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.
