right

ok! so London. I went there last weekend. It was cold and rainy, but it was actually a nice change from Sevilla's constant summer. Here I am in a telephone booth!

I went with my friend Samantha (and a couple other people who were staying with friends so I only saw on the flight over). We got in friday night around 3 am to the hostel. The hostel was actually nice: we had the room to ourselves, a kitchen in the room, a bathroom with shower in the room, doors that lock. impressive (for a hostel). Anyways the first day we got up and went to see Westminster Abbey. We just looked, we decided not to pay the 12 pounds to go inside.
After that we saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben (the clock attached to the parliament). That's my friend Samantha.
After that we went on the London eye which is a giant ferris wheel. Unfortunately it was raining for most of the time we were in it, so it was kind of hard to take pictures from it.
Here I am inside one of the bubbles (they were enclosed so we didn't get wet).
After that we wandered around a bit, looked at some random old looking buildings and eventually ended up at the Tower of London, which is a tower than was used as a prison and as a place to guard the royal jewels and stuff. Sir Walter Raleigh was kept there! There were also lots of murder mysteries involving kings and royal people trying to gain power. here is the tower from the outside.

Here it is from the inside. There were many towers and buildings/museums to explore here so we stayed here until it closed at 4:30, when it was already completely dark in London! I guess it's pretty far north. The Tower is right next to Tower Bridge which was really pretty at night!

We went up on Tower Bridge and we could see London Bridge, which was also lit up.

From London Bridge we could see fireworks! Not sure what they were for, maybe Guy Fox day celebrations lasting into the weekend? Anyways it was pretty cool to just walk by a big fireworks celebration... couldn't get any good pictures of it though. After that we crossed to the other side of the river and went to the Tate Modern art museum which was free and very modern art-y. After Tate Modern we crossed a pedestrian bridge that led to St. Paul's Cathedral which has a very interesting dome at night. It has random words flash across it like "fame" and "love" and "earth" and some arab words. Sometimes it made sense and sometimes it made no sense at all. strange.
Here is one side of the london skyline at night.
Then we went to see Picadilly Circus, which was very New York - like and ate at an Indian restaurant that was closeby. After that we went to Trafalgar square which has some tall monument in it and I have no pictures of it because it was night. Then we went back to the hostel.
On Sunday, we went to St. Jame's park and Buckingham Palace. In St. James park we saw the royal marching band and a parade of veteran war heroes with lots of medals. We were actually trying to see the changing of the guards but that didn't happen so the parade sufficed.
These guys were my favorite (outfit wise).

St. James park was really pretty and fall-ish.

There was a bridge over the lake that supposedly has a "protected view" that no one can change. I never figured out which side the protected view was, they were both really pretty.
Side 1Side 2
That's Buckingham palace by the way. Buckingham Palace was not nearly as impressive as I thought it would be, and there weren't very many guards. We did see a couple though. They were wearing their jackets over the normal red coats. Oh well.

After that Samantha had to leave to go to the airport so I dropped her off at the hostel and went to eat lunch which was pie! I actually enjoyed the food in London, contrary to what most people warn against. I did mostly eat just pies so maybe thats why. But there are so many different kinds of pie! I had potato, feta/spinach, and turkey/bacon (thats three different kinds). They were really good for the cold London weather.
After that I went to walk through Hyde park. The first thing I saw in Hyde park was Speaker's corner, where a bunch of people stand around and practice their right to free speech by talking to whoever will listen about their opinions about... whatever! Here they are.


Hyde park itself was really pretty.
On the other side of Hyde park, I saw a bunch of guard like people on horses carrying swords!
Here is a memorial about something that I was too lazy to walk over and see.

From there, I figured I should go to atleast one of London's famous museums, so I chose the museum of natural history, which turned out to be a good choice. Saw lots of dinosaur bones and stuffed mammals. Here is the natural history museum building. There is an outside ice skating rink in front of it.
After that I just wandered around a bit, ate dinner and went back to the hostel. I left the next morning. On the way to the bus stop, I found out that a train on the metro line I had to take to the bus stop had broken down and there were major delays. Luckily my stop was the last one the train was running to, and I got there early anyways. London was one of my favorite places I've visited in Europe so far and I would definately go back there. Maybe I'll try fish and chips next time.

