to Valencia with a large group of my fellow engineers. We have a three-day weekend and it so happens that there is a huge festival in Valencia. The festival is held in honor of St. Joseph's Day. It is massive and takes over the whole town. There are huge firework displays everyday, floats consisting of papiermâché sculptures, concerts, bullfights, parades, cooking competitions, and street parties. The grand finale of the festival consists of burning all of floats at midnight. Unfortunately, we will not be able to witness it because we have class on March 19. 

I'm excited for this weekend, but I'm also kind of nervous. I've heard that this festival is crazy. There are going to be tons of people everywhere. The fireworks displays are deafeningly loud and so powerful that they literally shake the city. I think I'm going to need earplugs!

El Escorial

This past Friday, I went to El Escorial with my civilization class. San Lorenzo de El Escorial is a town about 45 kilometers northwest of Madrid. Half of the kids in my civilzation class don't have class on Fridays because they aren't in the engineering program. They met at the Institute at 1:00 pm and took a charted bus to UAM, where they picked me and the other engineers up after our classes. The drive to El Escorial took around an hour and a half because of traffic. When we finally got to the town, we toured the Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, which is a palace that was built for Phillip II of Spain. The tour lasted around two hours. Honestly, I didn't really enjoy it that much because I was exhausted after a busy week of school. Also, the weather was very gloomy; the sky was grey and the weather was cold and very rainy. However, I was impressed by the size of the palace. It contains a school, a library, a church, and of course living quarters for the families of the monarchs that one resided there. Today, the Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is open to the public for tours and it no longer houses Spanish royals. After the tour, we all loaded back onto the bus and headed back to Madrid. The trip was short, but it was enough for us to be able to put into context the history we've been learning about for the past month.

Things I've noticed...differences

I apologize for being the most inconsistent blogger ever. These past two weeks have been insanely busy and not in a fun way. School has been intense with homework, exams, and three hour long bio labs everyday for the past two weeks. I love studying abroad but it would be so much better to just be abroad, without the studying.

Anyways, I've been meaning to write this post for almost two months (basically since I got to Madrid). There are so many differences between the US and Spain. Some big, some small. Having never been out of the United States before I came to study abroad in Spain, I expected to experience some sort of culture shock. That really hasn't happened but it has been fun noticing all the differences between the United States and Spain.

• In buildings, the ground floor is considered zero, the basement is negative one, and what would be the second floor in the US is considered the first floor.

• Street signs are located on the sides of buildings, not near the traffic lights.

• Everyone smokes. In Colorado, not that many people smoke. In Boston, a lot of people smoke. In Madrid, EVERYONE smokes

• Cars are much nicer to pedestrians and actually yield, unlike in Boston

• The Metro is really nice. It's clean, efficient, user friendly, and has good coverage of the city

• Old ladies wear big, long fur coats. Not just some old ladies, all old ladies.

• You must ask for the check at a restaurant otherwise they'll never bring it to you

• Another restaurant one: you tip, at the VERY MOST, 10 percent. Waiters are actually paid normal wages and don't live off tips like in the States

• Dog poop everywhere. It's like no one cleans up after their animals.

• You pay for water here. In the States, if you ask the waiter for water they'll bring you a free glass of tap water. In Spain, they'll bring you a bottle of water unless you specifically ask for tap water

• There are roadside gas stations. They are literally located on the sidewalk and cars pull up in the right lane of the street to fill up.

There really are so many more but I'm too exhausted from these past two nightmarish weeks to think of more. I'll post a part two with more differences in a few weeks.

Grenada

Last weekend I went to Grenada with my study abroad program. In civilization class, we learned about the period of time when Muslims controlled the Iberian peninsula from 711 to 1031 AD (they weren't expelled until 1492, but after 1031 their control started to decline). Grenada was a very important city for the Muslims because it was a military stronghold in the 11th century and in the 13th century, the royal residence was established in Grenada at the Alhambra.

We left as a group on Friday afternoon. We traveled by bus, which is not my favorite mode of travel. It took around five or six hours to get there. After checking into the hotel, we walked up steep winding streets to get to a good view point of the Alhambra. The Alhambra is the palace where Muslim leaders lived starting in the 13th century. The view was gorgeous. It was dark so we got to see the whole city lit up.

On Saturday, the group went to see Grenada's cathedral and the tomb where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel (famous for funding Christopher Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic) are buried. I forgot to mention that I was sick this past weekend. When I woke up in the morning I wasn't feeling well enough to get out of bed so I slept in while the others explored. By the afternoon I was feeling up to getting out and about. I met up with the group at a market where we explored for a bit. I bought a few souvenirs: some tea, a scarf, and an evil eye. Then we had tapas for lunch. After lunch we went to the Alhambra. It is quite an exquisite building. The decoration is intricate and stunningly beautiful. The Alhambra is very large so it took us many hours to explore all of it. When we finished our tour of the Alhambra, we had an hour or so of downtime before going to see a flamenco show. I really enjoyed the show. The music was great and the dancing was very impressive. It reminded me of tap dancing with more hip shaking.

Sunday we checked out of the hotel at 10:30 am and got back on the road. After a few hours of driving we stopped for lunch. Then, we went to go see the famous windmills of Consuegra. Miguel de Cervantes made the windmills famous after publishing Don Quixote. It was very windy and quite cold, but it was worth it because the windmills were very cool.

Grenada really is a great city. I only wish that I wasn't sick and that I got to experience the nightlife. Hopefully one day I will be able to go back.