Las Cuevas y Sierra Nevada

Oh, beautiful Granada!  It was one of the most beautiful places that I've visited so far in Spain.  Our program took us on this trip, no extra planning needed on our part!  We were free to enjoy the mountains and beautiful hilly city at our leisure, with a few planned excursions thrown in throughout the weekend ...and a sweet hotel to stay in (yay non-army showers!).

We stopped in Córdoba on the way to Granada for a few hours to see the great mezquita (mosque).  The mezquita is significant because the continuous shifts in power and religion are so apparent within the current structure.  The site originally housed a pagan temple during the Roman rule of the Córdoba, and later a church, during the Visigoth rule in Córdoba.  When the Muslims took control of Spain (Córdoba specifically in 711) they built a grand mosque on top of the structure.  During this time Córdoba was one of the most advanced cities in the world, home to over 3, 000 mosques, 300 public baths, and the largest library in the world at that time.  It was also thought to be the most populous city in the world during this time.  During the Spanish reconquista, when Córdoba was recaptured by Christian rulers, the mosque was converted into a cathedral.  However, the Islamic mosque was so grand and expansive, that much of it was left as a mosque even after it became a cathedral.  The center of the building was converted into a traditional central nave for the cathedral, but the arcaded hypostyle arcs (Umayyad traditional style - the first picture below) make up a large part of the building that was not changed.  So today, in the center of the massive complex there is a cross-shaped cathedral which is surrounded by Umayyad-style rectangular Muslim prayer halls.  

Back on the bus, and two hours later we arrived into the bustling town of Granada!  The streets were packed with young people.  Even though Granada is smaller in population than Sevilla, it has way more students and young people.  The night we arrived was the Festival de Primavera (Spring Festival) in Granada, one of the biggest bottelóns in Spain.  The streets were packed with people who were out to celebrate the beginning of Spring!  Later that night we went to a flamenco show in one of the cuevas (caves) up in the hills of Granada.  Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the city-center is located in the valley but the town spreads far up into the hills.  Up in these hills there are tons of caves that are home to gypsies, tea-houses, flamenco performances, and lots and lots of hippies.  We had the fabulous chance to see a flamenco show in one of these caves the first night.  Flamenco originated in Andalucía and I'd never seen anything like it before, and was completely blown away by the performance.  

We visited the Alhambra the next morning - Granada's famous Moorish palace/fortress complex.  It was built in the mid-14th century for the last Muslim rulers in Spain.  Granada was the last city to be taken back by the Christian rulers during the Spanish reconquista.  And because of this the Alhambra is the most recent Islamic architecture in the history of Spain, much different than the mudéjar style Muslim architecture found in Sevilla (the Alcázar palace is the most important example in Sevilla).  Everything about the Alhambra was beautiful and exquisitely ornate.  Whereas the Alcázar feels tropical and cozy, the home to peacocks and palm trees, the Alhambra is the opposite.  It sprawls majestically on the top of hills overlooking the city with grand views of the Sierra Nevada's all around.  After spending a few hours walking around the Alhambra, Sam and I went down into town to meet with her friend who lives in Granada.  After lunch the three of us started out on hike to explore Granada.  We hiked up high into the hills, past the highest plaza with the last few cafes in town, and up to where people lived in caves.  Sam's friend knew a lot of the people that lived in these caves and had even lived in one a few years ago.  We got to meet the people and look into their cave homes.  Our final stop was at a wonderful tea house/cave situated on the back of one of these high hills.  We relaxed, sipped green tea, and got to enjoy the beautiful afternoon sitting in a garden surrounded by art and mountains.  

On the bus to Granada I overheard someone talking about skiing while they were in Granada.  I had been trying to figure out a way to make it to Granada to ski, but hadn't really found anyone to go with.  Turns out the guy, Derrick, didn't have anyone to go with, but was going to go regardless.  So I eagerly agreed to join him and ski all day Sunday.  We woke up early Sunday morning and took a bus from Granada into the mountains and had an awesome time.  After a long, long day of skiing we took the bus back into Granada and waited for our bus back to Sevilla - separately from our program since they had left earlier in the day.  I unfortunately didn't wear sunscreen while, and definitely paid the price the following week.  I spent most of the week cooped up inside with sun poisoning - a red puffy face and swollen eyes.  Never a mistake I will make again, but nonetheless I'm very happy I had a chance to go skiing in Spain.