Barcelona, Granada

Hi!
Last weekend was a long weekend (no school monday), so I went to Barcelona, the city of Gaudi and a million tourists. Sarah and I arrived Friday afternoon and met up with our friend Debra who got there the night before and was staying in the same hostel. The first thing we did was walk down the main touristy street Las Ramblas, where they sell mainly art, tourist crap, food, and animals including:
Chipmunks!
We also stopped by a giant market with lots of fruits including a strange pink fruit I've never seen before but tastes pretty good. Here are some peppers.

Next we decided to do the "Gaudi walk". This is a Gaudi streetlamp.
We also saw two houses designed by Gaudi. The first one is Casa Batllo (a strange Catalan name I assume). This house is supposed to look like water I think.
I'm not sure what the next house was called, but it looked pretty cool as well.
The Sagrada Familia was the last thing on the suggested "Gaudi walk" on our map. Gaudi died (not sure when) but his cathedral was unfinished so they are still working to complete it. It is supposed to be finished within 20 years. We didn't go inside because we heard from a hostel mate from kyrgystan (sp?) that it wasn't worth it because of all the construction.
From this angle you can't really see the cranes as much. Oh well. We also decided to go to Park Guell, which has lots of Gaudi stuff. What we didn't realize is it is at the top of a giant hill. Luckily there were escalators up alot of the way, but the rest was very steep. While at Park Guell we saw the longest park bench in the world! made by Gaudi. It extends farther than this picture and is crazy looking.
It has lots of cool tiles and designs.
There was also a lizard surrounded by people trying to touch it and take pictures.
Barcelona is alot more obnoxiously overrun by tourists than Sevilla. I heard alot of strange languages that weekend. The next day we decided to do a tour of the inside of one of Gaudi's houses and we chose Casa Batllo because it was the coolest, even though it was the most expensive. It is pretty crazy on the inside.
This is the roof. ^ and here is the view from the staircase. v

There are too many cool pictures to post them all here, so you will have to ask Matthew to show you on facebook.
Later we went to the top of a hill called Montjuic (another strange Catalan name). This is where the 1992 olympics took place. We saw a stadium and a strange tower/structure/monument thing.There was also an art museum that looked like a castle, some parks/gardens, and a fountain that we later found out only turns on every half hour between 7:30 and 8:30 at night, but is supposed to be really impressive. Oh well. Here is the museum castle with the fountain in front of it:
The next day we went to Montserrat - a monastery on top of a mountain about 45 minutes by train away from Barcelona.
The rock formations were very cool, as you can see. The main thing to do there was just to walk around and look at the rocks and view and the monastery. There is also a cathedral there with a famous statue of a black Mary. Originally the statue of Mary wasn't black, but people thought it was because it was so dirty. When they cleaned it off and realized it wasn't actually black, they were disappointed so they decided to just paint it black anyways. Now people wait in line for hours just to touch the foot of the black mary.
When we came back to Barcelona, we walked around the beach area. Another funny story is the statue of Christopher Columbus. He is mistakenly pointing towards Africa instead of America.
The next day we walked around another park where we found a giant woolly mammoth and I got to sit in its trunk!
Later that day I went back up to the top of Montjuic, to look at a castle from which there was a pretty good view of the city, except it was very foggy. The castle was pretty though.
While we were in Barcelona, we ate dinner three times at the only Italian restaurant in Barcelona. There was a line out into the middle of the plaza, but there was usually only a 15 minute wait if you got there right when it opened and it was really good and cheap!
Whew, so I think I'm done with Barcelona. Remember to ask Matthew to see my Barcelona album on facebook for more pictures.

This weekend I went to Granada with the program. I just got back this afternoon. Granada was a very beautiful and interesting city.
The first day I wandered around with two friends Debra and Monika into the city center and then into the oldest part of town and the gypsy section where I bought a scarf for 4 euros! We wandered up a hill with lots of old pretty white houses on it.
From the hill we could see the Alhambra, the muslim palace which is the main attraction in Granada.

You can also see the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background. The next day we went to the cathedral of Granada and the Alhambra with our teachers acting as tour guides. Here is the cathedral.

The alhambra was impressive and large, lots of Arabic architecture and decoration.
There are two parts to the Alhambra: the Alcazaba (the defensive building) and the Alcazar (the palace). We went to the top of the tower of the Alcazaba, and there must have been some kind of electrical field anomaly, because everyone's hair was standing on end!
This is the top of Ana's head. There was a nice view though.
There was also an extensive garden as part of the palace.
Thats pretty much all we saw in Granada, it is actually a fairly small city. Will try to post the rest of my Granada pictures on facebook soon too.