Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Segovia, el Norte, y vida por lo general

Hi hii!!
So one major detail I left out of my last post is the details of my living situation.  I'm living in an apartment with an older single woman who is nice enough but also has a very strong personality reminiscent of the aunt from My Big Fat Greek Wedding:
"What you mean you don't eat no meat?!... that's ok, I make lamb."

 and now for my where-abouts:
Segovia! a few friends of mine went to Segovia for the day to see the huge roman aquaducts there... incredible.  they were huge! it was such a cool city that was a fusion of old (really old) architecture and new as well.  In a lot of cities I've seen, there's an old part of the city and a new city, but what I saw in segovia was that the two were completely fused, there was no distinction.  Keep in mind: we were only there for a day, so I could be wrong. Either way, it was so cool and I wish I could have stayed longer, but the train left at 6.


 Where's waldo? insert blinge to scale.




 El correo de torros: a bull fight.  The season was ending and Bull fights are so unique to Spanish culture.  They just banned bullfighting in Cataluna, the autonomous community that Barcelona is in, and I don't know if that ban will spread to the other parts of the country as well, so I decided to go.  I am not a confrontational person nor violent, so I was nervous to watch the bullfight.  There were six bulls, each of which were killed in the arena, which a lot of people don't realize.  Every bull fight aims to end in the death of the bull.  It was interesting and beautiful and alluring while simultaneously bloody and gory and something that I'm not super interested in seeing again.  The outfits were cool, and the atmosphere unique, but it was violent.


El Norte (Leon, Santander, y Bilbao) was so beautiful! Unfortunately I was sick and hacking up a lung, but thankfully that didn't stop me from enjoying the trip.  We saw a lot of cool things thanks to the planning of our director, but the coolest was the cuevas de pinal, which are prehistoric caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites that have prehistoric paintings. We also went to Bilbao, which is apart of el pais vasco (basque country) where they speak a language completely unrelated to any other language on the planet and have unique food. It was my favorite city of the trip, with the guggenheim which was really interesting as well.

 



Outside of the Cueva de Pinal



 El Catedral de Leon
 










Futbol! not the Steelers, but FC Madrid! I went to a game, it was awesome. Enough said.  Also, we went to the James Joyce Irish Pub, close to Banco de Espana, its this cool bar in the middle of the city.  There was a soccer game (Manchester City vs. Manchester United), and walking into the bar was like being transported to the UK, or what I imagine it to be.  Everyone was speaking in British English and cheering on their teams.





Finally, Toledo! We took a day trip there to see the city.  Toledo was a big deal back in its hay day.  The way our professor explained it is that to understand a person, you have to learn about their childhood.  Its the same with a country, to understand the present, you have to know the past.  Spain's culture, although now extremely roman catholic, was once a melting pot for religion and culture.  This is, perhaps, the most obvious in Toledo, where they have an old Jewish quarter and mosques.  They may have been destroyed over the course of the inquisition, but everything was restored and made into museums.

Toledo!
Before I left for Spain, my Grandma gave me a 10$ bill.  Its kind of a tradition to take it as "emergency money" and write on it all of the places you travel.  So far, mine getting lots of cities on it, but none outside of Spain, an my passport has no new stamps in it.  This weekend I'll be traveling a lot across a certain channel north of France, so that is soon to change! more soon about the cities soon to be printed on Alexander Hamilton's face and other Spanish adventures!

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