I've been having a hard time getting this post written and posted! Surprising, since I spent most of last week inside trying to heal - and hiding my red puffy face from the sun/people.  This past weekend, however, was the first weekend I've spent in Sevilla in a while! I went with friends to some thrift shops to get some clothes for our hiking trip, spent lots of time at the river, and have been making some Spanish friends.  We leave for the Picos de Europa in northern Spain this Friday and return next Wednesday, just in time to see the best parts of Semana Santa.  

    

Arcaded hypostyle hall of the mezquita.

Here you can see the altar of the cathedral on the left, and the Moorish arcs and columns on the right.

View from the Alhambra.

So much work went into the detail of the Alhambra.

Wood carving found up in the hills. 

Walking to the tea-cave.

The outside of the tea-cave

Delicious tea and tapas.  This is where the word "tapas" came from...small appetizers literally covering the top of the drink.

Skiing in the Sierra Nevadas!  Before I got tooo sunburned...

Barcelona

You can't go to Spain without visiting the wonderful Catalonian city on the sea, Barcelona.  As the second-largest city in Spain and the sixth most populous city in the European Union, it was quite the metropolis.  Barcelona was vibrant and exciting, and has a ton to offer.  So much art and architecture!   But just so...big.  I'm starting to realize more and more that I don't like big cities.  I like natural beauty over man-made beauty and get stressed out by so many people all around me!  I'm glad I saw Barcelona, but it just made me even more sure that I don't ever want to live in a big city like that in the future...

Last Thursday my Literature class took a field trip to the Alcazar here in Sevilla, and it was magnificent!  It's actually right across from the University, nestled behind Santa Cruz, and I had no idea.  I had noticed the tall walls and gates before while walking around, but somehow never realized that behind them was Sevilla's royal palace.  There are beautiful gardens, peacocks strolling about, and the mudéjar style palace.  The literature class I'm taking is all about the literature and history here in Sevilla. We read a story called "Romance de la muerte de don Fadrique" (Romance of the Death of don Fadrique) and learned that don Pedro I, the King of Castile and Leon in the 14th century, ordered the death of his step-brother don Fadrique and the deed was done in the courtyard of the Alcazar.  I love this class because we learn about history and then actually get to see where it happened! There are several streets in Sevilla named after the convoluted history of don Pedro and his many lovers.  Don Pedro was obsessed with a woman named Doña Maria Coronel for many years.  She was married and wanted nothing to do with him.  Don Pedro (often called "The Cruel") had Maria Coronel's husband killed and continued after her. She entered the Santa Clara convent, hoping to escape the king, but he followed her in disguise.  Finally, she could take it no longer, and she deliberately threw boiling oil over her face to produce a horrible disfigurement.  She was mummified and to this day, every December 2nd her body is taken and exhibited in public in Sevilla, and people flock to see it.  

Right after our field trip to the Alcazar ended that afternoon Lisa, Molly, Daniel and I caught a bus to the Sevilla airport.  After a pretty short flight we arrived in Barcelona with a full moon greeting us over the ocean.  We hopped on a bus that took us right into the middle of Barcelona and found our hostel right off of the famous street, La Rambla.  We got some cheap falafel for dinner (finally some food with flavor!) and hit the hay.  Or tried to at least.  Let's just say the hostel in Barcelona was no where near as nice as the one in Venice.  Every time you moved a muscle it sounded like your bed was going to fall apart.  But that's more of what I expected from a hostel, we just got lucky the first time in Venice.  

Gaudí, the olympic stadium, and Picasso were on the agenda for the next day.  We went to the famous Sagrada Familia cathedral, which was truly remarkable.  It's still a work in progress and construction relies solely on donations.  The outside of the cathedral is magnificent.  It looks like the drip sand castles I used to make on the beach as a kid.  And the inside is suposed to look like a forest, with columns modeled after trees and branches, and vaulted ceilings that look like the sky.  The stained class is brighter than any I have ever seen, and cast beautiful colors of light all throughout the inside of the cathedral.  We went up into one of the lofty towers and had a beautiful view of the city.  Later that day, we made our way over to the other side of the city to see the 1992 Olympic Stadium up on a hill.  The stadium was actually built in the 1936 to house the People's Olympiad, but the event had to be cancelled due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.  We made our way back on the metro into the center of Barcelona to go to the Picasso Museum where we saw a lot of Picasso's early art.  It also had one of the many recreations Picasso painted of Velazquez' "Las Meninas", which was my favorite thing to see.

