Saturday, June 26th

Today we woke up and got breakfast at the hotel again at 9 a.m. First thing we did was head over to the church Gaudi designed! It was an incredibly strange mix of styles, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Did you know that Gaudi lived in the basement of this church during his last years? He turned into quite the mess and he ended up getting hit by a train and dying soon after. THe strange thing is, he looked so dirty and like a homeless man, nobody recognized him for days! Finally they realized that it was the famous architect Gaudi who was this dirty and dying man. The church is STILL not done-- at least twenty more years! In all, it will have taken over 100 years to create, quite a long time!

Here are pictures of the facade we entered, where Gaudi designed a scene depicting the creation story and the birth of Jesus. See how the pillars are held up by turtles!







Once we entered the church, it was like we were at a completely different place! The inside is meant to look kind of like a forest, and the stain glass windows brought in the most beautiful rainbow light.



Once you leave, once again it feels like you're in a completely different place! The second finished facade depicts the Passion. The style is completely different, and it should be since Gaudi didn't design or make it!





Once we left the church, we headed straight to the Cathedral for another try! It was beautiful, as are most cathedrals! We got to see the crypt of a female Saint who was tortured to death and later made a Saint. We had to put a coin in to turn on the light to view the crypt, as 'Illumination comes with a price." We were going to head into the Cloister as well but it was closed :-(





After the cathedral, we went to a park designed by Gaudi. This had amazing views of the city too, as well as some cool Guadi houses!







After the park, we headed to a lovely lunch at a hotel, and then we were free for the day! I roamed around the city with karen again and then we went to the pool and read and got more sun!

For dinner we ate cheap food again, and then went to the same student-chef restaurant to have some sangria! While we were sitting at the table looking out the plaza my friend Dana from my sorority at Syracuse happpened to walk by! It was nice to have a little reunion. After dinner, we headed home so we could get up early for the car ride home the next morning.






I absolutely loved Barcelona! It was a beautiful city with tons to visit, and I certainly wish I'd had more time there! All in all, a fantastic weekend!

Friday June 25th

Today we got up at about 9 a.m. for a nice breakfast at the hotel before driving up to MontJuic, where the Olympic Games were held when they came to Madrid! We went to the top to see the beautiful views, check it out!







After our quick stop for the views, we drove down the the Museum of Catalunyan Art, which was cool! We went just to the Romanic Art section, where the art had very specific characteristics. The exhibit was cool because it was made almost completely of salvaged pieces from the walls of old churches around Catalunya, so they were never completely filled in. It was cool to see art that was salvaged and transported from the walls of churches from the 900s!





After the museum, we headed down the mountain to go to the Cathedral of Barcelona, which was unfortunately closing for Siesta. So we left and walked around a little and I found a few things to take pictures of:




After the walking around, we headed to a great restaurant on the beach! We had salad and traditional Spanish tapas (squid and this special type of fish that almost nobody likes except for me!) followed by paella and ice cream for dessert! Here are pictures from lunch:


After lunch, my friend Karen and I went to the beach. We didn't take any pictures, but it was certainly beautiful and a great day to lay in the sun! Afterwards, we got a little lost heading back to our hotel, but it was fine because the weather was so beautiful, as is the city.

That night we ended up getting Pans, a fast food place from Spain, and bringing it back to our room to watch the Chile-Spain soccer game. Afterwards, we went on a 'pub crawl' in Barcelona that was literally the worst experience ever! It was funny though because we got to laugh at the GIANT group of Semester At Sea kids going on the crawl. We ducked out after about 20 minutes, but here is a picture of me, Karen, Keegan and Mel...


That's all for Friday! Next post, Saturday!

Thursday, June 24th

This morning we packed up and left for Barcelona around 8! I'm really beginning to enjoy our bus rides, they are long but very fun! We watched a movie (Cell 211) for Spanish class and had a couple nice stops for food, etc...

We arrived in Barcelona around 5 p.m. and checked into the Hotel Lleo. Almost immediately, we went on a walking tour of La Rambla, which is the major walking street for people in Barcelona. It's beautiful: there are two small streets for cars surrounding a giant median in the middle where there are tables from the various restaurants, vendors, and lots and lots of street performers. Here are a few pictures from our walk:







After the tour, we were free for the night. We took a quick nap and then got ready for dinner. We went to a restaurant called Quinze Nits, which is very cool: it's really delicious and quite fancy, but the chefs are all students, so it's really reasonably priced! I got a mozarella and tomato pesto salad and spinach and cheese ravioli, followed by an AMAZING chocolate brownie! We got to sit out at a table on La Plaza Reial which was just beautiful. We got to people watch for the entire three hour length of our meal! Here are some pictures:





After dinner, we just went home to the hotel (it was almost 1 a.m.!) and went to sleep to get ready for the next day, which was going to be pretty long!

Friday, June 18th

Today I headed over to the school at around 11 a.m. to board a bus that took us to Martue Winery, which is located in the region of Toledo. Here is a little review of the winery, which was beautiful:

http://www.cellartours.com/spain/spanish-wineries/martue-winery.html

When we got to Martue, we immediately began a tour of the vineyard. We walked through the grounds and it was beautiful. I've never seen a baby grape until now! The vineyard is about 90 hectares, and each year they made about 300,000 bottles of wine from those 90 hectares.






Right after we took our group photo by the grapes, a storm came faster than you can even imagine. We headed into a building that turned out to be connected to the main 'house' of the winery and got to see the machinery they use to create the wines. We got to see the big vats that hold the wine during the fermentation process. We also met the son of the owners and his two friends, who are all our age and going to school in Boston in the fall.







After the storm we walked around a little more, and ran into a herd of sheep from the farm next door!



We then went inside again and checked out the basement where much of the wine is stored in barrels before bottling. It smelled very strong of grapes and wood, and the smell was a little hard to get used to!




Then, of course, we got to eat! The meal was very strange- a cold, egg-vegetable souflee type thing! But as always there was delicious gazpacho :-) Here are some pictures I took out front of the winery, and of course, the bathroom! So pretty!




After we left Martue, we headed to another city about an hour from Madrid, called Chinchon. This city was named so because the remedy for malaria (quinine) which comes from the chinchona tree (Peru) was brought to Chinchon. The city is known for it's Plaza Mayor which has cool wooden balconies and about 10 restaurants in a very small space! We climbed up the hills and got beautiful views.











All in all, it was a fantastic day! We got to taste lots of delicious wines and eat some interesting foods and enjoy the beautiful views! This week we leave for Barcelona on Thursday!