That night I went to synagogue with Lisa.  She had been looking forward to going to synagogue in Barcelona for weeks.  There is a very, very tiny Jewish population in Sevilla and no synagogues to be found.  We found the synagogue her brother had gone to when he had visited Barcelona and went inside.  She knew it was an Orthodox synagogue, but it was nothing like she expected it to be (and I have never been to a synagogue before so I had no idea what to expect).  The men and woman had to sit on different levels of the building, the women up top and the men below.  The women didn't participate in the service at all and weren't allowed to sit with the men so that the men weren't "distracted".  And Lisa pointed out to me that the woman sitting in front of us was wearing a wig , because once you're married you have to hide your hair from other men while at synagogue.  Lisa wasn't used to any of this and didn't like it at all (and neither did I).  She was used to synagogue being a family activity, something she loved because she got to do it with her mom, dad, and brother.  She wanted to leave early, and so we did.

The next day we saw more Gaudí - we went to Parque Guell on the side of a big hill overlooking the city.  We also went to the harbor and sat in the grass for a long time next to the water.  There was a group of jolly old men playing guitar and singing next to us, so we felt like we were being serenaded.  Then we had to go pick up our backpacks from the hostel, we didn't book a room that night because our flight was so early the next morning.  We hung out in a plaza that night and got dinner, then headed to the airport at about 11pm to sleep (hah)/wait for our flight which was at 6:30am.  After a long, long night in the cold airport we finally got on the plane in the morning and made our way back to Sevilla. Sevilla was nice and sleepy in the morning when we returned, and I walked through the park back to my apartment very glad to be out of the hustly bustly city (and also back to a city that speaks Spanish - not Catalan!) and home in laid-back Sevilla.

They've been starting to prepare the last couple of weeks here for Semana Santa, which is coming up soon.  But this week the preparations have really been getting into full swing.  They practice the processionals at night.  It's actually pretty creepy - you see dark figures walking ever so slowing collectively carrying a heavy platform on top of their heads (which during Semana Santa will hold various wooden statues depicting various scenes from the Passion).  This week is also midterm week at the University.  I had three exams today, one tomorrow, and then we leave for Granada and Córdoba for the weekend with our program!  I can't wait to see the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Alhambra, and la mesquita.

Venezia

Venice was breathtaking.  Our time spent there was like a dream and I never wanted it to end.  In retrospect I was pretty unprepared for this trip, but somehow everything worked out perfectly.  Luckily Gabby was there to show us around.

Our flight left Sevilla bright and early on Friday morning.  I rode a bike to Puerta de Jerez at 4am to meet the girls I was going on the trip with.  Four in the morning is still early in the night for most Spaniards going out on a Thursday night.  As I was trying not to fall off of the bike from sleep deprivation, people were still partying on into the night.  Taxis were still waiting in droves to take people home from the bars and so we had no problem finding one to take us to the airport.  We flew with RyanAir, an airline known for being cheap, cheap, cheap... as long as they don't trap you into the extra fees they're notorious for adding on.  But we all did a good job of packing light.  There was no way any of us was going to pay the extra 60 euro they can tack on if your carry-on is too big or the 40 euro they charge if you forget to print out your boarding pass ahead of time.

Two and half hours later we landed (very roughly) in Italy!  As I said before, I wasn't very well prepared for this trip.  I knew Gabby planned to pick us up from the airport and that she knew what time, but I had no way of contacting her.  I hadn't thought ahead of time to find out what phone number she was using or if my phone would even work in a different country.  Luckily, we only had a few minutes of sitting in the airport wondering how on Earth we would find Gabby before she walked in.  She got us on the right bus and headed toward Venice.  The bus ride took about an hour (one of the reasons RyanAir is so cheap is because they don't fly you directly into the city) and I was passed out for almost the entire ride.

After getting off the bus we switched modes of transportation again.  Vaporetto (aka the water-bus) this time.  Gabby got us to the right dock and then had to go say goodbye to a friend who was leaving Venice.  We got off the vaporetto in Academia and found our hostel surprisingly easily.  We were all surprised when we were told we would have our own apartment.  We had a room with a nice loft all to ourselves.  I slept right next to the little window looking out at all of the rooftops.  I felt kind of like Heidi, which is strange considering I was nowhere near the Alps.  The breakfast at the hostel left much to be desired but at least they gave us a nice cup of coffee in the morning!

Saturday morning we met Gabby at the wooden bridge in Academia.  Called Ponte dell'Accademia, this bridge is one of the four that stretch the entire way across the Grand Canal.  After more coffee and pastries in one of the cafes she took us to Piazza San Marco.  We took lots of pictures and stayed clear of the pigeons.  It was a whirlwind of a day, but we saw almost all of the famous parts of Venice.  We went to the Rialto bridge (one of the other bridges spanning the Grand Canal), took a gondola ride, saw the Jewish ghetto, and went to Burano (a colorful island off the coast). We ate lots of pizza and gelato and had an all around good time.  That night we went to dinner with one of Gabby's friends, Lea, who is from Croatia but studying in Venice.  

Gabby took a flight home early the next morning.  Two of the other girls wanted to sleep in, so Lisa and I went by ourselves to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum.  Her collection has paintings by Picasso, Miró, Magritte, Max Ernst (Peggy was once married to him), Dalí, Jackson Pollack, Braque, Duchamp, Kandinsky, and so many more.  It was really cool to be able to see all of these paintings by modern artists that I had learned about in my Modern Art History class last semester.  My favorite were the Cubist paintings by Picasso that we had talked so much about, Dalí's wild surrealist paintings, and Magritte's super dramatic surrealist paintings.  The wishing tree in the garden, given by Yoko Ono to Peggy Guggenheim, was neat too.  Lisa and I both wrote down wishes on small pieces of paper and hung them on the branches.  That night Lisa and I went to Vivaldi concert at a concert hall really close to our hostel.  They advertise the concert everywhere throughout Venice, and Lisa who is a music minor really wanted to go.  We sat in the first row, just staring up at them in awe of their talent the entire time.  

The next morning it was time to leave, bright and early once again.  We woke up at 4am and made our way to the vaporetto, then the bus, plane back to Sevilla, bus into town from the airport, and then finally biked back to our apartments.  It was a long day and I decided to sleep for the rest of the afternoon rather than go to class.  It was nice to be back into the home-stay where we had home-cooked meals instead of eating another pizza (I lost count of how many pizzas I ate while we were there).  

I get to do it all again starting tomorrow though! I'm going to Barcelona with Lisa, Molly, and Daniel and can't wait!  And although it was nice to be back in Salud's apartment for a little while, I'm ready to leave again.  Yesterday, I got yelled at for eating too much bread (it wasn't that much)! In Barcelona I plan on eating lots of paella, taking lots of pictures, and enjoying getting out of this apartment again.

Oh, and I made sure to get lots of pictures with me in them while in Venice, just like you requested Dad!

Volando

I love how quickly the school days fly by and how it always feels like the weekend here.  Why does it always seem to be the opposite at home?  I also have so much more time to sleep here, and I don't feel bad about it.  I love sleeping, but at home if I sleep in too late I feel lazy and unproductive.   Sleep is encouraged here.  The Spanish siesta which everyone always talks about is real (I always thought of it as some type of wonderful myth)!  All the stores close from about 4-6 every afternoon and people go home and take naps (well, the smart people do anyways)!  

Tuesday was Día de Andalucia, which celebrates the day that Andalucia became an autonomous community (one of the official provinces) in Spain.  We didn't have school that day so Lisa and I went to the river all afternoon to hang out.  The river is usually always busy, but it was even more so on Tuesday because of the holiday.  Sevilla is the capital of Andalucia, so everybody from all the smaller pueblos in the province flocks in to the city to celebrate.  My host-mom was in good spirits and even offered to take Laura and I to Cádiz that day or for an entire weekend later in the month. We'll see about that...I'm not entirely sure whether I could handle an entire weekend with my roommate and host mom. It was a nice offer though!

Although school isn't taking up that much room in my life this semester, I do enjoy it while I'm there.  Every day when I walk into school I can't believe that I go to school in such a beautiful building.  This week the University has an exhibit of really old books in one of the courtyards and a flower show in the other courtyard.  There are always non-students coming in to look at the exhibits and see the building.  Sometimes it feels less like a university and more like a tourist destination.  Or sometimes a high school (but not in a bad way).  I don't know why it just hit me this week, but I just realized that there are no dorms or other facilities like most universities have.  Of course I knew this, I just didn't really think about it.  People have been telling us since we've been here that Spain different than the US in that students stay in their home towns to attend college.  If you are from Sevilla, then you go to college in Sevilla and don't think twice about it.  Young people here also live with their parents until a much later age, usually into their late 20s.  

I should go to sleep, seeing as I have to wake up at 3am!  Our flight to Venice leaves tomorrow at 6:30 and buses don't run that early in the morning, so the four of us are going to meet (we live on opposite sides of town) and take a taxi together to the airport so we can split the cost.  I'm really excited to see Gabby and finally be able to understand why she is so in love with Venice.  

Also, I made this video for an internship I'm applying to.  It was my first time trying to make a stop-motion video and it was a lot of fun.  I might just have to make some more...

:)